The flight was a long one.  It would take four different planes and almost forty hours to reach me including a few hours of rest in a hotel in Manila before the final leg of the flight to the southern Philippines.  He had never flown internationally before and was not quite ready for what he was about to face.  The last minute rush to get his engineering project complete and the wedding preparations hadn’t given him much time to think about what a grueling marathon that he was soon to endure.  The lack of sleep and medical problem prior to his departure had also taken its toll.

The first leg was a short one of only about an hour with a two hour lay over.  When he started the next leg that was to take him across the Pacific Ocean, he was not prepared for what he would encounter. My fiance was six 6′4 inches and 280 lbs. The coach airline seats were not designed to comfortably accommodate someone of his size. He felt like a sardine that had been stuffed into a can.

After about twelve hours into the trip, his legs and back began to cramp, but he was too tired to spend much time standing. His medical problem was also causing him pain. The trip began to feel like torture. After about fifteen hours in what seemed like an eternity, he finally arrived in Tokyo. He was still a long way but at least he was able to get off the plane for a couple of hours before starting his next leg. Then it happened again. When he went to the restroom at the airport in Tokyo, he began bleeding profusely and again  it wouldn’t stop.

The day had finally come that my fiance was due to board the plane to come to the Philippines.  He was now due to arrive only one day before our wedding, which really made me nervous, because all the relatives were already coming from far places.  If anything went wrong it would be a tremendous humiliation for both me and my family.

Then came the phone call.  He had missed his flight out.  He had been struck by the number one occupational hazard for all engineers, a bleeding hemorrhoid.  This was nothing like he had ever experienced before or has experienced since. He was bleeding profusely and could not get the bleeding to stop.  He finally ended up having to go to the emergency room to get stitched up.  It took four hours before the heavy bleeding was finally stopped.  Then came the big question.  Was the doctor going to give him the OK to fly seven thousand miles in his delicate condition?

After a short explanation of the circumstances the answer was a tentative yes.  After a near sleepless night, he got up the next morning to start the drill all over again.  This time he needed to go to the emergency room doctor to get a written release for the airlines to accept his emergency schedule change and authorize flying that day.  The doctor was tied up and was able to sign the release just in the nick of time for him to make his flight out.  He was now scheduled to meet me face to face for the first time only four hours before the scheduled start of our wedding.

My husband calls me a worry wart.  I imagine all sorts of terrible things happening no matter how unlikely.  I now began to wonder if I was going to have a nervous breakdown.  With all the things that had already  gone wrong I was imagining every conceivable bad possibility.   It seemed like the devil was hard at work trying to make sure that this wedding would not come to pass.  Was this really God’s will or were we both just crazy?

As I had mentioned before, my engineer fiance was in the midst of the biggest job he had ever taken on.  He did all the engineering work and then sub-contracted building the project to a nearby small machine shop.  The project was on a rigid schedule and things seemed to be going well until the manager of the machine shop fell on the ice and broke his hip.  At the same time the company that had ordered the project was asking for last minute changes that added to the pressure but still wanted the job completed according to the original schedule.

Although my fiance dreaded the idea of having to put off the wedding date only two weeks prior, he knew that he now had no choice.   Though I was disappointed, I was still very excited about my impending wedding but at the same time the nagging fears of being left at the altar continued because of the broken promises I had experience before. During those two long weeks my feelings were being torn between the extremes of anticipated joy to worries of despair.

I immediately started preparing for the wedding.  I just wanted to have a very simple ceremony.  I was busy in the midst of making preparations when a friend of mine who was also getting married began telling me about her plans.  She had hired a disc jockey and wedding coordinator to help her prepare for the big day.  When these two guys heard that I was getting married they decided to come and talk to me.  They said that they would help me out in my wedding preparation free of charge because I was a friend.  Although I considered them to be just acquaintances, the offer of free help sounded too good to pass up.

These two guys were now in the picture of my wedding plan.  My fiance had sent me more than enough to cover the original cost estimate but once these guys got involved the tab started rising quickly.  The first thing they did was tell me that I needed a new wedding dress and bridesmaids dresses because they felt that what I had already purchased was unsuitable.  They moved the wedding reception from an air conditioned indoor site to a more expensive outdoor venue.   I gave in to their suggestions even though I was already happy with my simple wedding plans.  As a matter of fact, I made a down payment for the new dress before talking to my fiance about the changes.   Everything was suddenly getting more expensive and I soon ran out of money to cover the new wedding arrangements.

When I talked to my fiance about it he got upset.  He asked me why I needed to change everything when as far as he was concern everything that I had done previously was just fine.  He was right, the problem was I got carried away by the wedding coordinator’s suggestions.   We had both agreed that all we wanted was a simple ceremony presided over by my father who is also a minister and a small group of family and friends.

It was the first time that our relationship had experience any tension.  I broke down crying over the phone apologizing to him.  But he wasn’t really mad at me.  He told me he wanted to talk to the wedding coordinator directly so I handed the phone to him.  Unbeknown to me, my fiance told the wedding coordinator that he had better get his act together or get out of the picture altogether because if he caused any more upset between me and my fiance that my fiance would deal with him when he got there.  From that point on, things went a lot smoother, at least on my side of the pacific.

I was happy reading his email with the promise that he would propose to me on our first face to face meeting.  At the same time I also  felt nervous because of my previous relationship with a guy who I had  also met online.  I learned a lesson from my past relationship and was a little bit worried that it might be deja vu all over again.   I held his promise in my heart.  This time I was more cautious and got myself ready for broken promises to come.

When he finally asked my hand from my father (on the phone), that was when my heart bursts into tears of joy. I couldn’t believe that I would be getting married soon. Basically, our plans were to get married in the Philippines, but because of visa processing complications, we decided to have the family wedding vows there in the Philippines and the legal wedding would be here in the US.

At first we had set our wedding for the 8th of April, 2005.  Later we had to move it back to the 22nd because of some complications with his engineering project.  Two weeks before the 8th he came to the conclusion that he would not be able to finish the things he needed to get done before the trip.  Fortunately I had not sent out the wedding invitations yet so this turned out not to be a big deal.  His original plan was to arrive there two days before the wedding but upon rescheduling that had to be reduce to one day.   He had planned to be there in the Philippines in order to propose during a romantic candle light dinner.

It had been seven days after our first communication that I had decided he was the one for me.  It had been another seven that it took him to come to the same conclusion.  Two sevens, God’s perfect number, was all it took for us to be convinced.  This was clearly another confirmation that this was God’s will for us.  He didn’t exactly proposed to me then.  He wanted to do that in person, not in an email and from half way around the world.  The fact was that we had never even heard each others voices yet, all correspondence had been via email.  What he sent was a promise to propose on our first meeting.

Early in our first week he sent me $500 to buy a cellphone and start making plans for our wedding in early April.  I couldn’t believe that he would trust me that much.  It was more money than I had ever held in my hand before in my life.  My younger brother and I went home.  I was still in disbelief.  My parents and other younger siblings were happy to see us and thought that I had found a job in the city because I bought their favorite roasted chicken and fruits.  My mother then started asking me.  At first she didn’t believe me.  She thought I must have found a job.  I had a hard time convincing her that the money I used to buy the food was from a guy from Minnesota that I met online.   When I showed her the money, she was also was in disbelief and called my father and other siblings.  They too couldn’t believe.  My mother was afraid that he might be a gangster or drug dealer and wanted something in return.  I told her not to worry, that he was an engineer, and just a very generous Christian man.

He was a man of his word.  He hated the idea that he might have to back down from the offer for me to become his engineering assistant.  But how could he offer to marry a woman who he barely knew, especially after the experiences of his first two marriages?  After having read my college transcripts and resume and heard my heart breaking story of frustration and rejection trying to get a job,  he could not bear to add to my disappointment.  He turned to God for an answer to his dilemma.  He told God that he needed His help.  It would either take many years of communication and trips back and forth before he could trust or God would have to speak to him clearly and plainly to let him know that I was the one. 

It was a very difficult time for him.  It was mid January and bone chilling temperatures and long nights were the norm in the far north of the US.  His work schedule was heavy and to complicate things even more he began to suffer from a toothache that became so severe that he couldn’t sleep.  After two days of suffering he was able to get an emergency appointment with his VA health provider that was a two hour drive away. 

It was a cold Sunday morning exactly one week after God had shown me that he was the one.  As he started the car and turned on the radio, he was running a question through his mind regarding our dilemma.  The first song that came on the radio was the perfect answer to that question.  As he began to drive his mind went to the next question, and there on the church sign that he passed was the answer to that question.  The third question was answered clearly by the next song.  This went on for nearly the whole two hour trip.  Question – answer – question – answer – question – answer…..  This was clearly God speaking in no uncertain terms.  He had experienced this many times before.  Before long, tears of joy were streaming down his cheeks as he drove through the ice and snow.  By the time he arrived, his pain was nearly gone and clearly forgotten.  It seemed as though the weight of the world had been lifted from his broad shoulders.  He could hardly wait to get back home and send me the news.