How We Met
Micah and I met through a series of very unfortunate/ fortunate events. He was finishing up guide school in South Africa and had been living in the bush/ off the grid for three months. He had planned ahead of time to fly to Texas to see his best friend get married and stay with college friends when he got there. The day he was supposed to fly out to Texas he finally turned his phone on upon receiving his first cell signal in months and received a text from the friend who was supposed to be hosting him in Texas which informed him that they no longer could help him out.
While literally boarding his flight to Texas he frantically sent out text messages to any and all connections he had in Dallas, TX including my roommate at the time and dear friend, Alexia. She didn’t hesitate to host him as Micah and his family had essentially adopted her during her time in Kenya. It was over the next three months that Micah was stateside and occasionally crashing on our couch that we fought hard to deny our feelings for each other, knowing we lived worlds apart but, in the end, love won.
He asked me to be his girlfriend the day he got on the plane to head back to Kenya and the rest was history.
How They Asked
Fast forward six months of long-distance, a VERY unexpected year together stateside and one pandemic later… We were hot tubbing one evening with our dearest friends and newly formed community in Dallas when Micah slyly propositioned the idea of doing a group trip to Yosemite. He and I had been there earlier the previous year to visit family and knew we wanted to go back before he left for home. I took charge of most of the planning while Micah sat back knowing all too well that if he helped at all I would be suspicious. Little did I know at the time, I was planning our engagement.
We arrived in Yosemite and the first evening we met up with his cousin and their dear friend, Safeena. I had stalked Saf over the years of dating Micah and I won’t lie to you all by saying I didn’t have hope that MAYBE she was there to document our engagement. Our first night we watched a gorgeous sunset with our dearest friends while Saf documented it all and I secretly hoped it was happening there… but at the conclusion of our evening, Micah had not proposed. At that point, I had come to peace that I would not be getting engaged this trip because, to my knowledge at that point, Safeena was leaving the next day and thus we were losing our photographer.
We spent the next day climbing, hanging out with friends, and enjoying our time altogether leading up to what I thought would be another quaint sun-downer.
When we reached the destination of that evening’s dreamy Yosemite sunset, Micah grabbed my hand and began to lead me to a familiar sight–a Masai blanket from Kenya, and as I looked up I saw Safeena (SNEAKY MOM) and immediately knew my life was changing forever.
With our favorite piece of rock, El Capitan, as our backdrop and our best friends surrounding us, he began to read the book he made me for our one-year anniversary. In it contained printed pictures and narrations from him of “Our Story”. The book had ended “to be continued…” with blank pages to fill except this time the “to be continued…” now led to Micah’s proposal written out. He asked, we all cried, and I said a resounding “YES”!
