When I first met Elise it wasn't in person. It was on Instagram. Back when I was on social media I wouldn't follow anyone that I didn't have some sort of relationship with. When I got a notification that she wanted to follow me I saw that she was friends with iv and cru people. I figured that she wanted to connect with other Christians so I accepted her request not thinking much of it.

I didn't officially meet her until I met her at my friend Jabari's bible study in December of 2019. I recognized her from her Instagram and we had small talk. The next semester in 2020 I had big plans. I just moved into a new apartment on campus and had awesome roommates. I always had a dream of inviting people over to hang out, watch movies, play games, etc.. My first plan was to have a super bowl party. My plan was to invite all of cru/iv. While I was planning all of that I was at cru a couple of weeks before the super bowl and cru had just ended for the night. Everyone still wanted to hang so we decided to a restaurant on campus and we run in to...you guessed it Elise. We invited her out to dinner and later on I invited her to the super bowl party.

Shortly after the super bowl I had movie nights consistently and Elise was one of the people who came over every weekend to join in. The more I saw her the more interested I became. I did take her to church to help her find community and she liked it, so we kept going back every Sunday.

We were really starting to connect but before things could blossom....COVID happened. I expected all of my relationships to die down but with Elise it accelerated. We just kept in touch. We wanted to know how the other person was doing. We would sometimes be on zoom till 1am. It was great.

Now even during COVID I tried to keep the movie nights alive over zoom. There was one day I said in a group chat that if anyone was interested in watching tiger king. I set up the documentary and one person showed up......I'm sure you can guess who it was. We got hooked. We binge watch the entire thing, and then we started to watch other shows together till the end of the semester.

Once we got to the end of semester I started to develop feelings for Elise. I waited till the end of semester to see if these feelings were real and sure enough they were. I reached down deep into my soul to muster up the courage to ask her out. And sure enough I did in the most awkward way possible. Somehow, someway, she said yes.

Little over 2 years later I can't wait to call her my wife.

Registry