The very first time I met Oliver was at day 2 of Iowa State Salt Company's mission trip to campus. All Salt leaders were out at Cornerstone Church in the morning planning how we were going to reach the incoming freshmen that day, and we had been asked to pair up and talk with other people. I paired up with two girls I didn't know, and we then paired up with two boys I didn't know... I soon found out their names were Oliver Dies and Luke Shekenbach (aka, Shake-n-bake). I immediately thought Oliver was handsome, but I didn't even entertain the thought of something happening with him! When we got dismissed for lunch, Oliver and Luke came and sat with me and some of my other friends. Oliver and I talked quite a bit at lunch - he told me about how his fraternity, Beta Sigma Psi, had sunk a canoe on their canoeing trip the day before. I sort of thought that was where my relationship with him would end, that he'd just be another boy I'd met at Salt.... so when Oliver walked up to me later that day, I was a little shocked he even remembered me (took me a second to remember his name...)! After that, he kept coming up to me at different Salt Company events. It took me a WHILE to catch onto his interest, even after he nonchalantly messaged me on Facebook and smoothly dropped his phone number in an effort to get my cousin Jared into Beta Sig (so he says)...

Not long after I started noticing Oli's interest, I told my mom about this cute, blond boy named Oliver Dies who kept coming up to talk to me. As all moms do, she immediately looked him up on Facebook. When she called me back later, her first words were "Hallie, you're not going to believe this!" I was fully expecting her to say we were long lost cousins (thankfully, we are not!) , but when she told me the real information, I was stunned. Oliver's mom, Marsha Mohr (Dies), had grown up right across the gravel road from our family's century-old dairy farm in Tipton, Iowa. In fact, my Great Grandma and Grandpa, Rachel and Willie Norton, had been close friends with Oliver's Grandma Marian and Grandpa Amos. According to my grandma, Becky Bradfield, Rachel helped lead Marian to faith in Jesus, and they would often have long visits at each others' houses - exchanging romance novels and talking about the Lord. Oliver's grandparents are buried close to my great grandparents in our family cemetery, which sits on a hill overlooking Oliver's uncle Arlan's farm, and our dairy farm across the lane. Oliver found out about these crazy connections a while later. We also figured out we both lived in Ames as young children and played Upward basketball at the same time! It's crazy to think the man I would marry was so close to me for so much of my life. I hope on the other side of heaven, the Lord might show us a string map of all the times and places Oliver's and my life have overlapped. But we are awed and amazed by the way he has authored our lives; he had already written our stories in the days of our ancestors! Most of all, he had written salvation over our lives and determined the exact times we would come to know Him. God is SO good.

Going into the ring at the Iowa State Fair with my sheep doesn't compare in the adrenaline that I felt when asking Hallie to marry me. Originally, I had wanted to do a scavenger hunt across campus with all the spots that were some fond memories for us but that just seemed too complicated. So I ended up doing it out at our barn, where I first told her that I loved her many moons ago (really not that long). Our original plan was to stop there on the way to dinner and have us all dressed up but she was snooping the week before on our plans so we had to call an audible. I told her one of my finals got moved and I couldn't make it to dinner anymore and we'd do it some other time. So for my new plan- I got her friend Livi to take some pics and Vivian to "come do chores with Hallie and my family". She wasn't dressed up as much (sweatpants and a big blue coat)... but hey she still said yes. As Mel (her van) was coming up the drive, I remember looking out the window and my heart just gets going really fast and it's hard to calm down. We move on. She comes in the door and I have string lights up above and a path of candles on the ground leading her to me sitting on a hay bale (very nice alfalfa). I read her a note that I wrote a couple days after we had started dating just about how I knew that she would be the one for me and that even though I didn't love her yet- I knew I would some day. Ya know, all that sappy and cute stuff. Then, I had her stand up (which she could barely do cause she was so excited) and got down on one knee to ask her to marry me. We both were so happy and gave my best friend a big hug and we both cried some. And now my beautiful girl gets to deal with my jokes and pranks for a long, long time. I am so excited for life with her- she is the one of the biggest signs of God's faithfulness to me and just getting to be with her stirs my affection for the Lord.