Alysa and Daniel meet in the glamorous city of Molalla, OR. Yes, we went skydiving, one might say we fell for each other, but we really had no idea we would later fall in love, and we actually didn't see or hear from each other again until over 2 months later...

My brother finally convinced me to go to Missional Community, what was being hosted at their house. Of course, I suspected that "the girl from skydiving" would be there, and I was right! I believe Jonathan and I were playing Halo when she arrived (earlier than MC started), and we respectfully paused for all of 30 seconds before looking at each other and saying "well, it's just Alysa", and continuing the game. I don't remember the outcome of the game, but it wasn't very long before she was much more than "just Alysa". ;) -Daniel

In the morning on Thanksgiving Day, Alysa posted her new phone number on the missional community Facebook page. This was done, of course, with absolutely no intention of enticing any form of contact from yours truly… probably. ;) Without an ounce of trepidation, and certainly without spending hours contemplating what I should say, I sent her a quick text that evening after dinner. Thus began a humorous and fascinating conversation about many subjects such as Stranger Things, insomnia, auto-incorrect on iPhones, coffee (no relation to aforementioned insomnia), Philosophy, family, life dreams and goals, and Christmas trees. Our mutual love for gifs (Bless Michael Scott) and extremely long texts helped catapult us into a deep and meaningful friendship, after a few days we felt like we had known each other for years. Also I forgot to mention, Alysa was heading up a “Missional Community” outing that was coming up quickly, and so far the only other person to declare his intention to attend was (you guessed it) me…

Before our long and prosperous text conversation, Alysa invited the Missional Community (the ENTIRE Missional Community of around 15 people) to go downtown with her to see the Christmas Tree lighting on Tuesday, November 28th. I (reluctantly) volunteered as tribute to attend, but I was new to MC and expected other people to come too. Nobody else expressed any interest in going whatsoever. This made me suspect that this Christmas Tree lighting thing was going to be really lame, but I was looking forward to spending some time in person with my new friend. Of course, Tuesday rolled around, and we found out that the real Christmas Tree lighting had happened 4 days before. But hey, neither of us were about to back out of this… uh… date? I didn’t know what to call it, I didn’t know what we were doing, I just knew I wanted to go see her and get some time to talk one-on-one. We wound up going to a restaurant called “Oh Sushi!” and talked for about 4 hours. As I was driving home, Alysa texted me and told me she liked me, which of course came as a huge surprise to me, ;) and I pulled over (don’t text and drive kids) and told her that of course, I liked her too! A couple days later, on December 1st, I went back to Portland for our second date and asked her to be my girlfriend. Throughout the rest of December, we spent almost enough time together to qualify as a full-time job (and yes I already had an actual full-time job), and quickly approached the next significant milestone in our relationship…