Carla - I began hearing about a Jim Buss from my cousin Kathy and her family in the summer of 1999. I didn’t think much of it at first. It was just someone else teasing me about another guy. Eventually Kathy asked my permission to give Jim my email address. I agreed but still didn’t think much of it. My only condition was that I wasn’t going to email him first!

About a week later, on the morning of October 28, 1999 I got my first email from Jim. My first impression was that he was a little stuffy. Those first few emails were a little awkward. What do you write to a stranger? But as the weeks went by we felt more at ease and my first impression that he was stuffy changed. We began emailing every day. It as around this time that Jim knew that God wanted him to move back to Ontario when his Coles store closed. We were both playing the "what if" game. What if this is the guy for me? In fact, God was revealing to me that this was indeed the guy for me. But there were many questions. We hadn’t even met in person yet! I had only seen a picture.

As my family and I were going to be in Regina for Christmas, we decided it would be a good time to meet face to face. We set the day for Boxing Day. All that day I was very nervous. Finally in the afternoon, Jim called me to decide where we were going to meet. He sounded so confident on the phone, he put my mind at ease. He picked me up at Uncle Wes' house. No one there knew he was coming. It was quite a memorable first meeting. Lots of people were surprised. We soon left the house and headed for the bowling alley. I enjoyed the evening very much and knew that I wanted to get to know this guy better.

James - I first heard about Carla after her cousin Celeste’s wedding. I had come back to Regina from my brother Glen’s wedding and Kathy and Dan (Cowman) had come back from Celeste’s. They had been recounting that Carla and Jody wee the last of the cousins to get marred and as usual the state of my singleness came up again. The comment was made about introducing Carla and me. At lunch that Sunday Kathy got out a picture of Carla and her sister Jody on the farm. It was a small picture and I had to look at it for a while to get a good idea of who they had been talking about.

About a month later Kathy asked me if I’d like to email Carla - just as a friend. Kathy was willing to exchange our email addresses for us. I thought long and hard. What if I didn’t enjoy getting email from Carla? A manager at Coles said to me, "What have you got to lose? You might have to delete email or you could gain a friend."

That convinced me, so I gave Kathy the okay to pass on my email address. It was still another week before I figured out what I wanted to say in my first email. I sent that email out on October 27, 1999 and received a nice reply. And so the email relationship was born. More and more as I would write, I would be drawn in and intrigued b this person. Why had her emails captured my attention? I’d rush home from work or go to the library on my lunch to see if there was an email from her.

After nearly two months, I had to find out who this person was. Carla and her family were coming to Regina for Christmas. Carla and I decided to meet. I came to pick her up at her uncle and aunt’s house. As I drove up, I noticed that Kathy and Dan and the kids were there. Now I started to get nervous. I rang the bell and Ben and Sarah answered. Ben’s words were "Jim, how did you find us?"

After introductions were made, we went bowling, where I was soundly beaten. Afterwards we went for a drink. We sat and talked and I thought to myself, "Carla’s a nice person." But I didn’t feel anything really special about her. I could take her or leave her.