My Future Wife From Africa - How it happened

Many of you know that for the past year I lived in South Africa doing missions work with my family. What you may or may not know is that during my time there I met the girl who I plan to spend the rest of my life with. Those of you do know may not know the backstory of how I was able snag such a gem.

So here's how it happened:

Early February in 2017, I received a text message from a girl asking if I would like to accompany her to her school's valentines ball. At first the idea of going to a high school dance seemed ridiculous. I was too old, and my Afrikaans dance skills were non-existent. I was hesitant, but decided to try it out. So I took a class on how to dance according to the Afrikaans culture, got a slick looking suit, and went.

While at the dance, my date took me to our reserved table where her friends from school also accompanied us. Everyone was speaking their own foreign language to each other, so I sat there awkwardly playing with my utensils when I heard some english come out of a girls mouth.

"So are you like the boys in the books?"

I looked up to see who had asked the question only to gaze upon one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen...and her boyfriend right next to her.

My first thought pertained to how weird the question was, and how I would answer it. My second thought was about how beautiful the girl who asked it was. To this day, I still don't know how to answer that awkward question.

Later that evening, after attempting to dance with my date and stepping on a few toes here and there, I took a break and stood outside. Shortly after that, the same stunning angel came up to me asked if I wanted to dance. Me trying to play it cool confidently took up her offer, but in reality my heart was racing. That whole night I was screwing up the dance. The classes had no effect on my skills, or lack there of. But for some odd reason, when I grabbed the hand and waist of this girl in the red dress and started dancing, I felt comfortable. I felt as if two pieces of a puzzle had just been put together. My dance skill were still trash, but dancing with her felt natural.

At the end of the song, this same girl invited me to church on Wednesday, and I remember asking God in my mind to help me find a girl like this, because she was already taken.

That night after the dance I told everyone I knew about how I had met the most amazing unavailable girl.

So I started going to this church/youth group on Wednesday's even though half the time the service was in a language I did not know. I'd hang around this girl, but at a distance because she did still have a boyfriend. I am not the one to cause division. I eventually stopped going and hanging out with her because some people started getting the wrong idea about us. So for about a month the two of us didn't see each other. Every now and then we would text but nothing too serious. One day I went back to the youth group because I felt bad for kind of cutting off our relationship as friends. Little did I know, her and her (ex) boyfriend had broken up during our month apart. So at the end of that service she broke the news to me about how unhealthy the relationship between the two were, and about how she went about leaving him.

*smirk

After that, our friendship sparked up again. We became really close friends, and as time passed that spark turned into a flame that still is burning today. She started coming over to my house everyday to see me and my family. It was annoying at first, because I wasn't sure if she was into me or just fascinated with the fact that we were from America. I also had my doubts, because honestly I still think this girl is out of my league.

Well time went by and it became obvious to both of us that we had developed strong feelings toward each other. My parents and I decided to take her with us to Sabie, a beautiful mountain nature reserve in Africa, for the weekend (look it up, it's gorgeous). At the end of the trip this girl and I took a hike up to a hidden waterfall. We sat down and confessed our feelings for each other, and then and there I asked Nickey Alberts to be my official girlfriend.

She said yes.

After that moment we would continue to see each other everyday straight for the next three months. We had our mini arguments as young couples usually do, but even then we made it priority to keep our daily dosage of each other up to date and consistent. We kept each other accountable to God, grew spiritually. I fell in love with her more and more each day.

Fast forward another two months, and we decided to go on a missions trip to Zambia with the church we had been attending. Around that same time, I had also been offered a well paying job in the US centered around the area of my passion. I took the job knowing that after our missions trip, I would be leaving South Africa and the girl I love behind. This was very hard for me and I prayed and prayed about what I should do. Nickey and I had only been dating for 3 months, so to the outside world it was nothing serious, but to me she was my world. I knew that this was girl I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. So a day before arriving to Zambia, I took her to the side, got down on one knee, and asked her to marry me.

She said yes.

We have had a lot of opposition against us because of the fact that we are still very young, and our time together was short, but when you know 100% that you've met your soul mate, and God gives you peace with the idea of spending your life with that person, why wait?

So here we are now. 9000 miles away from each other, yet our love for one another stays stronger than ever! I am currently in the process of preparing a home for her, while she is in the process of preparing our wedding.

We still have a long way to go, but I have faith in our relationship. We went from something to everything. I thank God everyday for blessing me with the most amazing girl in the world.

All that being said,

Please pray for us as long distance is hard. And there has been some trouble financially with funding for both her visa and the wedding. At the bottom of this post is a link to a GoFundMe I put together for those who believe in us to help contribute to our future as husband and wife. Anything helps.

Thank you all and God bless!

https://www.gofundme.com/480f3jc