Hey everyone, what are you doing????
I say that because that is a pretty standard Bulgarian form of greeting. "What are you doing?" People say that instead of "Hello" or "What's up," as far as I can tell. And I like it. Especially when old ladies yell it to you in an amiable neighbor-like way as you walk along the street. "Um, walking and sweating. . ." But of course it is not literal. Unless. . .
Anyway. We received transfer calls this past Friday, while our district was travelling by muddy Jeep/sweaty mini-bus back to Stara Zagora from Elenavo, the celo outside of Nova Zagora where the British/Scottish members in our ward live and keep a farm upon which we do service. Convoluted sentence! And the call extended to Sister Turnbow and me was: stay in Stara Zagora together for three more weeks! I think pretty much all the sisters (there's 14 of us now!!) are staying put for the next three weeks, until new greenguys arrive. And you know what? I'm really, really happy to be staying here. I love Starz. Some missionaries get down on smaller cities because of their difficulties associated therein (convoluted!) But I am charmed by all of it. By the way EVERYBODY has a celo they go to on the weekend to take care of tomatoes. By the old ladies. By the, dare I say, hillbilly-like feel of it all. It's just very chill and cute and silly, like the time the Rotary Club dedicated a fountain statue of a phoenix in front of the Obshtina on Thursday and a bunch of sketchy suit-clad guys (not missionaries) stood around menacingly giving a speech about how this statue will help Stara Zagora become an "eternal city" while a bunch of naked kids ran up from behind and jumped in the fountain and started splashing around and had to be chased off by the laughing police. Anyway. I like Stara Zagora. I like the branch here, too. The members are AWESOME. There's like, 25 of them, 7 of which come to church these days, but they're AWESOME. But let's have a week review for a moment.
Monday: Discovered the weirdest, most obviously awesome pee day activity in all of Eastern Europe: thrift store shopping. Oh man. So weird. So many barrels of bizarre baba dresses and shirts that say things like, "This tiger is my best friend" or "Don't stop going arround!!" with two r's and so forth. And all of it is one kilogram of clothes for ten leva! Pretttty good. Sister Turnbow and I have plans to do some more traditional western shopping later today.
Tuesday: Had an awesome (sorry to overuse that word) lesson with Mitko, the investigator who got baptized when I was here last time. Mitko is pretty much the coolest person I know. He has a mullet, used to have a horse and cart (got stolen), can walk on coals (for real), and speaks celski Bulgarski, which is a weird celo dialect full of Turkish words. (Instead of 'domati,' tomatoes is 'frank.' ???) And he has given up so much, family and friends and work, to join the Church. But he gets everything and loves the Gospel and lifts up the missionaries more than we lift him, I think. Also I taught him how to say, "Hi, honey," in English, and he says it to all the missionaries now to freak them out. Hee hee!
Wednesday: Last district meeting, in which we ate banana cake (which I made, of course) with Funetti, which is like a cheap Nutella knock-off that is somehow better?? And visited Tanya, another new convert from my last transfer here, who predicted that I was going to live for a long time and have at least three children. Okay.
Thursday: Wacky English class! Oh man. Also met with Raiko, the guy we found accidentally while looking for a less-active member, who fed us an entire meal (kababcheta, shopska salad, lyotenitza, watermelon, Coke Lite, headless fish, and bread, which I mostly hid in my bag) and showed us all his paintings. And he came to church on Sunday! Also had a lesson with Maria, an investigator from over a year ago who is the best cook in Bulgaria (officially) and finally wants to get baptized!
Friday: Service day in the celo! And we picked plums, which are now in season (along with watermelon, peaches, tomatoes, OMG tomatoes, cucumbers, OMG I don't even want to talk about how good these things are) for FIVE HOURS. And I LOVED IT. I found out that fruit harvesting is probably my life calling or at least something I should do as a hobby. I love it. I love scrambling up in the trees and getting all the worms out and climbing on roofs and picking for hours and getting all sweaty. It is very soothing for some reason. MISSIONARY METAPHOR.
Saturday: Made more banana bread for another less-active member. I can't stop.
Sunday: Ridiculously hot church (it's like 40 degrees here with 90% humidity, or at least feels like it) was proceeding normally and crazily (we did a musical number as missionaries and as usual, everybody clapped ha ha ha) and then all of a sudden the Relief Society president passed out on the floor in front of me as I gave the third-hour lesson. So I called my first Bulgarian ambulance.
Anyway, that all reads very superficially, sorry. If there were two sincere take-aways I could impart, it would be: 1) We should all live on farms, and 2) The Atonement is real. Those are things that are hard to explain, and so I can only say that I know they are true and that we can know they are true for ourselves.
Anyway. I love you all. Send peanut butter if you get a chance. Everybody tell me your lives!
Love,
Sister Campbell
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