A Conversion Story (Part III)
(Coming in late? Start from the beginning!)
My most sincere apologies for the backlog, but our new baby daughter, Naomi, was born in Kansas on Monday. Hopefully I’ll still finish up on time! :-D
I don’t remember everything Anna and I talked about, that first night, but I know we were on the phone from 12:30-2:00 a.m., at 14¢ a minute—the then–after-11:00-p.m. rate for a phone call from New Jersey to Indiana. Iit wasn’t a cheap method of contact, but neither was e-mail, anymore. What I do remember is the Anna had just gotten back from visiting her grandparents in her former hometown of Huntington, West Virginia, and I thought she sounded like a hick. Of course, I was tired and kind of mellow, and she thought I sounded like a druggie. Either way, she was everything I’d hoped for (despite having never seen even a picture; e-mail was text-only, back then), and I knew I was in love. A few days later, I asked her to call me. When she said she couldn’t afford it (she didn’t have a job, at the time), I told her to use the $5.00 she was going to send me to cover the (pirated; I didn’t know any better) tapes I was going to send her. I’d cover the tapes, just to hear her voice again.
After that, we decided she’d call me the second Friday of every month and I’d call her either the fourth or last Friday thereof. (I usually wound up calling her more often, but that’s just the way I am.)
By the end of January, the relationship had gotten about as serious as it could get, given that we were a couple of high school juniors, living 800 miles apart, that had never even seen each other. Anna knew it was time to take it to the next level and went on a fishing expedition: “What do you believe?” she asked me in one particular e-mail. “Like, religious beliefs, or whatever?” I responded with a sort of modified version of the Ten Commandments, with things like “Honor thy father and thy mother, unless they’re beating you.” Finally, after getting through all that, I asked her the question she’d been longing to hear: “What do you believe?” She told me I’d find out soon enough, that she’d answer my question in my Valentine’s Day present.
Along with some photos of herself and her youngest (five-month-old) sister, she sent me a copy of the Articles of Faith.
Tune in next time for Part IV!
My most sincere apologies for the backlog, but our new baby daughter, Naomi, was born in Kansas on Monday. Hopefully I’ll still finish up on time! :-D
“[I]t becometh every man who hath been warned to warn his neighbor” (Doctrine & Covenants 88:81).
I don’t remember everything Anna and I talked about, that first night, but I know we were on the phone from 12:30-2:00 a.m., at 14¢ a minute—the then–after-11:00-p.m. rate for a phone call from New Jersey to Indiana. Iit wasn’t a cheap method of contact, but neither was e-mail, anymore. What I do remember is the Anna had just gotten back from visiting her grandparents in her former hometown of Huntington, West Virginia, and I thought she sounded like a hick. Of course, I was tired and kind of mellow, and she thought I sounded like a druggie. Either way, she was everything I’d hoped for (despite having never seen even a picture; e-mail was text-only, back then), and I knew I was in love. A few days later, I asked her to call me. When she said she couldn’t afford it (she didn’t have a job, at the time), I told her to use the $5.00 she was going to send me to cover the (pirated; I didn’t know any better) tapes I was going to send her. I’d cover the tapes, just to hear her voice again.
After that, we decided she’d call me the second Friday of every month and I’d call her either the fourth or last Friday thereof. (I usually wound up calling her more often, but that’s just the way I am.)
By the end of January, the relationship had gotten about as serious as it could get, given that we were a couple of high school juniors, living 800 miles apart, that had never even seen each other. Anna knew it was time to take it to the next level and went on a fishing expedition: “What do you believe?” she asked me in one particular e-mail. “Like, religious beliefs, or whatever?” I responded with a sort of modified version of the Ten Commandments, with things like “Honor thy father and thy mother, unless they’re beating you.” Finally, after getting through all that, I asked her the question she’d been longing to hear: “What do you believe?” She told me I’d find out soon enough, that she’d answer my question in my Valentine’s Day present.
Along with some photos of herself and her youngest (five-month-old) sister, she sent me a copy of the Articles of Faith.
Tune in next time for Part IV!
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