The very first time Philip and Christina met was on Philip’s first day of undergrad at LeTourneau University (LETU). In 2020, Christina was a junior and working New Student Orientation (NSO). As it was 2020, LETU had a policy that every student coming to campus had to receive a COVID test. It was while Philip was in line to take his COVID test that Christina and Philip first talked. The NSO staff was very involved in trying to welcome the new students; Christina started a conversation with Philip (albeit brief) by asking about his Amazon mask. After that, we ran into each other a few times, but it wasn’t until Christina joined the freshman friend group (nicknamed the Spoon Cult/the cult for short…that’s a different story) that our friendship started. This group grew to be fairly large, but there was a consistent late-night group that Christina and Philip were both part of.

Philip had a crush on Christina for a long time, but God’s timing wasn’t right. Christina graduated from LETU in 2022 and went to dental school at The University of Iowa. Three semesters went by, and Philip tried to move on, but he couldn’t get Christina out of his head. Christina planned to come visit friends in 2024 for MLK weekend like she did in 2023. Philip planned to use this opportunity to ask her out. But God’s timing was still not right. The week that she was supposed to visit, there was a massive blizzard in Iowa that cancelled her flight. Philip, not wanting to miss his chance, convinced two of his friends (and now groomsmen) to drive 12 hours into the blizzard to pick her up and drive her back to LETU for the weekend. Christina ended up convincing them not to go for their own safety, but it ended up working out for the better. Since she couldn’t be there in person, a group of The Cult members hung out virtually on Discord (a messaging and video call program). This continued for a couple of months. The group hanging out online kept getting smaller and would often end up just Christina and Philip. March 23, 2024, Philip asked Christina if she wanted to date and the rest is history. 😉

Philip came to visit Christina at her family house near Austin, TX, on her 2 weeks break over New Years. January 2, 2025, is the day that we had set aside as our date day to spend the day together. We first went down to the Domain in Austin (fancyish shopping area with tons of things to do). We wandered around for several hours, going into a few shops window shopping, chatting, and figuring out plans. We had lunch at a local shawarma food truck, and we found a fun laser activity place called Activate. We spent a little over an hour at Activate and were very hot and tired after running around. We wandered a little more and then went to a nearby ramen shop for dinner. One of Philip and Christina’s favorite things to do together are Exit games. An Exit game is an escape room in a box, in which the players work together to solve puzzles as quickly as they can. That night, Philip and Christina had planned to go to a local board game café to play an Exit game together. However, after dinner Christina was tired and Philip realized how busy the board game café would be, so we headed back to Christina’s parents’ house to do our Bible study and play our Exit game. The Exit game we played that night was titled The Secret Lab. Every exit game that we had played up to this point had used the box as a part of a puzzle. So Philip decided it would be fun to hide the engagement ring in the box to be found when they were playing an Exit game at the end of the day. We did our Bible study and Christina had to take out her contacts, which gave Philip a chance to hide the ring. After Bible study, we played Exit. Unfortunately, this specific Exit game happened to be the first one we played that didn’t use the box. After we solved all the puzzles and stopped the timer Philip reached over and grabbed the box. “So, here’s the thing,” Philip said as he shook open the box with one hand to reveal the hidden ring inside. Then he got down one knee and proposed.

Both Christina and Philip love blue as well as nature. In Iowa, Christina hadn’t really seen many blue birds. When Philip came to visit, they saw an Eastern Bluebird (first time). They also saw some Blue Jays. In addition, just before visiting, Philip bought Christina two blue bird gifts (a puzzle and a Lego set) to give to her on their visit. Now anytime we see blue birds, it reminds us of each other.

We took our engagement pictures in January in Iowa…in the midst of one of the coldest weekends (it was 15℉) that year. On top of that, Christina lost one of her contacts and could only see clearly out of one eye (thankfully, she had her glasses for the drive home!) Amy was a trooper and went exploring around Scott Park with us. When we were looking for another site, we stopped, and Amy pointed out our deer friends. After they scampered off, we got some of our favorite pictures in that clearing.