First off, I wouldn’t be engaged to this amazing man if I didn’t love writing and email! God’s blessing, I know now.

Gerre and I met for the first time in the summer of 2006 at a Campus Crusade for Christ (Cru) meeting at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He was an engineering student, and I was studying biology. Given our different courses, we didn’t see each other much outside of Cru meetings once a week.

We actually became better acquainted when I drove a van full of people to this conference in Louisville, Kentucky, and Gerre was assigned to my carpool. We spent lots of quality time with friends over the trip, and learned a lot from God’s word at the conference. I left that weekend counting Gerre as a good friend.

We remained friends throughout college, and I graduated a year before Gerre (who was in a five-year program). I left Philadelphia for graduate school, but would still send emails back and forth with Gerre catching up on one another’s lives. He graduated and moved to Maryland, and I ended up seeing him again only twice over the span of a few years. The first time was at another conference in Baltimore, and I left that weekend so impressed with his character. I had never wanted to be married before, but I found myself saying “If men can be as godly as him, maybe I could marry one.”

Over the next two years, I spent a lot of time praying and reading about marriage and waiting! If God put this on my heart, I knew he would have to be the one to make something happen, and he would have to find me a willing man! Out of the blue in August 2011, Gerre asked me to be his plus one to a wedding in Philadelphia. I said yes, certain that he was dating someone else, but happy for the chance to spend time with a good friend. I showed up, even though it was the night that Hurricane Irene hit the East Coast, and we had a great time. After that, the emails increased and I even got a phone call, until he finally called me in December asking if I would consider dating him. I paused a bit and said yes– I had been praying for that specifically since August!

Since then, it’s been a fun, interesting, and trying long distance relationship for us. We had to learn to communicate well, and quickly, to make it work! We always talk about how it’s hard, but the time we spend together is more than worth all the time we spend apart. Gerre proposed at Eagle Rock Reservation in October of this year (where we went hiking on our first date, and went to dinner on our one-year anniversary). We are so excited to begin a new adventure together!