As many of you have probably heard already, Laura and I are engaged!

Some of you might be thinking "Laura? I didn't know there was girl in Corey's life.Who is this Laura?" Well I'll make a long story short and tell you who she is and how we met.

Last January I was sent on the World Race as a last minute fill-in translator for the brown team, the team Laura was on. I spent two weeks with the brown team, mainly as a translator, and got to know each of them team members fairly well. Since she never showed it, I never had a clue that Laura had more admiration for me than being a good Spanish speaker.

Enter the last days of my journey with the team.

All the teams gathered in Palenque to debrief the Mexico part of the World Race. I spent less time with the brown team as most of our activities were with all the teams and because there were a few other friends that came down for the debrief, along with my other translator friends. Needless to say I didn't spend much time around Laura, and I wasn't looking for it either. We had a friendship develop between us during those two weeks but I was sticking to my new years resolution of "no girls ever", seriously that was my new years resolution.

The last day I figured out that she did like me more than friend and as I sat in the guys cabin I prayed "Lord, shes really great and all but if this going to go nowhere I want no part of it. If this is an oppertunity from you please make it aparent and confirm. Through someone talking to me about it, someone like Bob (my leader of the FYM program in Matamoros who came down to facilitate the debrief)."  (sorry Bob, you weren't the only confirmation, just the best one for this story)

The second my mouth closed I heard footsteps coming up the stairs to the door. I waited to see who it was and I lo' behold it was Bob. And guess what he wanted to talk to me about...yup, a girl named Laura.

In a nut shell he told me never to chase a girl (good advice), but that he could see us together. "Keep in touch and see where God leads you two"

So thats what we did for the next 11 months. Most people don't get much out of emailing but we used it to get to know each other the best we could.

This December I stayed with her family for 10 days. On Christmas day we flew to Wisconsin and stayed with my family untill January 7th.  Proposing had not been planned but was something I was asking the Lord about. I wanted to use this time together to identify what the Lord had for both of us and move towards what ever that was.

Through many prayers, talks, and watching her love my family I knew that I wanted to marry her. We spent New Years eve at my good friends house with others. On the morning of January 1st I proposed.