We come from completely different worlds. I was born in Texas, and she was born in Portugal and grew up in Germany. Somehow, life brought us both to Madrid at the same time during our semester abroad in 2019. Even though we were studying at different schools and had nothing to do with each other, we were meant to meet. We only had one month left in Spain when God made us cross paths.

One night, completely by chance, we ended up at the same bar. We started talking, exchanged numbers, and didn’t think too much about it at first. But that conversation turned into something more. Over the next four weeks, we started spending more and more time together, and by the end of the month, we had fallen in love. Happy to have found each other, sad about having to leave each other so soon.

When our programs ended, we had to say goodbye. She went back to Munich, and I went back to Dallas. Suddenly, there was a seven-hour time difference and thousands of miles between us, but we made it work. We called and texted as much as possible for a year, and even though it wasn’t easy, we knew what we had was worth it. Because it wasn’t hard enough, March 2020 a pandemic started and resulted in us not seeing each other for 313 days until I was able to go back to Madrid for another year. We got one step closer, still a three hour plane ride away but finally in the same time zone – long distance became easier.

Eventually, I made the decision to move to Munich, Germany to be closer to her – after nearly two years of long distance in September of 2021. It was a big change, but it felt like the right one. There was no question in my mind that she was the person I wanted to be with. We both enrolled to do a Masters program, finally living a normal life together with a lot less missing each other and goodbye's.

Looking back, it’s crazy to think about how random it all seemed. But God put us in the same place, at the same time, and that one night turned into everything. We overcame distance, time zones, and all the challenges in between (we weren’t short of those), and now we’re building a life together that we couldn’t have imagined or wished for back then. And we couldn’t be happier and excited for what the future holds for us!