When I was a junior in high school, my father, who was a pastor, told our family that one of the native missionaries our church supported in Tanzania, East Africa was coming to visit. This wasn’t unusual as he had visited and stayed with our family many times over the years. What I didn’t anticipate was that he would bring his oldest son, who had attended two years of high school and then college in the US. When they arrived, the crush didn’t take long to develop, but he was older and heading back to another country in a matter of days, so I didn’t think anything would come of it. When he left, we exchanged addresses and decided to start writing letters. Since this was 1992, we resorted to writing long, hand written letters and then waiting the weeks it took for the letters to travel across the world, back and forth. This went on for nearly two years and a friendship grew that evolved into love. It seemed unbelievable that after only spending less than two weeks in the same place, we could write pages and pages. In those two years we learned that there was more than just a friendship that was happening and that we had fallen in love. After not seeing one another for two years, the time came to be reunited in the US during a visit he made for some additional schooling. On our first official date, my husband asked me to marry him. It seems unreal, but after knowing he had asked my dad for my hand in marriage and my father had approved, I said yes! He ended up back in Tanzania for another year and a half before we were able to be married in a big wedding in my town of Poulsbo. We then travelled to Tanzania several months later and celebrated again with a wedding in his village, nestled in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. To say that Africans know how to celebrate is a huge understatement. Since my father in law is fairly well known in the village, our wedding turned into a massive event. There were nearly 6,000 people who attended!! It was like nothing I had ever witnessed with dancers and celebrations, singing and music. We made our first home there in his village for the first three years of our marriage before returning to the US to live. We still travel their many times each year to run a primary and high school we helped start and God has been so amazingly faithful in our lives. We have now been married for 23 years and have three, amazing biological daughters and countless foster children we have had the privilege of helping raise. Life has not been perfect, there has been sunshine and rain, but who knew that all those years ago, God would bring two young lives together and take us on a wildly beautiful adventure. Mungu ni mwema! (God is good)