Chapter Two: Pee-otch

After Omar graduated high school in 2002, he decided to lead high school kids to Christ through Young Life. Omar and Whitney and 20-something other people showed me Jesus in a way that was real and exciting, and I was stoked to be a part of it. Little did I know what God was doing behind the scenes…

Omar, Whitney, and other leaders at YL camp, circa 2005 aka before I entered the picture

Our first encounter was in Pioche, Nevada, a town whose population we nearly doubled when our group of 35 people chose to camp out there for three days. Omar and I were fairly distant acquaintances, and I had a crush on our friend Max (which lasted like 5 days, so glad that that’s out in the open now).

On day two of the trip, Omar and I were placed in the same share group. We were supposed to share how we came to have a relationship with God. There were three of us in the group, but it only felt like two. Omar and I bonded over our identical lives; our South American lawyer fathers who weren’t around to raise us, and our ridiculous high school experiences which landed us in the arms of our heavenly Father. Later that day we played a game called “Assassins,” where you covertly shoot each other with water guns. We were all handed pieces of paper with someone else’s name on it, and it became our job to “kill” our target. I was assigned to Omar, so I hid the paper with his name on it in the old testament of my bible, and shot him in the face.

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Omar (and Jon) on the wonderous, giant, inflatable slide in Pioche, circa 2005

I remember praying for my future husband a lot during that trip,

how was I to know that he was right under my nose?

to be continued...