| Shelly and I actually
started our journey towards missions individually before
we met at University of Wisconsin, Whitewater.
I attended Urbana
Missions Conference in Illinois in 1996 and I had
felt a strong pull towards the missions field since that
conference. I was kind of leaning towards going to a
Spanish speaking country, but I really was not sure, I
just knew I wanted to work with kids, particularly
orphans.
Little did I know that a
friend of mine at school (Shelly) was also planning on
going to the missions field as well. She knew that she
wanted to work in a Spanish speaking country (because
that was the language she was studying) but she didn't
really know what she wanted to do.
One evening Shelly and I
and a friend of ours (John Allard) were playing cards
and talking about our futures. John asked me what I was
planning on doing after I got my degree. I let him know I
was planning on going to YWAM
(Youth With a Mission)-Denver discipleship training
school (DTS) so I could learn how to be a missionary.
From there I didn't really know what country I wanted to
go to.
Shelly was rather
surprised and intrigued by this, she didn't know I was
planning on going into missions at this time. She said
she wanted to get into missions as well someday. I told
her that I was leaving for training in May and there was
room in my truck if she wanted to come with. I had
offered that spot to many of my friends who I knew were
interested in missions, and nobody took me up on the
offer yet. But, little did I know she took this offer
very seriously. After a few days of thinking and praying
she agreed that she wanted to go too.
I figured this was pretty
cool to have a missions buddy already! Now I had someone
to do fundraising with for our training and also someone
I could switch off driving with out to Denver. Besides,
I thought she was kind of cute.
Well over the next 6
months Shelly and I spent a lot of time together working
on raising money, pulling together our limited resources,
hanging out with friends together, and helping each
other with school work. We came to realize there was a
lot more to our relationship than just friendship. I was
pretty sure I was falling in love with Shelly, and I didn't
realize it, but she was also falling in love with me.
We finally had "the
talk" about our feelings for each other around
January of 1999. After that talk we were dating each
other , with plans in the back of both of our minds of
when we were going to get married.
Our Mexico outreach team
friends
Click on the picture to enlarge.
In May we left for YWAM
Denver to our DTS school. On the way out to Denver we
stopped at my sisters and my aunts to break up the
drive. Those visits were also planned so my family could check out
Shelly, since I had been talking about her so
much.
We spent 3 months in
classroom training at YWAM Denver with about 30 other
students from 7 different countries. We made many
friends while at YWAM with fellow students and staff
members alike.
At the end of our classroom training I
surprised Shelly, who was out hiking with a friend of
hers, Jeanette, by meeting her in the forest with a
picnic and an engagement ring. I was rather relieved
when she accepted my proposal. Yeah! |
