Sunday, October 26, 2008

How We Met

My Uncle G. recently wrote about how he and his wife met. My friend from "Never bored" also wrote about how she and her husband met. I thought I would write about how my husband and I met also.

I really wanted to marry someone who also spoke chinese. I felt this was something that was important for my life. I was single and living in a little town in southern Utah, and couldn't see how I was going to find someone that met this criteria. One day I was watching "Oprah" and saw an author of a book that talked about how to marry a millionaire. The author said that if you want to marry a millionaire, you have to hang out where the millionaires hang out. You should have lunch at their golf clubs, go to the same restaurants etc. Basically, you need to put yourself physically in a location where millionaires hang out, thereby increasing your odds of meeting one. I didn't care about marrying a rich man, but I thought I could use this same strategy for finding someone who spoke chinese.

I came up with a plan for how I would put myself in a position to meet someone who spoke chinese. This plan entailed several elements. All of these were things I wanted to do anyway, even if I didn't meet a guy who spoke chinese.
1. I would attend BYU where there were other returned missionaries who spoke chinese.
2. I would take Chinese classes.
3. I would get a job teaching at the missionary training center, where other returned missionaries worked.
4. I would live in the "chinese language house" where students, while they are in the house, are asked to speak only the language they are studying.

My first semester at BYU was just a foot in the door. I was only able to do two of the items on my list. But my second semester I arranged to live in the chinese house, and got a job at the MTC. As I said before, these were all things I wanted to do anyway.

At the beginning of my second semester, I moved myself in to the chinese house. There were two houses, one for the men, and one for the women. These houses were located very close to each other. The residents all agreed that we would eat Sunday dinner together each week. I lived with 3 other women in a big beautiful house right at the edge of campus, near the law building. One of the women was a native speaker from Taiwan.

On my first week in the chinese house, I went with one of my roommates to Mc Donald's for lunch. They had a new chinese style dish on their menu that we wanted to try. With the boxed meal came fortune cookies. I saved my fortune and glued it in to my journal. It said, "You will meet a tall dark handsome stranger". Very cliche, I know, but it came true. :)

I was sitting on the front lawn of the chinese house showing pictures of my mission to my roommates. Suddenly one of the residents of the men's house came up and started talking to our head resident. He knew her from before his mission, and had lent his television to her over the summer. He had come to claim it, and was asking her about it. He noticed my album, and was looking over my shoulder. We all went in the house, and he and I began talking. I liked him immediately!

A few days later, he came and told me that a group of them were going to the dollar movie that was being shown in one of the auditoriums. He invited me to come along. I finagled (is that a word?) to sit by him during the movie. The movie was "The God's Must be Crazy". I wasn't that interested in the movie, but right in the middle of it, the film broke. That gave us a chance to talk to each other. He asked me about how I first came to have a desire to go to Taiwan. We found we had similar experiences, and that God had worked on us in the same way. I remember following him out of the movie thinking to myself, "Could this be the one? Naww..this is too easy!".

I won't write the entire story here because although it is short, this post is already long. But suffice it to say that we dated for about 2 weeks before he proposed. I didn't accept for another 2 weeks at the beginning of October. (during general conference). We were married a few months later at the end of December. Whirlwind romance I know, but we were already 25. If you find the right person, why wait, right? :)

4 comments:

Amber said...

aww that's so romantic - i didn't know you were engaged and married so quickly - that's so awesome!! - and i like that strategy too, I'm always telling all my single girlfriends exactly that.

Fromagette said...

What a great story! And you are right. If it is the right person, why wait? I know I shocked some former coworkers when I told them that I was getting married...in two months. Granted, my husband and I had been dating for some time (in BYU terms, ie 10 months), but we got married two months after getting engaged. But why wait? :)

Lindsay Logic said...

I didn't know that you got engaged so quickly, either! That's a cute story, thanks for sharing! :)

*L*

Becky said...

Isn't it neat how everyone's "how we met" story is so unique? Yours is great!

I didn't mean to cause pain, guilt, and anguish for anyone! Actually, I only hung up the skeleton so I could take a picture of it. I had the thought that it felt kind of humid and I probably ought to use string instead of just tape, but I was too lazy. The next morning it was all on the ground! And I did put out the Halloween dining room centerpiece, but that's the extent of our decorating this year. It's usually a Halloween afternoon activity, if we do anything at all. (Remember my pictures are just highlights from 20+ past years!)

Hope the school carnival turned out great :)