... a little Amish boy was born. He grew up on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania and learned the skills of self-sufficiency: milking, farming, butchering, and carpentry as a child. However, Mel often dreamed of life in the world outside and would sit in the grass watching for airplanes flying overhead or semi-trucks rolling down the road. During his rumspringa, Mel began driving a car and exploring more of the world. He slowly drifted away from his Amish heritage, and by his mid-20’s, he earned his CDL and his private pilot’s license and left to forge a life on his own. Mel banded with some fellow ex-Amish to launch a career in agricultural construction under the company Nationwide Builders (now Ag Building Solutions). He began traveling around the country managing construction sites and operating a crane. He had a good life: an enjoyable job, fat paychecks, and access to all the machines that had once been forbidden. But one thing was missing. Way down south in Cajun country, a nerdy little girl was born. She was the oldest of seven children in a big, Catholic family, and like Mel, Elissa learned practical skills and conservative values from a young age. As she grew, so did her intellect, and her insatiable desire for math with applications brought her to Nashville, TN to work and study in the robotics field. She developed powered prosthetics and orthotics at Vanderbilt University, designed claws for robots at Universal Robotics, and then began teaching engineering at Middle Tennessee State University while finishing up her PhD. Elissa’s passion for academics left her content with having the classroom as a social scene and needed no additional interaction beyond saying “hi” to people at the gym and “Amen” in the Communion line at Mass. She didn’t know what she was missing. Mel enrolled in a country swing dance program in order to “meet new friends”. However, he didn’t want a girl from the class; rather, he wanted to learn to dance so he could go out and meet girls at the dance venues rather than sit in the corner with a beer like so many other guys and wish that he had the courage to approach someone. Due to the excess of male participants enrolled, Elissa was cajoled into volunteering as a dance partner for Mel’s class, and the two were thrust together in an undesired partnership. Elissa tried to alleviate the awkwardness by making friends with Mel, but Mel was too shy to verbally interact, so the two had their first conversation four months into dancing. He was also too shy to dance with anyone else besides his assigned partner, so that meant he and Elissa were stuck together. Not long after, Mel found his tongue and burst forth an unexpected profession of love in December 2021. Due to the transiency of Mel’s job locations and confusion on the part of his dance partner, the two did not begin officially dating until May of the following year. Over the summer, their friendship blossomed, and Mel brought Elissa back to his hometown of Gratz, PA to introduce her to his family and the Amish way of life. Elissa was thrilled to find a real man with common sense, practical skills, a strong work ethic and internal drive. Mel appreciated her strong conservative and moral values, the way she brought him more in touch with his heritage and spiritual side, and marveled at her discipline and intellectual abilities, including quickly catching onto his native tongue of Pennsylvania Dutch. They shared a passion for machines, efficiency, and ice cream. After months of debating whether or not to give up his freedom of living life by the seat of his pants versus sharing it with someone else in a more scheduled form, Mel proposed to Elissa on November 11, 2023. They are looking forward to growing closer to each other and to God and excited to celebrate their wedding with you!