Bowmanville is Amazing!

Bowmanville is AMAZING, I love it. It's very small town, you can cross the whole city in about 5 minutes, and we drove to one of the other main cities in the area and I don't think it took even 10 minutes. It's going to be such a change from Owen Sound, Sister Casner keeps making fun of me because I worry about the kms and time and then realize that doesn't matter here, because I have way more kms and alot less space. She says to me "Oh, you're SO Owen Sound...." at least once a day. It's also small town because every one here talks to every one, by our second night here we were getting calls from members excited about having Sister Missionaries again and inviting us to come over. Or we'd drop by someone and they would say "Oh, who's from Owen Sound?" How do they know that?? It's pretty funny.

 

I don't remember what I told you about the area, so sorry if I repeat myself. We're white washing, there were Elders here before us, and this area LOVES sister missionaries. They keep saying how much they missed us and talking about how we're much more successful here than Elders. (Which, btw, I find a little sad- going through the area book, all the sisters worked with member referrals and the elders only found people through tracting- that's why the sisters tend to be more successful here, member work ALWAYS goes better! I don't know if the break down came because the elders didn't do member work or if the members didn't work with the elders, but it's a really huge difference.) Sister Casner keeps saying that she feels like she served here already, because everyone keeps saying "Welcome back!" It's kind of perfect though, because Sister Casner and I both felt we needed to start working with members more, and then we got sent to the best place in Canada to do member work! And remember how I asked about the family mission plan? Well, The bishop here has asked everyone to write a family mission plan for 2012 and turn it in to him, so when we got here he asked us to ask members about their plans when we see them. How perfect is that?? (Thank you for preparing me Spirit!)

 

We came into the area and had 1 investigator already. She's been going to church for so long she already has a home teacher! She just doesn't feel ready to be baptized yet, so we're excited to help give her that final push she needs. She has 3 kids, and they're so adorable! But crazy, teaching her is a circus, I spent the last lesson having my hair attacked and trying to keep the entertained with my plan of salvation pictures without letting them tear Spiritual Bob's head off. I think I spoke twice and wasn't even sure what was being said, but Sister Casner said it fit really well so that's good at least. We're working on setting up baby sitters for her lessons from now on. We've also already had 2 referrals we'll hopefully start teaching, although 1 may not be in our area so we may have to give her to other missionaries.

 

In case you haven't picked up on it yet, I LOVE Sister Casner so much, we're basically the same person. Actually, it's like hanging out with Erin...combined with Melissa...and Joey too actually....I just realized she's our whole family rolled into 1. It's hilarious. Our favorite thing to say to each other is "That's a great idea! You're perfect. I'm perfect. We're perfect." (We're really going to have to work on our humility here....) We laugh so hard it almost kills me every day. We came out from the MTC together, she was in the classroom next to mine, but we both thought the other was a quiet sweet polite professional perfect person. Oh how VERY wrong we were.... But in a good way! She's super powerful when she teaches too, I love it. And we complement each other so well, everything I've wanted to work on she's good at and she constantly tells me I just did something she's not good at, so we're both going to teach each other so much! Our goal is to baptize EVERYONE, so every time we go to talk to someone we whisper "let's go baptize that person." We decided we baptize them with knowledge, then later we get them baptized by water and the Spirit. It's perfect. We're perfect.

Okay, so one of the COOLEST things about bowmanville is the LaFrance family. Brother LaFrance is a Jui Jitsui master- he's the top jui jitsui grappeler in North America, and has been creating his own form-"spider jui jitsiu"- that is being recognized as an official style of martial arts! I wondered if Erin Martinez would have heard of him, though maybe not if she doesn't care about Jui Jitsui. But funny thing is, half of his dojo is rented out as a dance studio- so I'm living your childhood dream right now Melissa, of having a dance/martial arts studio. The missionaries go twice a week for a 45 minute class as a finding method- and the best part is that it's even worked, Brother LaFrance has brought 5 people into the church through his dojo, including his son in law. Their family is so cool, their 14 year old daughter is a junior black belt only because she isn't old enough to be an actual black belt. I'm pretty sure their baby grandson could beat me up even, he already knows how to kick and yell "hi-ya" and he can barely walk! So our first class is tonight, so hopefully I'm not dead by the time I email you next week.

 

Okay, I really have to go write to my mission president so I'll go now, but I'm glad everyone had a happy Easter!