Debbie and I had both just joined ChristianMingle days before we met online. I was immediately interested in her, but she was a little skeptical at first and did not accept my first few invitations to meet for coffee or lunch. She finally suggested we meet for the Wednesday night service at the church that we both attended. At the time, we didn’t know that we went to the same church!

Our first date was dinner in the church cafeteria, where we started to learn about each other, followed by the church service. Afterward, Debbie commented on how much she liked the pastor’s sermon but I had been completely distracted by “the beauty by my side” the entire time and had not caught much of his message. We talked for a couple of hours after church and began discovering that we had an amazing number of things in common: Not only did we attend the same church and live in the same town, but we had also grown up only 16 miles apart 3 states away! On top of that, she had relatives still living in my home town! We later learned that her cousin’s great aunt was a distant cousin (by marriage) of mine and had the same last name as me!

As we continued to discover more and more “coincidences” and things in common, we both became convinced that God had brought us together. We were married a year and a half later on December 15th at the church where we met and held our reception in the cafeteria where had our first dinner together. It was a Christmas theme and Debbie looked beautiful in her red dress. We danced our first dance to “Lady in Red.”