It was 8:30AM on balmy morning in March when I sat down to breakfast with Shana and Dave. I knew I was in love with them before they even walked in. We sat and they told me the story of a girl who hailed from the jungles of Papua New Guinea and how she came to know and love a wild and free teacher from the ends of the earth.

[excerpts taken from Shana’s blog]

“When you are meant to be with your soulmate you can find them even at the ends of the earth..

Once upon a time, a girl took a trip out to the island of Little Diomede, an island bordering the International Dateline, and Russia. It was a rock island, in the middle of the Bering Sea, where the Bering Land Bridge used to connect Asia to North America. She was going to help out in the clinic on the island…

There was a boy who lived there…

They met at the school…He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, his “island shirt” as he called it…After seeing patients in the clinic, she left…It was a beautiful, rugged place, at the ends of the Earth, far away from where she lived. But they kept in touch…They wrote letters, skyped, and sent emails back and forth…Meanwhile, she thought of him, as she walked along the Bering Sea and the love she felt for him in her heart kept on growing…

Then he came to visit her for a third date. It was a shiningly beautiful day with the Arctic sunriset (that’s a made-up word for when the sun barely rises above the horizon and sets again) light glowing. And that’s when he got down on one knee, on the freezing Bering Sea icebergs, and asked her to marry him..”

Shana and Dave posses a special kind of joy and wonder most often reserved exclusively for children.
And their family and friends embody a love that swallows you whole.

I will never forget the elation and total peace I felt blazing down the Seward highway, drenched and happy with a lake-soaked Shana on my lap, marveling a force I can only call The Lord who would bring us all together for a day like this.

There is a richness to the way these people celebrate- barefoot and unhindered. It’s a kind of joy I wish to encounter a million times more over.

With immense love to you Theobalds & Padvoracs,
Lauren

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In other news, I’ll be releasing my new 2016 wedding packages at the start of November. All you wild and free souls, you big hearted types you lovers of story – come my way.