August 27, 2000 - The First Ward Meeting, Fireside, and Ward Prayer

August 27, 2000 – The First Ward Meeting, Fireside, and Ward Prayer

I went to church the next day excited to see Rob, but I didn’t want him to know that. I didn’t want to appear desperate. So I scoped out the field of men in the ward and by the end of the day I wasn’t really impressed with the selection. And when I saw Rob, I tried to act super casual, as if he hadn’t made any real impression on me. Truly, I was already half in love with him.

Rob: Whatever, I have since learned that she was fully in love with me by this point. OK not really, but she was well on her way. I just wanted to share how I took her “casual” response. I walked in, saw Tamra, said, “Hi!” She was like, “Hi.” And that was it. She probably looked the other direction. There was no, “How are you this morning?” Nothing. I walked away from that encounter thinking, “Alrighty then. . . obviously the hug was too much and she now hates me.” I was ready to move on.

I think it was that Sunday that we all got our pictures taken for the ward directory. Rob and I happened to be in the room at the same time and I remember when he got his picture taken I was trying not to stare, but I thought he was super good-looking. Obviously, this thought had crossed my mind much earlier.

There was a Ward Fireside that night given by our bishop, Bishop Freeze. He was a great guy and very funny and warm. He stated that some of us had met our eternal companions that day. I thought to myself, “No, if anyone in this ward is my eternal companion, it’s Rob, and I met him yesterday.”

Then there was the first weekly Ward Prayer. I think I usually skipped mine the year before, but I was determined to be social this year, plus Rob was going to be there. So I went. I went around to a couple of groups after the prayer was said, trying to not seem like I bee-lined it for Rob. Again, I didn’t want to appear desperate. So I talked to a few people. Then I went and talked to Lorelie, who had been my room mate the year before and by chance ended up in my ward again (really, by chance. She didn’t want to live on campus again this year, so I was really surprised to not only see her in on-campus housing, but in my ward), and who also just so happened to be in the same group Rob was hanging with. We were having fun and talking and Rob for some reason started doing some of his impressions. When Rob gets going with his impressions, he goes off into his own little world and goes on much longer than you’d expect. I thought it was DANG funny and was genuinely surprised when the other people in the group lost interest. So here is us, in this group. Everyone else has stopped listening except me and I just think Rob is so funny, so I’m not paying attention to anyone but him, and he hasn’t seemed to notice that no one else but me really cares. It was funny.

written Spring 2006