Once Upon a Time...part one

This past month, my friend Cherie did something very wonderful and clever. She recorded her and her husband's "story" as a little blog mini-series, leading up to their anniversary. Eventhough I have told and re-told our story a million times, I have never really documented it. So, for posterity's sake and anyone else, here it is in written form (this may be extremely uninteresting for many of you...I'll be back in regular form after June 8th). Here goes nothing.

As any good story begins...

Once upon a time, in a land far far away (actually, in the spring of 1994 & in Spring, Texas--sometimes it seems very far away)...okay, I'll be normal now...I had received two college acceptance letters (one from BYU and one from Stephens College in Columbia, MO where my mom had also gone to school). After weighing in all the pros and cons of both schools (and after much prayer), I turned to my mom just as church sacrament meeting was about to start and said, "I know where I'm going next year." "Where?!!", my mom answered with big eyes and a big smile. "Stephens."

Keep in mind that Stephens is a women's college (which suited me fine...since marriage was nowhere to be found in my upcoming plans) and the only other person I knew that was going there at that time was my roommate, Missy, from high school. So, on Thursday August 18th I just arrived and was already homesick and thinking, "What in the world am I doing here?!" My family left two days later and I must've cried for the rest of the day. Missy kept trying to comfort me and encouraged me that everything was going to be just great. (It wasn't until her family drove away later that day that I spotted her out the window chasing them down the street, that she could join me in a heap of tears.)

Anyways, while my family was still with me, they took me down to the Institute of Religion where I would be attending church for the semester. So, on Saturday night, I did something very un-Alexis-like...I prepared. The only thing in my life at that second that was still normal, dependable, and unchanging was...church. I was now an independent adult (or at least pretending to be), and I was now on my own. I dug out my iron and pressed what I would be wearing the following morning for 10 a.m. services: a periwinkle knit top and a khaki skirt...nothing fancy. The next morning, with intrepidation but a resolve and determination that this was going to be a great day, I grabbed my scriptures and marched out my door to make the trek a little ways down Broadway toward the Univ. of Missouri to my unfamiliar safehaven.

The Stephens campus was like a ghost town(as are most college campuses on Sunday mornings) and the normally busy Broadway was empty. I was alone, but I didn't feel it. As I walked through those Institute doors I felt peace and a sense of belonging(even though the only person I had met there was the Bishop--Bishop Kitchens). I found my seat in the back of the quasi-chapel which was full of other students. The meeting had already begun and the sacrament was now being passed. As I looked out the door into the hallway I had quick eye-contact with a nice looking young man wearing a light blue dress shirt, a red tie with navy blue polka-dots, and khaki slacks. He and his other friends came into the chapel after the sacrament and sat right behind me. Lucky me! I was trying to concentrate on the speaker's talk (who I think was talking about the beautiful hot-air balloons he saw in the sky that morning--a little random) and also lecturing myself on having an eye-contact moment (you know what I mean) with someone ten minutes into the first day of church. geez.

For the next two hours, I honestly was hoping that the red-tie guy would come into at least one of the classes I was attending, but he didn't. "No," I thought, "First of all, I still have a someone back in Houston that I need to be loyal to, and second, I need to meet everyone...not just the cute ones." So, after the remaining meetings were over, I began introducing myself to anyone and everyone. Pleeaase...I need friends. I was in the foyer, trying to quickly work my way over to him (who I could see out of the corner of my eye and who I was trying to listen to as closely as I could without being rude to the person I was supposed to be engaged in conversation with--I know, I ended my sentence with a preposition...it's late!)

Casually, I turned to him and smiled--I couldn't help it (without seeming too desperate and too anxious)and introduced myself and shook hands with him. "Hi! I'm Alexis Rumsey." He smiled in return. "Hi! I'm Adam." ...

to be continued...