Part 1: Divine Intervention

So last year I had this great thought. Our 5 year anniversary was coming up and I wanted to write down our meeting/engagement story out in parts. I had just stumbled across the Pioneer Woman's blog for the first time and after reading their "story" I decided I wanted to do one of my own. But then life happened and I forgot before my anniversary came around. Life is more busy now (2 kids are SO much more work than 1...but twice as wonderful!!) but I still want to do it before time passes even more and more details fade away with my memory. Cause life will only get more busy! Anyways, I decided that I at least want to write a new "part" to the story every Sunday. But if I get more time, even better! So here goes the first part!

Part 1:

Divine Intervention

So where to start. I would like to say that we meet in heaven, because I am pretty sure we did. The way I felt around him the first time was something almost like 2 friends re-uniting for the first time after spending years apart. But I will save that for later. I spent most of my childhood in SO-CAL swimming in the oceans and enjoying year round summer. It was wonderful. When I was about 11 my Dad's bank he worked at was bought by another bank and he decided that instead of staying there, he wanted to move his young family of 5 out of California. It was getting worse and worse and the idea of raising a small family in such a morally declining place pushed my parents out of the "perfect" beach town that we lived in. My family was surprised when they felt they should move north. So long story short, we moved to a small town near Seattle and lived there for 6 years. 

Fast forward for our purposes to the summer before my senior year. I was on top of the world. I had great friends that I LOVED, one of my great friends had just joined the church (which was a big deal in WA), I had a beautiful horse that I was training to start doing hunter/jumper shows with and all was right. Of course, that's when things have to change right? Well my Dad's job was becoming dangerous. That is what the doctor said. Essentially the stress from his job (long story short: he was a senior vice president over a huge bank where all the people he was working with were super super corrupt and were trying to sabotage him for standing up for what was right) was killing him. Literally. The doc said that if he stayed at that job, he would die in just a matter of years. So with his young family of now 7, my parents decided he had to leave his job. 

One night, they called my younger sister and I into their room for a "chat". Little did I know my whole life would change after that "chat" on multiple levels. After a bit, it came out that they felt we should move and fast. To a small little "hick" town (my words, not theirs) about an hour away. I was DEVASTATED, to put it lightly. In all my 17 year old drama, I stormed out of their room bawling and insisting that they weren't moving me to that awful "hick" town for my senior year. I wasn't going to have it. I slammed my door and collapsed on my bed (I was quite the drama queen). I then felt a quiet prompting to open my scriptures. I didn't (and still don't) ignore those (or any) kind of promptings so I followed it's guidance. I opened to a random place in the scriptures and read the following verse:

"And it did work for them according to their faith in God: therefore, if they had faith to believe that God could cause that those spindles should point the way they should go, behold, it was done; therefore they had this miracle, and also many miracles wrought..."

--Alma 37:40

(no wonder Alma 37 is one of my favorite chapters in the Book of Mormon)

Then I felt the spirit directly tell me that I needed to have faith in my parents promptings to move us to said "hick" town, that we were being directed there for a specific reason and it would all work out. Sufficiently humbled, I slithered back to my parents room to tell them of my experience and to let them know that I supported their decision. Didn't like it, but I wouldn't sabotage their efforts to move our family away from our beloved town.

Fast forward several months and I am starting my senior year in "hickville" (my lovely nickname for the town we moved to). The kids were nice and I found some good friends. Of course not as awesome as my old friends, but still some fun people to hang out with during my senior year. Of course I did make the 1 hour drive back to my home town a lot because I missed my friends. Anyways, we had a great ward and I had a funny, wonderful, entertaining, bald Sunday school teacher named Brother Wadsworth. I really enjoyed sitting in his Sunday school class and learned a lot from him as he taught us from the scriptures. 

By April I was falling more in "love" with "hickville" (even though I would never admit to it then) and the people, especially the friends I was making. It really is a great little town. Brother Wadsworth announced INCREDIBLY excitedly that his son Richard was coming home from his mission in a couple weeks. Everyone in our class got REALLY excited and all were saying (in their own different ways) "awesome!! I am so glad Richard is coming home! He is SOOOO cool!". Of course, as the ward flirt, my interests were peaked. They were even more peaked when I heard later all the girls rave about how cute Richard was and how most of them had secret crushes on him. His homecoming date was getting closer and I was getting more and more anxious to meet this infamous Richard.

One of the only pics I have with me from my senior year. I was "Kim Macafee" in "Bye Bye Birdie" which was the operetta my senior year. More on the plays significance in our story later...

It was a few days before Easter Sunday and I heard that Richard had gotten home from his mission earlier in the week. I also heard that his homecoming talk was going to be Easter Sunday so I immediately prepared the cutest outfit I had. I was determined to win over the infamous Richard before any of the other girls in our ward could. As I was walking into the building on Sunday, strutting my stuff in the cutest outfit I had, I was delighted to run into one of my friends who was likewise planning a way to catch Richards attention. She had last minute decided she was going to sing a musical number and the bishop had okay-ed it. She needed someone to sing with her so we practiced our song a couple times before sacrament started. 

Needless to say we practiced until it was our turn to sing and walked in right before it was time. Because we had been practicing I hadn't had a chance to get a good look at who I was trying to woo and without looking really obvious, I decided not to look around for him. We went up to sing and I knew that he was behind me. Me, the ward and town flirt, got nervous!! No one made me nervous! This was an emotion I had hardly ever felt before! I finished the song and walked down to join my family in the front isle so excited to get my first look at the infamous Richard....