We first met in 2014 on a church trip to Mexico! Micah remembers noticing Heather at one of the pre-trip meetings and Heather remembers Micah while traveling in the open back of a pickup truck through the Mexican desert. Our real first impressions were actually during various trips to the Sahara, where Micah did building and service projects and Heather taught for years. We overlapped only a few times, but that was enough to strike up a friendship over our shared humor, deep interest in culture and language, and mutual desire to grow in faith. We would get together and catch up over coffee or a walk whenever Heather was in town, but those hours of conversation were just as friends. [Though Heather joked to friends on more than one occasion - “one day Micah and I will realize we should marry each other”] Fast forward to December 2020 when Heather was working in Clarkston, Georgia and Micah texted out of the blue, “Hey, how’s it going?” Heather responded, “Great, I stuck my finger in a manatee’s nose today,” and the rest was history - that silly conversation started the rest of our lives! We kept in touch mostly about language-learning, how the work in Clarkston was going, and more. Micah began planning a trip to ask Heather out, but she was a little confused about it because she wasn’t sure if he was visiting because of interest in the ministry or interest in her! She had since really started caring about his perspective and enjoying texting more regularly, so was hoping it was the latter. Micah spent a week in Georgia, getting to meet the people Heather was working with and spending time with some of the refugee families she knew, as well as hiking! Heather was still not certain why he had come until on the second-to-last day of the trip, he said “I think we should date.” She responded “I agree” and after an incredulous “Really?!” it was done. The next day he returned to WI and we separated for long distance for the first of many times. The first year of dating had a few months in the same place, in the fall before Heather returned to Algeria. Then Micah and his roommate came to Algeria for the first couple weeks to help Heather’s team repair the houses from break-ins and get settled in. The next 7 months of connecting across not only the distance, but time zones, horrible internet connection, and Micah’s super demanding job was difficult. We made it work, and Micah was even able to visit when he met up with Heather and her teammate Nicolette in Spain while they renewed their visas. We were both back in WI for the summer, and happy to spend lots of time together before Heather went back overseas to Oxford. All of that fun culminated in our engagement on September 2, just 5 days before Heather left! Micah was up all night driving from Appleton to MKE, carrying tubs of stuff across a closed beach, setting up a big blanket, pillows, string lights and breakfast picnic, then sneaking into Heather’s parents’ house (they left the door unlocked for him) to wake her up as a surprise at 4am! He then took her to this beautiful sunrise picnic and popped the question. Our engagement has also been almost entirely long-distance. That definitely makes planning and anticipating marriage challenging, but we’ve had our breaks! Micah visited for Christmas, and though Oxford was fairly shut-down for the holiday, we got to see a bit of London and Bath. Heather went home for Easter and a June wedding - two brief but really cherished periods of time together. During the stretches of long-distance we’ve kept busy reading together, playing Ticket to Ride online against each other, cooking a recipe at the same time, or walking in the park while FaceTiming! Micah will visit again in September, during which he will get plenty of Oxford experiences with Heather’s program ending as well as tour a bunch of old castles in the North! And shortly after that whirlwind of a trip we will see you all when we officially tie the knot :)