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This may come as a surprise...
So remember how I let everyone know in May
that Claire Griffin and I were dating again? Claire who I had been with
for a year, and then not with for a year? Yeah. I may not have done the
best job in communicating all this. But here we are now, and you'll get
the full story!
History is below, but here's the present and the future. Claire Griffin
is going to become Claire Jones in May next year! We don't have an exact
date yet, but we're working on it. She's from the States, so we'll have
the wedding in California, then the plan is to come back through New
Zealand to see people/have our honeymoon.
So she's going to be around from now on! I'm sure you'll get to know
her, both from updates of our life together and from meeting her in
person- there will be opportunities! Sorry if you found out via
Facebook. Hopefully this makes up for it :).
Thanks so much for your care, prayers and support. God bless!
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On
Claire and I started dating on the 24th of May 2010. We got to know each
other staffing DTSs in July 2009- she staffed the Classic DTS; I
staffed the Sports. Both schools spent the first part of Outreach
together in South Africa, and I found myself spending more and more time
with her there. I figured out pretty quickly that I was very interested
in her, but for the next 8 months we managed to be in different
countries. When we were finally both back in Perth, I asked her out. She
said yes :).
We then spent the next six months staffing DTS together. It was a pretty
intense way to start out a relationship, but I reckon it went pretty
well! :) Obviously we got to be together for the time we were in Perth,
and thankfully we both went to Mexico for outreach! We were leading
different teams, but at least got to see each other once a week. After
the DTS was over, I went up to the States with her to spend Christmas
and New Year's with her family.
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Off
After I left the USA, things went downhill for me. You might remember me
talking about this. I went through a really rough patch, and we decided
it was best for us to break up, and for me to focus on God. It was the
most awful and amazing year of my life, but that's not the point of this
update. We weren't on a break. As far as we knew, it was over.
It wasn't! Towards the end of 2011, I felt like God was leading me to
ask her out again. That freaked me out possibly more than anything else
could have! But as I was praying about it, I saw a lot of instances over
the previous year where God had stopped me from giving up hope. I never
stopped loving her. So, eventually, I asked her out again.
Then she had a process to go through! It took her a while (I won't say
how long :)), but she came back with a yes. As we talked about it, we
could see how God had had His hand in it the whole time. Maybe everyone
who gets married says that God brought them together. I know without a
doubt He did it with us.
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On again!
So it was May again (kind of a theme) when we got back together, and
three weeks later she went to London for three months (kind of another
theme). I knew I wanted to marry her then, but there was a bit of an
enforced waiting period.
October finally rolled around, though, and I finally had the chance to
pop the question. We went for a walk down by the river, where we
mysteriously discovered a table set up for the two of us :). There was
cake, music, et cetera, and then I got down on one knee and asked her to
marry me. She said yes almost before I got the question out!
So there it is. It's been a bit of a journey, but we finally got there. I'm stoked. She's stoked. That's a pretty good result!
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