Lottery Numbers, Anyone?

HELLO family!!

So so sorry I didn't have time to write you a main email last week. I was just writing away to friends and then suddenly I was out of time. We really dont' have that much time to email here. So SORRY! But I realized I wasn't telling you very much about what I do here and what is going on so I'm going to be more descriptive this time. So this week has been good! We have been working hard and had some fun times.

So we do different things to find people here than on most missions because it's hard to find people who are interested here. We do something called street boarding (I know I thought it involved a skateboard of some kind at first too! Sadly... no) ha ha We stand out on the glov (which is like an outside shopping place...ish where it's a street but just for people to walk in and then with shops and stuff on the sides too. ANyway, we get a board with some kind of info on the BOM or plan of salvation or what not and stand there and tell people about it as they walk by and try to get people interested. Another thing we do is called surveying where we have a survey with ?'s asking if they believe in god or what not and then we give them a little message about the church and try to see if they are more interested. Then another thing we do to find is we teach free english lessons twice a week. That is actually really fun to do and we have some interesting people in our class ha ha but I enjoy it and even though and really don't know what I'm talking about it's still fun. Last week we tried getting them to make the "th" sound with their mouths because they never do that here and it's really funny to see them try to do it. ha ha they can't say words like health, or with (Joseph Smith is Joseph Smit here ha ha) It's great. Also, we do the usual tracting and contacting but we also have letters of recommendation that a member wrote and we make those up and deliver them to people's mailboxes and then return later to see if they got it and to see if they are interested or have more questions. Anyway, when we aren't teaching lessons we are usually doing some sort of finding activity. I don't enjoy finding very much, I'd much rather teach but I guess you have to find people in order to teach them! ha ha but it's good they are pretty fun still.

So anyway, this week we were tracting one night and we go to this door and this lady answers and says she's not interested and calls us a cult (just like everyone else! ha ha ) but then her husband comes to the door and starts talking to us.. well kinda... we couldn't understand his bulgarian OR his english. I have no idea what he was trying to say to us. Anyway, he's talking forever and we are answering questions and such and then suddenly he goes in and gets a paper and pen and starts telling us to give him 3 numbers each that he is going to enter into the lottery and WHEN he wins he will give half the money to the church. This guy was convinced that we would know the lottery numbers and could make him win. Ha ha it was so funny! We kept telling him we didn't want money... blah blah he still would not get off this lottery kick. We finally just left but it was really funny and kinda made my whole night because this guy was such a nut! ha ha People are kinda crazy here but it makes life fun for sure! ( I also think he was really drunk...)

So this week we had Zone Conference which is why my p-day was thursday last week. The conference was really fun! We had all the elders there from the whole zone so that made the p-day really fun! I started playing basketball with all the elders and we were having tons of fun. Well they started talking a bunch of smack on me cause I was the only girl so I got competitive and just had to win, so I kicked their butts! ha ha it was great! Really it was just luck that I made all those shots but I won't tell them that! deeh!! :) We then watched Toy Story 3 cause we are allowed to watch disney movies and such on p-days which is AWESOME!!!

Oh by the way dad, I got your letters that you sent on Friday if that gives you an idea of about how long they take to get here. I don't think it took too long to get to the mission home but then I have to wait until someone from the mission home like the APs or someone is able to bring them out here to Varna because we are on the other end of the country. But anywho good news is I did get them!

SO funny story (if you get grossed out easily, then you should stop reading now and move onto the next paragraph... just warning you...) So for the last three weeks I have had this big narly nasty ingrown toenail that has gotten all infected and swollen and it hurts to walk or to run or anything. So I was soaking my foot like twice a day everyday with epsom salt stuff to try to help it and really it was just getting worse. SO this guy comes into english on Saturday and says he is a doctor and was wondering if anyone had anything wrong that he could help. SO sister Loss tells him about my toe and he wants to see it. I show it to him and he's all like I can fix it!! ( keep in mind he doesn't speak english and I don't speak bulgarian!) So he starts rubbing my ankle because he didn't understand that it was my TOE not my ankle! ha ha we finally show it to him and after a few more tries he finally gets it. Then he asked for a pair of scissors so we get them and there he goes right in the church trying to fix my infected toe with a pair of dirty, HUGE scissors with his dirty little hands. OH man it was so funny and it REALLY killed! Well long story short, he really didn't do much and it really didn't help much at all but I pretended like it did so he would stop trying ha ha anyway, I got an idea from him and that night I performed surgery on my toe at home and had Sister Loss help me (I know poor girl!) ha ha it was really funnny. But my toe is feeling better after my little surgery so hopefully I won't have to do it again and I can heal up just nicely! I was able to go running on it today so that's good news!

Okay, enough of that. Well I don't have much else to say. Hopefully this gives you a little more of an idea of what I'm doing over here in Bulgaria! I've been super busy and it feels like we don't have time to breathe! The good news is I am sleeping a lot better because I come home so tired that I just can't wait to go to bed! So that's great! things are going great though! We met with a new member named Rodka last night and seriously this girl is amazing. She's one of my best friends out here. I adore her. Well we met with her and her brother last night and she's been really worried about him because he is really against the church but she really wants him to look into it. Anyway, he ended up sitting in on our lesson and it was AMAZING! Like seriously it was exactly what he needed to hear and he was way involved and we really got him thinking, touching straight to the heart. The spirit was so strong. It was awesome! (and in english so I could help! ha ha) anyway, it was amazing and I"m excited to hear what happens with that later.

Well I love you tons and hope all is going well! MIss you!! I hope you are having fun with Rodent being home! MEOW!!

Love,
me

For those of you who may not know... RACHEL is home from serving her mission in New York!! Rachel is giving her homecoming talk this Sunday February 27 at 11:00am in the Oakforest building. It's gonna be good! So be there.

"Love You Like Flies Love Poop."

Still waiting to find out Cara's address so you guys can start writing her again! :) Until then... enjoy her letters.

SLUG!!

ah man I am running out of time! I thought I had more time than I do :( So sadly I don't think I will have time to write a main letter to everyone this week but I wanted to write you and tell how much I love you! This week has been great but kinda crazy! We had zone conference this week and so our pday was on Thursday instead of monday, but I will have another one on Monday so be expecting it!! deeh!! Things here are going really well! There are some hard days but also many many good days as well so I am really happy about that. I don't have a grasp on the language at all yet but I know it will come. I will just keep trying hard to do my best and I know the Lord will provide a way for me to do the things he has commanded of me. I am loving this city! Varna is really beautiful! and I love it! I don't have the ability to print out your letters but I can still read them from the computer! I don't have our address with me but I think.. yeah I don't know I"m sorry I'll have to give it to you next week sorry dad! I wanted to attach some photos today but I just don't have any time left! WE really don't have much time for emailing which makes me really sad but I love you dad and I'm excited rachel gets to come home and you get to see her! Tell her to write to me! I miss you tons and hope you are all doing well. I think about you everyday and I am always praying for you! MEOW!

Love
Me

On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 7:35 AM, Doug Child wrote:

Hi Bean:

Here is letter #2 for you. please give me your address as soon as you can so I can start trying to mail letters to you at least. I sure love you Babe. (let me know if you can print these letters out ok?)

Love you like flies love poop. ( a lot more than that too)

Dad

WELCOME TO BULGARIA!!

I have finally received Caralee's first forwarded letter from Bulgaria! And I couldn't be any happier right now. I wish I could be in Bulgaria and see for myself what it is like.. but I'm just glad that she is enjoying it so much! I'm still trying to figure out what she meant by 'forgot her camera cord'.. forgot it at the MTC? or home? Either way - how do you forget something like that?! I hope it somehow finds its way back to her. Last of all, thank goodness for Ambien!

HEY FAMILY! GUESS WHAT??! I'M IN BULGARIA!!!! COOL EH?? ha ha it's so sweet!!! Okay so this has been a very interesting week for me as you could probably guess.

Let me just start out by saying how much I LOVE not having giant red blinking numbers counting down the time I have left on the computer! ha ha it's so GREAT!!

Okay so I made it here just fine. The flights were not bad... I took an ambien and literally slept the ENTIRE time on the plane, actually I slept the entire time on all three plane rides so that actually made the trip go by quite fast.. besides our two 8 hour layovers, it was great. Because of said ambien I have not had any jet lag which is beautiful!! We met president and sister Roth at the aiport with the APs and we stayed at the mission home that night. Sister Roth is an incredible cook and made us excellent dinner and breakfast! ah it was so great to eat REAL food again! Yes.. heaven. Anyway, the mission home is really nice and I enjoyed it. The next day we met our trainers and were assigned to our areas.. along with some other meeting stuff. It was bad. SO I have been assigned to Varna and my companion is Sister Loss, which is great! I expected to go here and actually really wanted to go here so I love it! Varna is a big city and it's kinda dirty... okay really dirty but still beautiful at the same time. I love it. Varna is a city on the north east side of the country right on the Black Sea! Cool eh? We are going to go see the sea today :) AND ever since I got here the weather has been BEAUTIFUL!! It's sunny everyday and pretty warm, especially for winter. It's warmer here than it was in Provo. Deeh! Makes me happy.

Okay so wanna hear something kinda funny!? Turns out Joel Racker is my Zone Leader here in Varna!! ha ha oh man it's so weird! He picked us up from the bus stop (after another 7 hour bus ride on top of all the flights! Grunt.) and it was the weirdest thing to see him here. I see him all the time though because he is our zone leader and we are doing stuff with them most of the time. So anyway, that's kinda crazy and kinda fun! It's still really weird for me to see him though, but it's cool.

So, BULGARIA ROCKS!! It's really just exactly like I expected it to be! Very European, Euro cars, Euro streets, Euro styles.. yes I love it! I don't understand a word of what people are saying to me, but I try anyway. I feel like a 5 year old when I speak and people kinda look at me like I am one too! ha ha BUT I will get the language eventually! I've already noticed a huge difference just being so immersed in the language. There is one thing however that is going to be hard to get used to. They nod their heads up and down to say no and they go back and forth to say yes. It's opposite and oh man it totally throws me off ALL THE TIME!! Ah it kills me and I just cannot get my head to grasp the fact that shaking my head back and forth is yes! I just can't do it! Though that is my goal today.. to shake my head the "right" way from now on. Ha ha I heard that's what it was like but I don't think I actually really believed it!

Sister Loss is awesome by the way! I love her. She is from Salem, Utah and we get along great. We are very much alike. We both love to run so we go running every morning and she loves to eat healthy which is really good for me.. seeing as I love chocolate!! So we eat very healthy as well. She also is a very hard worker and that's very very good for because as you know.. I like to have a little too much fun. So she keeps me on track which is really good. We work really hard all day long every day. At the end of the day I'm always so tired and my feet hurt and my back hurts and I have a headache... yet I'm still so happy and feel so great because I know I am utterly exhausted doing the best I can here. That's what I want everyday of my mission.

We went tracking last night and it was really cool. ( I can start the conversation but then Sister Loss has to take over because I don't know what they are saying to me!) Anyway, we met this old lady (a baba is what they call it!) and she had just lost her husband and kids and sisters. They all had died recently. I didn't catch how.. but it was so sad. She was just so lonely and just needed to talk to someone. We stayed with her for a while and gave her some things about the church. She was so happy to just have someone to talk to. It was so sweet. She gave us some cookies and clothes hangers (random) but it was all she had. My heart just went out to her. As we were walking home that night, I was looking down at the sidewalk because the roads and sidewalks here are so cracked and broken that you have to watch where you are stepping or you will fall. As I was doing that I couldn't help but think of how these sidewalks are just like the people here. They have been so oppressed and bruised and beaten through their lives that they've learned to be hard and calloused in order to survived. Just as the walkways are broken and hard, so are their hearts. My heart just reaches out to them as I think of all they have gone through and really they just need someone to show them some love, to fix up their broken hearts and to soften something that has been so calloused from years and years of hatred, bitterness, and brutality. It really made me just want to give my everything to help them and show them they were loved. Just as that little old baba just wanted some love, I think everyone can use a loving hand.

The members here are incredible! They are very few in number but very strong. I met them all yesterday and I love them. We have about 30 in our branch here in Varna and then we also go to a neighboring town called Pervadia for church. They are mostly all inactive and struggle. We had 4 people there besides us at this sacrament meeting and church only lasts a 1 total there. We go every Sunday though to help build it up there. That poor town struggles, they are so poor. Many of the Maxalas (ghettos) here remind me a lot of Africa because of the way they live. It's very similar. There are many poor people here and it's hard to see. There's a lot of work to be done and I'm excited to do it!

Well just so you know. My p-days are now on Mondays so I'll be emailing every monday. I forgot my camera cord but think I should be able to attach some pics next week so I will try! I will also try to attach a voice recording too if I can dad :) Love you all and hope things are going well! MEOW!! (PS there's also a LOT of cats here! They are everywhere! ha ha LOVE IT!)

Love,me

Waiting = чакане = 'chakane'

Caralee got a flood of letters on her LAST day at the MTC. Some from regular writers, and a lot from first time writers. Please do NOT wait to send your letters to her in her last days in Bulgaria. That would make for a long 16 months in the land of the unknown. Please and Thank You!

She has been in Bulgaria since last Wednesday and I am still waiting! Waiting for an e-mail, a letter, a sign... ANYTHING! I miss her dearly and want to know how she is handling Bulgaria. I'm pretty sure it's not going to be anything like what they told her in the MTC. That always seems to happen. As much as I LOVE Sister Pantigoso, I'm comforted knowing that Caralee will have a companion that knows Bulgaria well and can teach her the ropes.

Speaking of сестра (sestra) Pantigoso.. We have been writing and guess what? She is an Alicia Keys fan! Oh. My. Goodness. I love her. I plan on going to a concert with her. Butttt.. you probably all don't care about that. :) However, you may be interested in knowing that the doctors cleared her and she was able to leave with her District! Yay! I was so worried about her. But all is well!

Goodbye MTC. Helllooooo BULGARIA!

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