Meeting Dean

The wedding is just a few short weeks away. Yippeee and oh my!! I am very excited to become Dean's wife and stressed out about all the details of the wedding and moving to Wisconsin at the same time. I was under the delusion that a small, simple wedding wouldn't be too difficult to put together or too stressful. Silly me!! No matter the size of the wedding there are still all the same decisions to make and details to attend to... BUT I am thrilled to be planning this day and very grateful for all the help I am receiving from Dean, my mom and my dear friends, Jo and Brenda. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by all the details but that is starting to subside as things are moving into place.

I had no idea that I would be getting married a year and a few months after returning from Ghana. As a matter of fact I if you had asked me back then if I would meet a guy and contemplate marriage, I would have given you an emphatic NO! But things in life change quickly and God seemed to have other plans for me. Don't get me wrong I hoped one day that I would be able to marry again and have the godly, loving marriage I always dreamed of but I had laid that dream down before the Lord and wanted His will alone for my life. I was sure when I did that back in Ghana that I would be single for a long time if not for the rest of my life. Through some ups and downs - even before I left Ghana - God moved me where He wanted me and crossed my path with a wonderful man who loves the Lord dearly.

For those of you who still read this I will share with you how Dean and I met. He tells it so well that I hope I can do it justice. I'll start back a bit before we met. Dean lives about 2 hours from the bar/saloon where we dance and met. He was coming down consistently hoping to meet a woman who enjoyed dancing and wanted a long-term relationship. He was not a believer at this time. A woman caught his eye and he began getting to know her. As they talked over time the conversations became more about God, the Bible and religion in general. At one point she gave him a Bible and told him to read it and it would change his life within two weeks. She said "you will either accept Jesus or reject Him". Dean took the Bible, the first one he had ever owned or read for himself, and starting reading Matthew and John. As he was driving down the road one day, he cried out to the Lord and knew that all he needed was God's love. When Dean gives his testimony he says that a peace washed over him that he had never experienced before and he knew he was a changed man. He shared the good news with the woman who gave him the Bible and my friend, Jo, who he also knew from the dance place. This was back in April of 2008. Dean found a solid church in his home town in Wisconsin and was baptized there in September of 2008. I met him some time in August or September last year. Neither of us knows the exact day or week. Dean said that he was getting tired of driving so far to dance and was ready to give up when Jo told him that her friend who had just gotten back from the mission field was going to come next weekend to dance. As Dean tells it when Jo said that "she is a believer" he decided it was worth another trip down to meet this woman. He says that he had been praying that if God wanted him to meet someone He would have to make it very obvious and drop her in his lap. So we met the next week when I went dancing. Jo wasn't trying to set us up, she was just introducing me to all her friends there. Dean and I danced and talked for a few weeks as I recall and then one night he asked if I would go to dinner or a movie with him. I was pretty straight forward and since I wasn't super interested in dating at that time (there was so much going on in my life) I said "it depends on what your intentions are". I give him credit b/c he didn't turn and run for the hills. These days when he tells the story he says that if he had thought quick enough he would have said that if he was going to marry me some day he would need my phone number. Guess he was taken with me early on. His intentions at that time were to get to know me. So we went out on our first "date" and talked for about 4 hours or so. Needless to say it was very good. B/c he is on the road for his job - he drives a semi- and we live so far apart, most of our relationship for the first several months was by phone. Thank goodness we both had the same cellphone carrier!! We both think the distance was a good thing b/c it required us to talk and learn to communicate well right from the beginning. It took me some time to work through some trust issues and deal with other things going on within me but Dean has been a strong and steady man through it all. I am often amazed at the gift God has given me in him. Now he does drive me crazy at times but most of the time we truly enjoy each other and there is much smiling and laughter. He is quiet at first but very intelligent and deep. He is highly mechanical, can fly an airplane, plays guitar, has a nice singing voice, enjoys NASCAR and racing in general, of course is an excellent dancer for the two-step, etc. and he loves the Lord and reading His word. We have deep, meaningful conversations and then turn around and act like we are 12. It is great fun. We have conflict and work through it, we have differences and are learning to appreciate them. He is kind to me and so very thoughtful. I thank the Lord often for blessing me with Dean. It is not b/c of anything I have done or that I deserve such a good man, but it is by God's grace and goodness alone that I have this gift. I look forward to building a life with him and pray that we are as crazy about each other in 20 years as we are today.

Well sorry if this is too sappy for some of you but other inquiring minds want to know. :)