On Monday, my husband Nuni and I celebrated 13 years of marriage! We’re so grateful for our relationship and that we have such a happy, fun life together. It's pretty amazing, considering we are from opposite sides of the world. 🇨🇦🌎🇧🇷
Have you heard the story of how we met?
It's my favourite story to tell!
In 2008, I was 23 years old and working as a Christian missionary. I was leading a team of 5 people, and we were sent to Florianópolis, Brazil. It was my first time in Brazil. 🇧🇷 I didn’t know the language or anything about the country, except that they liked soccer. We were working with a church there, and we made friends with a couple that was about to get married. They invited me and my teammates to sing at their wedding. It was at this wedding that Nuni and I met!
After my team performed at the wedding, there was an "open mic" where anyone could go on stage and sing. I remember standing and talking with some friends when I heard a beautiful, confident singing voice. I looked to the stage to see who it was, and it was Nuni. I was impressed, and I am not easily impressed!
At some point during the evening we were introduced. Nuni was a good vibes guy who spoke English well. He seemed really excited to meet me. Since I was a missions team leader, it was highly discouraged to get romantically involved with anyone during the mission. So although I was single, I wasn’t really in the dating mindset. We had a nice chat and Nuni told me he wasn’t “religious”, but was always up for hanging out and playing music. My team and I invited him to drop by our house sometime.
Two days later I returned home from an excursion. My teammate informed me that Nuni had come by and left a note. I started reading it out loud, thinking it was for our whole team, but halfway through I realized it wasn’t for our whole team… it was for ME! In the note he asked me if I’d like to have dinner with him. I told him over the phone later that although I would love to, I wasn’t really supposed to go on dates. He was really respectful and understanding.
A couple days later I found myself thinking about him. We hadn’t heard from him since I declined his date offer. I thought, “we can’t date, but we could all be friends…” I decided to invite him to a Bible Study we were leading that night, and to my surprise, he said yes! 😮
During the Bible Study my team and I performed a little drama. Normally we did the drama without any music. But we had a guitar in the room and since Nuni played, I asked him to do some background music for the skit. He didn’t hesitate. He played something so fitting, even though he had no warning or even knew what the drama was about. At the end of the drama he even played and sang the song “Oh Happy Day” which was so perfect. I was really impressed… again!
After the Bible Study, Nuni came over and we all had an awesome evening of talking, laughing and playing music together. At the end of that night I knew I was in trouble… this guy was seriously cool, charming, handsome, talented, and into me. A dangerous combination 😆
Over the next two weeks that we were in Florianópolis, Nuni spent a lot of time with our team. He came to the orphanage with us, helped us with other ministries we were doing. We all loved him… especially me. There was something very special about our connection. It was undeniable. We didn’t have to say a word to know that we liked each other.
Leaving Florianópolis was hard. We were just getting to know each other, falling in love quickly, and now the team and I were heading back to South Africa where we were based. There were a lot of tears at the bus station where we said goodbye. There was also a beautiful letter from him telling me how he felt. It was heartbreaking! 💔
So how did we end up together again? Well, it didn’t happen until 13 months later. And that’s another amazing story!!
A few years ago we shared this story (and 4 songs that we wrote for each other) in a livestream.
Click the link below to watch it!
👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
✅ Make sure to subscribe to my YouTube Channel while you’re there!
Peace, love and harmonies,
Lindsay
