Joel & Chantall: Our Love Story

When someone asks me where I am from, I say Washington State. Then, they ask Joel oh where did you serve...Washington, Spanish speaking...Then their eyes light up and they connect the dots. There is always that awkward part because they always think Joel was an unfocused missionary or that I was a flirt. But all who know Joel know that he was a very focused missionary and I am far from a flirt lol. I wanted to take this time to write Our Love Story :)

Joel and Chantall's Love Story

Well, I guess you could say that we met sometime at the end of 2008 because Joel had just been transferred and I remember that I was a senior in high school. I thought Joel was kind of too friendly and not that cool, we are being honest here lol.

He just thought I was a cute girl.

Joel spent the last part of his mission in Othello, which was about 9 months.

I was dating someone, so I didn't really notice anything about Elder Frazier.

My dad was the ward mission leader and Joel and his companion were always eating at our house. Not to mention the his Brazilian companion was obsessed with my mom's enchiladas and rice and always wanted to eat there.

Finally, the time came when Elder Frazier had to go home and he obtained everyone's email address, including mine to be able to stay in touch with the members.

All missionaries always say that they are going to stay in touch once they get home, but how many actually do that? Not that many. Joel actually did pretty good with that.

I actually broke up with my ex because I wasn't going to marry someone who didn't serve a mission and I didn't want to be with someone who was close to going on a mission. I wasn't going to be that girl.

Then, somehow Joel and I started emailing each other back and forth. A couple of emails turned into lots of emails which then turned into chatting online every night.

The very first time we met up again after he was a missionary was at Lake Roosevelt. It was kind of weird seeing him as a "normal" guy and when we first saw each other, he gave my mom and brothers a hug. I, on the other hand, stuck my hand out to shake his hand, as he is leaning in for a hug. He stops and just shakes my hand, hahaha. This was a bit awkward but I didn't know I was supposed to give him a hug! He was just a missionary and that was weird! So, now we laugh about it all the time and pretend shake our hands lol.

This was our first encounter picture :)

This was during that same trip and somehow under the direction of Joel handling the baseball tickets, we ended up sitting next to each other and apart from everybody else (my family and his) haha

So, I kind of consider this our first "unofficial date"

The next couple of months consisted of each other flying to each others home. I was getting ready to go to BYU Hawaii and he was going to ASU. I was starting to like him. A lot.

This was Wenatchee, in WA. We were official as of August 13, 2009.

This was right before I left for Hawaii. We were in AZ on a family camping trip. We did a lot of fun stuff together like rappelling, dirt bike riding, and of course getting to know each other more!

We basically did the whole long distance relationship for about 5 months when Joel asked me to transfer to ASU. I had to ponder and pray hard about this because I was planning on trying out for the women's soccer team at BYUH. I felt my answer and transferred. Sometimes I do think about what would have happened if I wouldn't have transferred, but I believe that everything happens for a reason and am grateful that I did.

This is actually the view that we had when Joel proposed. Of course, he had to do it while rappelling and as a geo-cache, I will have to save that for another post.