Telling the World (Part 2)

This is the next installment in a rather long series about how Daniel and I met–and have become engaged. Click on the “Our Story” tag for context.

My Bible study friends weren’t the only people who were incredulous that Daniel and I were engaged.

Anna reports showing up (late) to worship practice the morning after our announcement and having the entire worship team asking for the scoop.

“Rebekah is engaged?” our pastor asked. “I didn’t know she was dating anyone.”

(In my defense, his wife knew I was dating someone; as did at least two of his elders. It wasn’t like it was a secret.)

Consensus was that they all needed to meet this guy, check him out.

Anna let them know the good news. He would be visiting that very morning.

After teaching the Sunday School lesson and getting the children into their small groups with their small group leaders, I left a little early and went out to find Daniel. We strolled, hand in hand, through the church building and towards the sanctuary. As we passed the visitor welcome center, my pastor interrupted his conversation “Hey, Rebekah, good to see you today. Engaged, I hear?”

I affirmed that this was true, introduced Daniel quickly and left Pastor Justin to his conversation. But as we walked away, Justin informed Daniel that he (Justin) would be talking to him (Daniel) later.

Later didn’t end up being after the next service as I’d expected.

Instead, Justin mounted the stage to give the morning’s announcements–and opened with “Sometimes, in the course of this life, two people decide that instead of walking separately, they’re going to join their lives together and walk the rest of this life together as a married couple. If you are in the congregation today and have made that decision in the past week, could you please stand up?”

Groan.

Daniel and I stood to applause.

At which point Justin came off the stage and towards us, microphone in hand.

“Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist,” he said, “to figure out that Rebekah is one of the most eligible young women in our congregation. We’ll be very sad to see her go.”

Turning now to Daniel, he asked him to introduce himself and tell what he did for a living.

Daniel did so, but didn’t quite give the answer Justin was looking for, so Justin supplied it himself: “So you could almost say you’re a rocket scientist?”

Ermm…not quite, but we’d let him keep his punchline.

His next question for Daniel had us looking back and forth to decide who would answer and how. “How did you propose?” he asked.

Thankfully Daniel, not liking how he’d automatically contradicted me when I started telling the story to my family the day before, had helped us get on the same page as to the story we’d be telling the world.

I gave the short version. “Well, Daniel didn’t so much ‘propose’ as we mutually decided to get married during a conversation this past week.”

Justin wasn’t content with this answer, so he asked Daniel for more detail.

Daniel gave the long version (although still shorter than my long version.)

And, if anyone was in doubt of the veracity of my Facebook status change, they were now convinced. Thanks to a ten minute in-church interview, they now knew that Rebekah Menter was indeed engaged–and knew exactly how it had happened.