Our Story

Our story begins when we arrived at New Tribes Bible Institute. It was January of 2012 and anyone who's been to Waukesha, Wisconsin in January understands that when we say it was cold, it was COLD. During our first semester we didn't really interact a whole lot with each other. Granted, with our class size being just twenty-eight people, we didn't completely avoid each other but we didn't really hang out a whole lot either. All we really knew of each other was that Cameron had his idea for "Freshmen Freshest Week" as an ice breaker for the class and Caitlin made her comment that water bottles shouldn't be shared because then you will contract mono.

The first time we really spent any time together was in May when we both began training to be school bus drivers. Sophomore year was pretty much the same as freshmen with each of us occasionally crossing paths. It honestly wasn't until December of 2012 that our friendship really began, albeit slowly. We attended the same school social events more and more often. Then in January we both attended the student leadership training at NTBI and were placed in the same small group which provided us with more opportunities to get to know each other.

But really, it was the spring break trip during our Junior semester to Pennsylvania to participate in NTM's week-long Wayumi program (which is similar to the Interface program but stateside) that everything started. We spent an inordinate amount of time together during this break, eating meals next to each other, playing game after game of Chess (all of which Caitlin won, by the way) and playing Risk (which Caitlin also won). This was when Cameron started liking Caitlin, but he kept it to himself. Later that month, we went on the Junior-Senior weekend trip down to Camdenton, Missouri to visit the Missionary Training Center. We rode there and back again together and continued to get to know each other more. This is when Caitlin started liking Cameron, but she kept it to herself.

Which leads us to our senior semester at NTBI which is the one you all really care about reading. We both arrived back to NTBI early in order to attend the student leadership training which gave us a week to renew our friendship before the rest of the student body arrived. Then, once the semester began, we hung out a ton. Whether it was volleyball or random talks in the stairwell or early bus driver breakfasts as 5:30 in the morning, we were seeing each other quite often.

One of the required classes for senior semester at NTBI is a speech class with the second speech being on anything you want. Well, ironically enough, we chose pretty much the same topic: Cameron spoke on celibacy and Caitlin spoke on singleness. Nearly everyone thought that was hilarious.

It was on October 10th, after going to the Green Letters book study at one of the staff houses, and after playing several games of volleyball that Cameron told Caitlin that he liked her. And it was that Sunday that Caitlin told Cameron she liked him. Then, exactly one month later on November 10th, they made it official! Cameron called and asked her dad if he could date her and then asked her by surprising her with a dozen red roses in their classroom.

***DRUM ROLL PLEASE***

And now THE story! The story that you've been wanting to read! Your diligence in reading through all of this has paid off because now you can hear how Cameron asked Caitlin to marry him! The story, the story! First, it must be prefaced by saying that Caitlin typed up the entire story of JUST the proposal and the final document ended up being 5,000 words..... needless to say below are the very short cliff notes. But the short version of the story is still awesome! On Monday, December 16, 2013 we were supposed to exchange Christmas presents with each other and then go ice skating and finish by eating dinner at Olive Garden. Well, we started with Cameron's present because he said his was a scavenger hunt and indeed it was! Each clue led to important places around town like where he told Caitlin he liked her and where he told Caitlin he loved her, etc. And after six of those riddles (all of which rhymed) we ended up at a bridge where he proposed! And he even had two people from school follow us around to take pictures and two others were stationed at the bridge waiting for us to snap some pictures! It was awesome! He did so good! And Caitlin didn't see this coming at all because he had made her think that he hadn't asked her dad! As he pointed out he technically didn't lie, he just allowed her to have the misconception because he had said earlier that day that he never had a good opportunity to talk to my dad.......so he made an opportunity! So a month and six days after we "officially" started dating we were engaged!


(If you want to hear a play-by-play of the entire proposal, just ask us anytime and we would be more than happy to tell you every detail!)