how we began

david and i very randomly became penpals april 2001. i had moved to baltimore the summer of 2000 and became very depressed. i wrote an email to an address i made up--i just wanted to vent. this email address ended up belonging to a guy named joel. we wrote back and forth a few times, to let him know my life was getting better, but our correspondence gradually tapered off.

meanwhile...david was living in california working for a year to save money to serve a mission for the lds church. he happened to be home for a 20 minute lunch break and got online to check his email. ryan, david's friend, was at college and happened to get online and instant message david to say hello. while they were sending instant messages, another friend from high school, karly, also happened to get online and join the conversation. while the three of them were talking, joel randomly got online and asked to join the im conversation. fyi: key point to this story is that this is the first and only time ryan and david talked online since high school--this 20 minute window. this was also the only time ryan and david had spoken with karly since high school, and neither of them have spoken with her since that day. so, joel was in a band and was trying to sell cds. david bought one, and a few weeks later emailed joel to say thanks. he also mentioned he would be serving a mission for the lds church.

now we are up to february 2001. i had also decided to serve a mission for the lds church, and decided to email my old penpal joel to tell him about the mission and what it meant. he wrote back about a month later saying he'd run into "another mormon who was also preparing to serve a mission." i asked for this person's email--when you are preparing for a mission, you are very excited and want to talk to everyone about their experiences, find out where they are going to serve, what they're excited to learn and do, etc. so joel gave me david's email address...and thus began our correspondence.

we started emailing april 2001; david left on his mission to peoria, illinois in july 2001; i left for my mission to sao paulo, brazil in spetember 2001. we continued writing throughout our missions (i sent david a photo, but he never sent me a photo). i got home in april 2003 and david got home in july 2003, and in august i invited david to the east coast to meet me and see the sights.

i saw david for the first time when i picked him up at the dulles airport. my first thought was, "oh, okay! so that's the guy i'm going to spend the rest of my life with!" we spent four days together and hit everything from hiking the shennandoah mountains, the baltimore inner harbor, the beach in delaware, and the dc temple and sights. as david always says, we were in love before first sight, so our four days together were bliss. we continued dating for a year (some long-distance and some together) and got married june 19, 2004. we love life together.