Buckle in everyone.

We met in December of 2018 doing a dance for Christmas BASIC (our college ministry). We didn’t talk at all as Ally was super extroverted, and Calli thought she was quite a lot. (hehe) The next time we interacted was when we both got asked to be in another BASIC “performance” but this time for Maundy Thursday. Again, we didnt talk, but that is when Ally remembers really noticing Calli and her heart for Jesus. (This is also when Calli realized that Ally was actually super cool and wanted to be friends). At the end of the service, Ally asked Calli to get coffee to learn more about her. We got coffee and found out we both would be working at Riverside Lutheran Bible Camp that upcoming summer. That my friend, is where everything changed.

Summer 2018, we were both on the same theme team (a group of counselors who plan the content for one whole day of the week to be used throughout the summer). We worked incredibly well together and started to become close. On week 5 of camp, we were blessed to be co-counselors. That completely changed the trajectory of our friendship and our summer. For the rest of the summer, you would constantly see us together: sitting next to each other at staff meetings, hanging out on the weekends, and finding something to do during our 1 hour break. Now, keep in mind that at this point in life neither of us had figured out our sexuality, BUT we werent trying to. We both had grown up thinking that that would be wrong and that there was no way we could live like that. We did, however, spend that summer really figuring out our faith and our deep love for Jesus and His Kingdom. After camp ended, we spent every single day together at UNI. Once we even counted days, and we had only missed 3 days of seeing each other during that first semester back. We LOVED being together.

During our first semester being friends back at UNI, we spent hours talking, sometimes until 3am….(Ally did get a ticket once for parking in Cal’s apartment lot past curfew..whoops). In the car, Ally would make Calli harmonize to any song that she played as Calli is the best singer Ally has ever heard in her entire life. (I will die on that hill- Ally). We ate A LOT of Papa Johns pizza and Pancheros quesadillas. We watched so many movies and carpooled to every event we were invited to. We texted consistently. We worshiped and prayed together. We asked each other every question you could think of in order to get to know each other more. We just never had a friend that we cared about this deeply. As this first semester continued, we started holding hands and being consistently close to one another. Calli would say that that was just her love language, but Ally knew something was different. Normal friends didn’t act the way we were.

On January 7th, 2019, we kissed. Obviously that night changed everything. We started dating three days later, January 10th, 2019. Then, for the next year and a half we hid it. We felt so much fear about telling our people. We couldn’t believe that our friends, families, or workplaces would be accepting, and we didn’t want to come out unless we knew that what we had was worth it. (After coming out, we are beyond blessed and thankful that this was not the case. We have been greeted with an abundant amount of love and we cannot thank everyone enough.) We are still grateful for the time we had when we were hiding it. We grew together, learned together, leaned on each other, and built such a strong relationship together during that time. We learned how to communicate so well, as we only had each other to talk to about it lol.

On August 8th, 2020, we had officially told the majority of our friends and family. We stopped hiding, and we finally started being a couple in public. The time since then has been the BEST time of our life and especially our relationship. We are so thankful that we can love each other with so much support from our community.

Getting engaged on June 4th, 2022 and posting the next day has only deepened our gratitude for our community and the people who love us. We felt overwhelmed with joy with the huge outpouring of support we received. You people, the people who are celebrating with us throughout our days and on our biggest day, are a true vision of the Kingdom of God. The people and the generation that is going to make this Earth look more like Heaven. The people who are going to show the world what the true love of Jesus looks like. Thank you. Thank you for showing us this love, but also showing the world this love.

We cannot wait to worship, pray, eat, drink, and be MARRIED on June 30th, 2023, with our most favorite humans.