My little latin love story. Part 4 of who knows how many.

Let's see, now I'm going to have to figure out were I left off. Okay, I just brought my own computer and Mili and I had started chatting online.

A month or two of letter writing and chatting and the whole course of our relationship changed. One night we were chatting, it was about eleven p.m. in Utah and one a.m. over there. We were in that state of Mormon drunkenness that people get into when you’re really tired, your speech slurs, you start laughing at the stupidest of things and you sentence structure goes to pot. Out of the blue she says, “I want to be your wife.”

“Sure, when do you want to get married?”

“As soon as possible. Because you are the best man I have ever met.”

“Let me find out how we could do that and I’ll get back to you tomorrow.” Even in my tired state I felt that this was just to weird to be talking about right now.

I thought about what Mili said all the next day. It scared me spitless. I wondered if I really wanted to marry her. And the thing about being on different continents was sort of an issue. I began to make a small list of pros and cons. Pros: We understood each other, we felt comfortable talking about everything, and it couldn’t be lust because we had never spent any real physical time together. Cons: I’d have to give up flirting. Spanish was my second language and she didn’t speak English, she lived on another continent and her culture and background were very different from mine.

The last note on the con list was the one that worried me the most. I had read an article from one of the Counsel of the Twelve that stated in effect that the Church does not recommend that that people from different cultures/races intermarry. I understood their reasoning. Being married by itself is hard enough without adding the friction of different holidays, ways to celebrate birthdays, how to morn and cultural differences in general would only make things harder. After a few days of deep thought, prayer and the avoidance of the subject with Mili, I came to the conclusion that I wanted her to be my wife. It was the first time I had openly gone against a recommendation of the church.

Still, I wasn’t going to become engaged to her over the Internet. Besides, what if we got together and couldn’t stand to be in the same room? What if she had ballooned since the mission? And what if she wasn’t a good kisser? All these things had to be considered. So I made arrangements to go back to Peru so that we could spend some time together. That way we both could come to the conclusion whether we should get married or not. Once the decision was made that we loved each other and that I was going to go back down to Peru we began to size each other up, seeing if we both measured up to what we both wanted from a spouse. Mili even asked for a letter of recommendation from my bishop.

To me continued...