We Meet
A couple of months after I made Jesus Lord, I was told that the Campus Ministry has a conference every year and one was coming up that summer. I was ecstatic to say the least because it was in Chicago, a place I’d never been, plus we were taking the bus there from New York City. I love road trips!
During the conference there was a day of service where all the campus students from the Unites States came together. We were all decked out in blue HOPE worldwide t-shirts, ready to serve in Englewood, Chicago. The organizers had decided to split up all of the different campus ministries and have us serve with fellow disciples that we had never met before. Brilliant idea, let me tell you! God was working through the person who decided to organize this.
Here I was, a new disciple, on a bus about to do a service project with my brothers and sisters, in Christ that I didn’t know. This scared an introvert like me, but I had no choice. And this was how I would meet my husband. We got off the bus at the work site where we were supposed to clean up all of the vacant lots around the neighborhood. I mean, we were picking up trash; hypodermic needles; diapers; you name it, we found it and we picked it up. I have to say, it was pretty fun and I got to meet some sisters and of course some brothers. One in particular was really one of the coolest people I’ve ever met, Patrick Genova from Maryland. He came up on my right to talk to me. Not that I liked him or that it was this epic moment, but I just remember it very well for some reason. He introduced himself. My mind immediately was in defense mode. I thought, Why is this guy trying to talk to me? I am not interested. Clearly my mind was not in the right place. I had just come out of the world, I was a really new disciple and all I could think was, This dude is trying to get my number right now. Trying not to be mean, I encouraged the conversation, giving him the benefit of the doubt. Boy, was I pleasantly surprised; he was so cool we talked for a good chunk of time and actually stopped picking up garbage for a while.
We parted ways after a while, and it was time to return to the buses. Once we arrived back at the hotel, for some reason (which I believe was God), I stopped outside the bus to look at my phone and here comes Patrick, drum roll please, dun dun dun! He asked for my number, I gave to him and saved it as “Pat, brother I met in Chicago” We started walking together back to the hotel, and again we parted, I didn’t see him again for the remainder of the conference. Four months passed and we didn’t even contact each other. One day, though, I was on a college campus with my friend Hannah; I believe we had just finished up a Bible study with someone. For some really odd reason I decided to text “Pat, brother I met in Chicago” and wrote something to the effect of, “Who is this, I found your number in my phone?” although I knew exactly who he was, and Pat responded reminding me of who he was, what we did, etc. I was in shock because he remembered everything about me. I wish I could say that we kept in touch and fell in love from there, but that was not the case. Since that initial text we talked here and there, really not that often at all. He would call and sometimes I wouldn’t even answer—I am not proud of that. (If you wanted to read a truthful book, well here it is!).