Two things prompted the decision to tell our story in detail.
1. I've read other blogs recounting their own love story. I've enjoyed the stories and have been blessed!
2. The Thanksgiving study has challenged me to recount and record God's faithfulness. I'm always so encouraged by this exercise, whether it's just a personal reminiscence or in a conversation with others, that I know it will be meaningful to me now.
Our story begins before we met. I love to retrace what was happening in our lives at the same time, literally oceans apart. I suppose I could start at birth, believing as I do that God had us in mind for each from before time began, but I will spare us all that lengthy of a retelling.
Winter of 1998-1999
My senior year of college. No man in sight with whom to share my life and ministry calling. My journal entries from this winter sigh and cry out to God for direction and sustainment.
A December entry reads, "Today, Lord, when the loneliness crept in, I offered it to You as a sacrifice.... Allow me to whisper this plea -- Let these times not be for nothing. May I know the joy of a husband's love. I ask that these moments of weeping be followed by joy in the morning..."
Uncertain of the future, yet desiring to be used of God, I began preparations to spend a year teaching English in China following my college graduation in May of 1999.
Meanwhile, across the sea, in Jamaica..... A young man receives the clear, unmistakeable call of God on his life. On January 17, 1999, Conroy asks his father if he can say a word in the Sunday morning service. Standing tall in front of the waiting congregation, Conroy turns and glances meaningfully at his own pastor-father, declaring, "This morning, The Lord has called me to be a minister of the Gospel." Over the next year , he makes preparation to attend an American Bible college.
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