My Love Story? Part 3

My first Sunday in the new ward was, to say the least, interesting. We were pulling into the church parking lot when my younger sister, Emily, saw Peter heading into the building. As I got out of the car I was suddenly grabbed by the hand and dragged into the building, then around the building, until I was face to face with Peter. All the while that Emily is dragging me by the hand she is calling, “Peter, Peter”. This was how I first met my husband. I was introduced to him by my sister. He heard her calling his name and turned around as we approached.
Emily told him who I was and Peter and I awkwardly said hello to each other before we both turned around and walked the other way. I know! It’s so romantic. I can tell that you can hardly keep yourself from swooning. (By the way, ever heard of sarcasm?)

This happened at the end of July, 1997. From then on we saw each other at church a couple of times. In Laredo, there were 4 Spanish wards and 1 English ward. Peter had callings in almost all of them, except the English speaking ward. (He may say that I am exaggerating, but that’s how I remember it!) Because of his busy schedule I really didn’t see him that often, but I thought he was nice.
Sometime in September, I went to the CES broadcast at church. I admit that I was hoping that Peter would be there, so I sat where there was another empty chair. As the program was about to begin, I remember hearing a commotion of kids in the hall and just knowing that Peter would be in the middle of it. As I watched the door, sure enough, there he was. Right in the middle of a crowd of kids wanting him to shake their hands and whatever else that he did that they found hilarious. (When he would shake their hands he would shake their entire arm really hard, they would laugh hysterically.)

GUESS WHAT??? He came into the room and sat next to me!!! I was interested in getting to know him, but I was still telling myself that I did not need or want to get into a relationship. There was just something about him, though . . .

That night the YSA decided that we would go across the border to the fair in Nuevo Laredo for an activity soon. I wanted to go, it sounded fun! My parents were still pretty strict about curfews though. I was 18, but they wanted me home by 10:30. I have issues here. We’ll talk about them later. Maybe.

Anyway--Peter would be driving some of us across the border for the activity and he decided that he would be willing to leave the fair early to get me home on time. I thought that was really nice of him, but I felt really guilty about him missing out on staying with everyone else longer. The night for the fair arrived (September 11, 2007 oddly enough) and there were 4 girls, including me packed into Peter’s little hatchback Honda Civic. One of the girls, who happened to be Peter’s friend and was becoming my friend also, managed to get me into the front seat while she and the other 2 girls sat in back. I wasn’t too thrilled with that. I didn’t think it was very fair, since I was “the new girl” and I felt like I was just tagging along. After the seating arrangements were all made we were on our way to the bridge to cross over into Mexico. (This was back before all the scary drug/gun/violence issues that plague the area now.) I was excited. This was going to be my first trip over into Mexico and it sounded like it was going to be great fun!