Our Story - Part Two

Mark - I went off to college in August of 1993. I would be living in the dorm rooms at Wright State University located in Fairborn, Ohio. By sheer luck, the university had made a mistake placing me and my roommate in a dorm room that shared a bathroom with women. So they had to move me to another one. However, the university only had a single person dorm room available for me to move me to. Normally, freshman never get these rooms but I did. The introvert in me was excited that once I got behind that door, I wouldn't need to pretend to be an outgoing person. I could be alone!

Outside my room was a completely different story. I went and did just about every social activity I could do. I met tons of new people. I made a new name for myself and shyness had nothing to do with it. Rather quickly, I had a group of friends from my dorm hall surounding me. It felt pretty good. However when it got to be too much for me, I could always slip back into my room.

I was a driven person at first. I was taking Computer Engineering classes which included Programing, Physics, Composition and Calculus. I had a full ROTC scholarship and esentially had everything paid for. I found work for spending money as a proctor for an algebra class where I taught fellow freshman students the remedials of algebra so that they could take normal set of algebra classes required of all freshman.

It was about a month into this routine that my life took a radical turn of events. I was walking from the ROTC building with a thought planted in my head that I needed to find a Church to go to. I had gone to Methodist and Prespitarian churches in the past and had made an intense study of the Bible the year before. By chance, there were two missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints standing out in the parking lot when I thinking about joining a church. I walked straight up to them (because I was in my extrovert mode outside my dorm room). I saw that they had a Book of Mormon in their hand. I told them that I knew about the Book of Mormon and I that I believed it was the Word of God.

Now you got to understand what just happened there in what I just described. This was two Mormon missionaries that are use to constantly having doors slammed in their faces and being ignored by the majority of people. Not only did someone come to them first, but this someone walked up and told them that the cornerstone of their faith was true. Why did I say that? I knew it was true. Two months earlier I had finshed reading the Bible. I had an impression that God would not just give revelation that was in the Bible. I figured that there was more that he revealed on earth. I found a Book of Mormon that our family had been given and read the statements of the witnesses in the front section. It was enough to convince me that I had found more of God's revealed truth. As you can imagine, the missionaries were excited to have found me and promptly made an appointment to come see me.

Julie Beth - While I was waiting for "Mr. Right" to show up, I kept myself busy by attending Institute classes and being involved with the Young Single Adult group in my church. I really enjoyed Institute. I took the time to really enjoy the scriptures and the Gospel. It helped me to stay focused on the type of person that I really wanted to marry. It could have been easy to settle for something less then my requirements for a husband but I knew that I wouldn't be happy.

It was good to have a strong group of friends who had the same standards that I did. I knew that Heavenly Father wanted me to be happy. And that if I just kept the right things, in His due time, He would send Mr. Right to me.

One night I got a call. There was a new guy in our Young Single Adult group who was interested in attending Institute. We agreed that he would pick me up and I would show him where classes were located. It seemed like fate had dealt me a lucky hand.

We started out as "just friends". But quickly grew to like each other and started going out on dates, attending Institute together each week, and going to Church dances. I did have to overlook the fact, that he wasn't Eagle Scout (one of my requirements for my husband). However, he was talking about going on a mission. So things were looking up and my dreams were coming true after all.