It is the morning of Saturday, 10 September 2016; Lefa and I are lying on Pontsho’s couch recovering from the night before, where we were celebrating my 28th birthday - it was a rough night!!! Ironically, I spend the better part of the morning sharing with Lefa about my ongoing search for the right romantic partner and how difficult it is to find a good woman.

Whilst feeling sorry for myself we decide to have a braai & take it easy. Then Lefa gets the bright idea to invite three lady friends who happened to be spending the day at the Vaal dam. He then showed me a picture of the single lady of the three and tries to convince me that she could be the one. To be honest I wasn’t moved, but I agreed none-the-less. In my mind, I was dreading small talks with strangers whilst in “recovery”.

A few hours later whilst Lefa was in the shower, the ladies arrived. Like the true gentleman I am, I went down to the parking lot to meet the ladies and showed them where to park their car – which I now know is a Mercedes Benz C Coupe (imagine my surprise).

Anyway, out of the car jumps out these ladies, amongst them the ‘Colored’ friend. We make our introductions and I lead them up to the house. Once in the house we continue with small talk and of course the gentleman offers the ladies some drinks. Once Lefa joins us, I offer to drive to the shops to get last minute supplies and meat. Upon my return everyone has made themselves comfortable. I begin to prepare the meat; the ‘colored’ friend offers to assist with marinating and joins me in the kitchen. This is the first time that I really notice her.

We start talking… and this is when I find out her name, “Catherine’’. We finished prepping the meat an braaing, then went on to have an uneventful dinner.

Sometime after dinner, someone suggests that we play a new drinking game that they discovered recently. To this day, I’m conviced that game was rigged to get Catherine and I to interact. As the only single people in the group, we started flirting with each other and I started to really enjoy myself. During the course of the game, Cat and I we instructed to uhmm…have light contact with each other for 10 seconds. This ended up lasting for a lot longer than 10 seconds. From there on, I was hooked.

Before I knew it, it was 2am and the ladies were ready to leave. I walked Cat out to the car and pluck up the courage to ask for her number and a date the following day. She responded saying that she would be asleep most of the day and would be in church in the evening. To my surprise I immediately offered to go to church with her (the last time I was in church before then was in October 2015). The following day, I spent the entire afternoon chatting to her on whatsapp, whilst telling my sister about how amazing she is.

In the evening I made my way from the south of Johannesburg to the East of Pretoria – stopping for flowers along the way. I meet with her and she instructs me to follow her to the church. When we get there, I hand over the flowers. She thanks me and puts them in the car. I found out months later that I was the first guy to buy her flowers… (Winning!!!!)

Once in the church, we found our seats and joined in on “Praise and Worship; at this point, I’m surprised I haven’t burst into flames on the spot. Half way through the service, we somehow started holding hands – this felt so natural and normal. At the end of sermon, the pastor did the alter call and I found myself standing in the front at thee alter with her right beside me whilst I rededicated my life to Christ.

My life has never been the same since that day and I look forward to being her husband and spending the rest of my life with her.

-Les-Ma-Ada-

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