It all began on a night 21st July, 2019,I had absolutely no intention of being out of my hostel. For many reasons, I did not want to attend that birthday party, but a friend insisted, and somehow, I found myself there. Little did I know that a moment I almost avoided would become the beginning of the rest of my life.

At the party, I noticed a guy I had never met before. What caught my attention wasn’t his looks at first, but his quiet resolve. I overheard him telling the person serving drinks not to give him alcohol. Almost immediately, the guys around him called him *“Apostle.”* I looked at him, buttoned-up shirt and suit trousers, ( who wears that to a birthday hangout?) and thought to myself, *“What a pastor.”*

When it was time to leave, a friend offered to walk my friend and me back to our hostel. Then, he decided he didn’t want to make the walk back alone and called someone to join us. And of course, it was *the pastor*.

That walk changed everything. Conversations started that night, though, truthfully, I wasn’t interested at first. He talked a lot, and I found it slightly annoying. When it was time to exchange numbers, he asked me to take his and send him a message because he didn’t have his phone with him. I did… and funny enough, for someone who claimed not to care, I actually followed up.

That message marked the beginning of a friendship. At the time, I never imagined I would end up dating him. In fact, I tried to set him up with my friend, and he tried to do the same with me. But life, as it often does, had its own plans.

Then came October 2020. One day, he looked at me and said, *“I want to marry you. I want you to be my wife. This is me making my intentions known. Please give it some thought.”* When he first said “I love you,” I didn’t say it back, not because I didn’t care, but because I wasn’t sure yet.

What makes it even more interesting is that at the time, I was praying about someone else as my future partner. Yet every answer I received pointed me back to him. I kept dismissing it, until wisdom intervened. With my mum and my sister as my prayer partners, clarity finally came. Without them, I might have allowed emotions to lead me elsewhere, and who knows how different the outcome would have been.

I’m grateful I listened. Today, I look back with so much gratitude: for the night I didn’t want to attend, the conversation I almost ignored, and the man I nearly overlooked. And now, I’m taking this bold step with the love of my life, the same “pastor” in the buttoned-up shirt who walked into my story and never left.

And this… is just the beginning.