In January 2005, I had a friend tell me about www.bigchurch.com so I signed up to make new friends. By that time, many of my friends had gotten married (or all my ETBU friends were back home) so I didn't have a lot of single friends to hang out with. I talked to a few people as friends and then got a message from Steven. We talked for a while through email just getting to know each other. After about 3 months of him asking, I finally gave in to giving him my phone number...I did meet him online after all.
We continued to get to know each other through email and phone until late May. In May of 2005, he was in the process of moving from Iceland to Germany. We didn't talk through the summer (email or phone) so I assumed he lost interest. In August, I felt like God was telling me to email him again. I did and heard from him that day. He had just gotten his internet hooked up at his home in Germany that week. He said that in the move, he lost my phone number but wanted to talk to me many times through the summer. I gave him my number again and we talked several times a week.
In January 2006, on my 25th birthday to be exact, we finally met in person. He had been in San Antonio for training and flew into Longview for a night. We spent my birthday together. We went to Lifeway, Cheddars for lunch, and went to see the first Chronicles of Narnia movie. He got to meet my family and friends that day since my friends had planned dinner at Papaciatas for my birthday.
On Sunday after church and lunch with my family, he and I went to Starbucks and then the park before I took him back to the airport. We talked about everything at Starbucks...he told me all about his life and his family. He asked me to pray about dating him. At the park we just walked and talked some more.
When we said "goodbye" at the airport, we left praying about if we were supposed to date. I told him the following day that I wanted to be his girlfriend (because he actually asked me to pray about that) but we were sad because we knew it would be at least 6 months before we would see each other again. Little did we know that I would be driving down to meet his family the next weekend.
During the next 9 months, we were able to see each other many times. In March, I was able to go visit him in Germany. While I was there, we drive to Paris, France one day. In April, his father passed away and he was able to come back to Texas and I was able to go see him and go to the funeral. He was able to come back home with me for Easter. That weekend he asked Dad if he could marry me but Dad told him to wait. Dad had to reasons, Steven and I had only been dating 3 months and Steven was leaving for Afghanistan in May for 4 months. When he came back in October, he asked me to marry him on our 9 month anniversary.
I went to see him again at Christmas in Germany....against my mom's will. She couldn't believe I wasn't going to be home for Christmas. In February, he was out of the Air Force for good and he moved to Longview. We finished wedding plans and bought our first home to fix up until the wedding.
God has brought us through so much since January 2006 and we've been beyond blessed. We have our dream home, I'm teaching 3rd grade with the greatest, most supportive coworkers ever, we have our sweet dog Bella (our child in training as I said in my first post), and we are part of a wonderful church/Sunday School class. We are still waiting on God to bless us with our first time, but we wait patiently on his perfect timing.
I know it's a long post but I just wanted to share to story of how I met my Prince Charming (Steven John Waalwyk).
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