I was overseas teaching English. My wife was a student at a Bible college. A few years before I got married, I was talking to this friend who was all into visions and prophecy. She asked me, "Has God shown you who you are going to marry, yet"-- as if God always did that.
I said, no, and she said she'd pray for me. She told me later what she saw in a vision.
So I was praying about it. What if the Lord had shown her a vision of my wife, but not me? I opened up to Deuteronomy where it says the secret things belong to the Lord, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever.
So I prayed to the Lord and told him that this person said He'd shown her a vision of my wife. And it's my wife, not hers. I said the verse says that the things that are revealed belong to us, not just one person, but us, and I wanted to see my wife, so I asked for Him to show her to me. So I had this vision, not one of those 3-D, sight, sound smell visions, but a picture that dropped into my mind's eye, so to speak. It was a zoomed in picture of a woman's eye and eyebrow, an Asian woman, with kind of bushy eyebrows, and her face was a bit oily. I got a clear picture of the eye. The image of the face disappeared rather quickly, too quickly for me to memorize everything or to be able to definitely recognize her if I saw her. Still, it was an interesting experience.
So, I was teaching at this school, teaching English conversation to every grade level they had except for the 3-year-old preschool (which I did for a little while) It was pre-school and kindergarten day. I was scheduled for class right after class back to back with no break in between. I'd left my box of cardboard numbers or whatever it was I was using that day to teach. I went back to get them, and when I did, the teacher introduced me to a new teaching assistant. We shook hands briefly, and I left for the kindergarten class.
A few hours later, I was in the office sitting at the long table, a bunch of tables put together actually, and at the other end was this beautiful young woman, who I didn't realize was the one I had met. I remembered she had a sticker from her denomination on her briefcase. I remember thinking, "I wonder if the Lord would give me a woman that beautiful to be my wife." Then I told myself to quit thinking that and focus on my work. I didn't see her again around there and basically forgot about it.
Fast forward a year or so. I was overseas for Christmas and before Christmas an American missionary I had met invited me to dinner at his house. His wife was local to the country there. Their apartment was in one of the buildings for the Bible college and denominational HQ there in the capital city. It was less than a mile from my house and every minute of the day there was a bus waiting to go up that way. He said when the campus opened I should go visit the library which had a lot of English books. I thought I'd do that, and go make some friends at the Bible college.
Christmas overseas reminded me that I was alone, and I started praying more intensely than normal for a wife. I asked the Lord to hurry up and send he to me. I prayed in February about it, and it seemed like the Lord was telling me that I would meet her that month.
The day after Valentine's day, I went up to the Bible college for maybe the second time to visit the library. I'd made a friend, Yoel (same as Joel), the last time I'd been there.
This time, I'd come down from the library and I was in the partly open area used for the cafeteria on the first floor. A couple of girls walked in. One of them caught my eye because she was pretty. She was in a good mood and greeted me in English, "Hi, sir." She walked up the stairs with her friend, chatting, going up to the library. Her friend, I found out later, said I was cute, so she looked back at me to see me looking back at her.
A while later she came down, and I was talking to Filemon, a student there, who was holding a guitar. This young woman sensed the Spirit telling her to stop and talk to me, but she prayed, "I am a shy Asian girl. I can't walk up to a man like that and start a conversation." So she sat next to Filemon, whom she knew already, and asked him if he knew how to play a certain worship song. Eventually, I struck up a conversation with her.
As we talked, she got a word of knowledge about my gift of teaching and how God wanted to us it which seemed to fit well with what I knew about myself. I had a bottle of water in the backpack I had with me and spilled the water. She put the backpack in the sun to dry it out. We talked for a while and she suggested I go to a cell group. I gave her my number but did not think to get hers (duh!)
I went home and started praying. I'd prayed to have more friends, and I'd prayed for a wife. I went home after meeting her asking the Lord if this was to be my wife, and also wondering if she could be an answer to the friend prayer. Later, I found out that she went home and wrote her prayer in her prayer journal about us getting married if it was the Lord's will that day. We both sensed it.
At this time, I was living with an American friend who had an office in his house. His family had moved back to the states, and since he was living there house-sitting for his sister-in-law, he let me live there for free until he moved, and we hung out together. It was also good to have someone to talk to about marriage. There were a few phone lines in the house we used for business and personal use. I rarely got personal calls at that time, and if I did, the people who worked in the office would let me know.
So one day, she called, hoping to leave a message for me to call her. But this guy who worked there who was engaged didn't pass the number on and tried to flirt with her. He did that maybe one other time she called, and finally put the number on my door.
I called her, and eventually started talking to her about just being friends.
As soon as I saw that, I gave her a call. We were both busy and couldn't meet up. I was going on a church trip to another city. Finally we met. I was silly about it, though. I got home at night from the church trip, and went to meet her at the house she was staying in. I didn't know her living situation. I had a little suitcase with me. Had I realized she was living with a family and there was no place to hide the suitcase, I might not have done that. I guess I was too enthusiastic to think it through well.
Anyway, at this meeting we went into a room and did like a little devotion. She shared a worship song she had written for me. I think our first date as 'just friends' where we went out was probably when I took her to this fast food Japanese place at the mall.
After that, I took her out for dinner just about every night for maybe 4 months or so. My guess is there were probably 3 days during that time that we did not see each other. We went to church together, went to Bible studies together. After several weeks, I started meeting her relatives. At first we were 'just friends' until I felt like we were lying. She called me 'brother' which is normal in her language--translated into English. I thought she might be trying to reinforce our 'just friends' status with that incestuous sounding form of address.
I asked her about it, and she thought I was trying to reinsure that we were 'just friends,' though I was trying to clarify that she was my girlfriend. Finally, I told her I felt dishonest saying that. Plus, I wanted to tell people she was my girlfriend. That sounded silly for what she meant to me. I wanted to be able to tell people she was my wife, but I was still praying about that.
Btw, we eventually figured out that we had met when she had visited the school I had worked at before. She was that beautiful woman I'd met and seen in the office.
So I'd pray about whether this was the woman I should marry. It seemed like the Lord was saying, "Yes" into my spirit. Later, it seemed like when I would pray this that the Lord was saying, "Yes, why don't you believe Me?" On one occasion, I was praying about something she'd gotten upset about during our conversation, and it sure seemed like the Lord was telling me this story that happened to her in her past, which explained why she was upset. Later, we talked on the phone and she told me the story I'd gotten in prayer. I guess that should have been enough to convince me, but I was slower than I should have been to accept it with full confidence.
But I did learn to make decisions. After about 4 months of solid dating (partly as 'friends'), my wife went away on a 6-week missions trip out in the jungle somewhere along a river. I was left alone to pray and make my decision. Taking a couple of friends' advice, I laid out my reasons before the Lord and told Him why I believed this was His will and the right decision. Finally I said, "If you don't want me to do it, stop me." After that, I went from being 90 something percent sure of us marrying to 100%. I really had peace about it.
I would have loved to have had a prophetic confirmation of this when I was making my decision. The woman who'd told me about seeing a vision of my wife told me she didn't look like the woman in her vision. I think my wife took that news (which she heard through me) harder than I did. So I would have liked to have had some counter-prophetic confirmation. I found out that this woman liked to cast doubts on other people's marriages. She was single and a little old to be single in that country (not for the US, maybe) and I think she still hasn't married the man she thought she would.
I go to this church meeting at night after I'd made plans to get the ring. There was this American evangelist that I'd known from before I met my wife. After the service, he calls us up and gives us this prophecy about how we would go to many places and minister to many people. In my mind, that implied that we would be married (at least together for a long time in a relationship where we could travel together). I don't know if that woman with the vision heard that night though she was there. (They crank up the music during prophecies instead of letting people hear such things, which makes no sense IMO if you believe in the gift.)
I wish I'd had a recording of the prophecy. As best I can recall, much of it has been fulfilled, though probably not to it's fullness.
We started our relationship after our first conversation on February 15th. I proposed to her on July 20th. I got 'engaged' by asking her parents in August. We married in December, all in the same year. If I had it to do over again, I think I might have proposed quicker, or maybe gone back further in time and married her up right out of high school to have a few more years with her.
