His Side....

I guess I should follow suit and share a little of my side of the story.  Back on a Saturday in 1980, I was born in Amarillo, TX.... Ok, maybe that's too far back.  I'll fast forward a few decades... 

I never went to EFY as a youth, but was recruited by a good friend to be a counselor in 2008.  It was without doubt my most spiritual experience since my mission.  I learned about Nauvoo EFY from friends who worked there at the end of that summer.  I knew instantly that I wanted to be there this year.  I had visited during the Temple open house in 2002 and fell in love with Nauvoo.

I'm too old to be a counselor another year, so the experiences I had in Nauvoo were a perfect way to finish my EFY career.  I guess when a counselor is twice as old as some of his youth, they worry we might not be able to relate that well.  My last week at Nauvoo I had the older group, so some of them were done with high school and would start college the next week - including Jeri Lin.

My focus at EFY is to get my boys excited to serve missions.  So I barely paid attention to the girl counselors, and especially not the participants.  But because of the smaller groups at Nauvoo, I was able to get to know Jeri Lin pretty well.  And I was thoroughly impressed.  But she was young. And from Arizona.  There was no way anything would happen between us.  Still, we had a great experience talking about the temple and Church history and Joseph Smith.

Then she wrote me this letter after EFY that had me thinking, "What if?"  I realized that if I didn't do anything to pursue her, some snot-nosed guy at ASU who had barely gotten home from a mission might.  So why shouldn't I give it a shot? 

Once I flew out to spend a weekend in Arizona I was ready.  My dad has always said, "You Mormon kids sure do date weird."  Maybe so.  But after spending a couple of days with Jeri Lin and her family, I knew I wanted to marry her.  Apparently, I came late to the game.  She knew before I even got there.  So on my 29th birthday, we were sitting on her family's couch and asked if she wanted to get married.  Best question I ever asked.