Through traffic jams and long separation during international travels, providence ruled to unite two lives to come together.
       

Sumeet's version

Summer of 2008, I was contemplating about organizing a seminar, through our church, on the topic of “how to understand ourselves emotionally”. Our church members had hoped to contact an organization that caters towards such events. However, things happened and I never really got to it. Later during fall, I remembered pursuing the idea again and spoke to a friend. That very evening my friend met Nicole at a gathering. My friend tried organizing to meet with Nicole on several occasion but it was not working on our mutual schedule. One day it was finally working out that Nicole would come over for tea at my place after a lunch meeting on October 18, 2008. However, she unfashinably was delayed due to a major traffic jam in Secunderabad and almost contemplated not coming over. However, her perseverance and her auto rickshaw driver's tenacity made it possible for her to come over for her lunch meeting. Finally, I met with Nicole for the first time on October 18, 2008 at Crosswords in Hyderabad. We had an instant connection with respect to the ease with which we were communicating with each other. Subsequently, we started to communicate over Facebook, e-mail, and skype. (I made sure we leverage all technologies). We also went for long walks around KBR park.

I was amazed with Nicole's passion is for seeing emotional well being of people, especially her heart for the new believers who have experienced abuse and rejection.  He core values of simplicity, pursuing intimacy and genuineness in relationships, serving Christ in the disguise of the poor and belief in God's deep desire to see his saint's emotional well being was very inviting and refreshing for me. Nicole and I became good friends between Nov – Jan and on January 8th, 2009, on the eve of my leaving for a long trip to the US, Nicole and I became very close friends.

Middle of March'09, after returning from my travel to the states and after at least 100 person hours of skype chat, it was quite evident that we wanted to get deeper into our relationship and spent a lot of time talking about marriage. I had prayed for someone who was quite content with being single and loved being able to accommodate across cultures. Being in a relationship and the concept of being married was a challenging thought for me. I really had to learn what it would mean to “make room” for someone in my life. Nicole’s encouragement, love for people and tender challenging approach were a source of great joy and encouragement to me. On May 16, 2009, I pleaded with Nicole to marry me at a nice park in Jubilee Hills Hyderabad. She was very merciful and said yes! I must admit that I now realize what it means to marry up!