You're Invited!

In June 2022, the two of us showed up to our annual two week training drill with the 1166th Transportation Company with the Massachusetts Army National Guard. We'd seen each other in passing plenty of times with the Guard but we had never really taken the time to get to know one another. Something completely changed this time around. We happened to be slotted into the same team so we were pushed to communicate with each other. God forced the two of us there for us to finally see what we were meant to do, and sparks flew immediately. The rest of the two weeks was filled with each of us getting to know the other on an incredibly deep level, discovering the two of us were both broken people with not much of a path to follow. From there, my bride-to-be moved out to Bridgewater where I was going to school, only to discover I was living in a manner not deserving of her in the slightest. She began helping me change the way I was living just as I began to unravel some of the issues in her life she hadn't had a way to deal with. The pace in which we began healing was incredible. After finally getting it through to me that Bridgewater was the not the place for us, we moved into an apartment with my best man, Cooper in Worcester. It was here we found that we really needed to make a big change in our lives. We felt that going through the motions like we were there was not the life we had planned for ourselves. It was while we lived here though, on November 14th 2023, I finally found the courage to ask the love of my life to marry me. We were at Magic Wings butterfly garden in Deerfield, and among all the butterflies flying around us, (which was funny to me because I felt hundreds inside of my stomach), that I got to a knee and was able to get the right words out. To this moment of writing this, although I'm sure it will change on our wedding day, it was the happiest day of our lives. Soon after this, we decided to make an even bigger change and the idea of moving to Arkansas started floating around. Keira's family there were extremely generous in offering us a place to sort ourselves out and find our place in the world. September 2024 we got in the car with our small amount of possessions, our dog Copper, and headed out for Arkansas. After a minor but major car issue that of course happened in the middle of the Blue Ridge Parkway, we made it to West Fork, Arkansas. In Arkansas, the two of us have discovered our passions, we've found a beautiful church body to be a part of, and have fallen every day more and more in love. Every day there are new things to learn about each other and it's been an amazing place for us to grow. Coming back to Massachusetts to get married will be such a beautiful full circle moment and I cannot wait to see all of you there! We will see you soon friends, family, brothers, and sisters. - Joe and Keira (almost) Fagerstrom