This photo was taken on my Baptism day. I Joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints in September of 1995. I was looking for God, and praying for the right church to join. At the time I was living in a small apartment in Plainfield New Jersey. My brother and his wife had a little daughter who was very sick in Vermont. I had started to pray for her to get better. I hadn't really prayed to God in years. But with the thought that this beautiful little girl could die, I knew I had to at least pray for her to get better. Then the thought came to me that praying wasn't enough, that I needed to also go to church. I lived across the street from a Catholic church, and my drive to work was one that had a different church building on every street corner. I was quiet and shy and really wanted to attend a church, but I wanted to go with someone. So I then began to pray for a friend to go to church with.
My Husband was a customer of the bank that I worked for. He would come in and talk about his ideas about life and sit and talk to me about the beach. When we first met I had been dating someone else, and then when he came in a few weeks later I told him that I was now single and he could ask me out on a date. He asked me out for that night to go to a party and I said no. I had just left a relationship with someone who was only interested in parties and drinking and I just didn't want that in my life anymore. I wanted the date to the beach with lemonade that he had talked about. Eventually we did end up going out on a first date. We sat on a park bench and talked about ourselves, and we talked so much that my husband got hungry and decided even though he wasn't going to spend any money on me that we would go out to eat. He said to me that night "you are like a pot of gold, but I'll find the tarnish" He was never going to get married, and was sure I had issues and once he found them it would be his reason for not dating me. I did get my beach date which was wonderful. And then my husband asked me to go to church with him. He told me he was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I didn't realize it at the time, but he had just joined this church. I thought he had always been a member of this church. He told me that church was 3 hours long. I agreed to go, but thought I would die being in church for 3 hours. Yet this was what I had been praying for a friend to go to church with.
That Sunday morning in late August we went to church together was the first time we went to church together as a couple and we never stopped going. I loved the church, the feeling I felt there, and knew I had found what I was praying for. I had found a good friend and God. I met with the church missionaries and was baptized into the church in early September of 1995.
My husband and I continued to date and he continued to tell me he would never get married. I was OK with that because I had my own plans. He had car projects and things that he wanted to do in his life, and I was planning to move back to Vermont. While I liked New Jersey, and going to the beach with this nice Guy, and he was cute and fun I was always planning to move back to Vermont. I didn't tell him this. I just said that I was fine with him never wanting to get married. I told him that I was OK with just being close friends, and that I too was not ready for marriage. And then in April he came home from his trip to the Washington D.C. Temple and asked me to marry him. I laughed at him. I thought it was a joke, as we had both said we were not going to get married. And yet he was serious and said he wanted to marry me. What had changed this man? The man who had told others " he would not get married even if the hand of God pointed down from the sky and said Bowlby you get married or else.." Well I guess God told him in the Temple that day that he better marry me. What is funny is I was almost to the end of my apartment lease, and was planing to move back to Vermont that August. After much confusion and disbelief I finally said I would marry him.
I think that we shocked a lot of people. His best friend came to my work and said to me " I thought you said you didn't want to get married. What are you doing?" Here we were two people who didn't think we wanted to get married setting up a wedding.. So he proposed in April and we were married in August. One year after we had met. We were the first convert couple in our ward to go from Baptism to sealing in the Temple... I wouldn't change any of it. I like to connect songs with our life and I recently found a cute song that goes with our meeting.
I Do..by Colie Cailat
How did you meet your spouse and do you have a conversion story?
G.G.
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