I first met Nathan at SALT 2015 when a mutual friend (Heaven) had introduced him to me. It was the last day and everyone was getting ready to leave. We met outside of the Edman chapel after morning service was over and to be honest, I was pretty excited to meet one more person before our week at SALT was over. Heaven told me that the person I was meeting was Esther’s younger brother, Nathan. I got to know Esther while she was a student at Toccoa Falls College. She had done ministry at our church and I considered her as a friend so I was excited to meet her brother. I clearly remember this moment due to my first impression on Nate. Surprisingly, it actually wasn’t love at first sight because when I first met him he was so uninterested in me! Nowadays when I think about it, I just tend to laugh and tease him about it. Anyways, I remember Heaven saying, “Hey Nate, this is Jasmine, she goes to my church!” And let me tell y’all, he looked at me for one second then turned away and said in a monotoned voiced, “Hi, I’m Nathan.” And this is the part that gave me a first bad impression on him. After he told me his name he walked away (read till the end to find out why this happened)! I felt kind of embarrassed and thought that maybe he just wasn’t a talkative and nice person like his sister. So after that I just shrugged it off, went home, and forgot about him.

Fast forward to a year later in the early summer of 2016. Our church was getting an intern for the very first time. We (the church) were all very excited about the news and had many prayers poured into this process. At the time, our pastor had plans for the intern to stay at my house since he had personal stuff to take care of at his house and my parents are known for hosting a lot of guests and students. I thought that the idea would be pretty cool and that it’d be nice to have another person living with us for the summer. I was feeling good about this idea until I found out who our intern was. Of course you all know already but yes, it was Nathan. When my mom had mentioned that the intern was “Esther’s younger brother” I automatically knew it was him since there’s only two of them. I started thinking things like, “Well, I don’t mind that we’ll be hosting him but dude it’s gonna be so uncomfortable because we met already and it was a pretty awkward and bad first meeting”. I do admit that I was nervous and concerned about it. I thought that maybe instead of feeling bad about it, I should be the one to talk to him and be friends with him since he is the one coming over here in a new and unfamiliar place. So I had prayed about it and was a little determined to be his friend.