The day that Joe and I "met", they had all of the chairs in class set up in groups of three and there was an empty chair left next to me. Joe came in late and took that seat and I have to admit, my hands got a little clammy and I was excited that I had an excuse to talk to him, but I didn't expect to be his friend or anything. When it came time for the class activity, everyone else got placed into groups of three or four but Joe and I were left to be in a group by ourselves.
In high school, I admired Joe from a far, and after graduation we went our separate ways, but life led us right back to where we started so that we could fall in love.
Joe got home from his mission on September 24, and I snatched him up October 21, obviously we weren’t wasting time! I don’t know how long it had been since I last saw him, but I remember one night at institute (a church study group), probably right after he got home, I noticed him sitting on the front row with a few of his friends that I knew fairly well. Joe says that the first thing he thought when he saw me at institute was, “I think her name is Amber??? And she used to want me.” The next couple of times I saw him at institute, he was always with one specific girl and I was always with one of my best guy friends, not that I was trying to attempt anything, but he had always intrigued me.
The day that Joe and I “met”, they had all of the chairs in class set up in groups of three and there was an empty chair left next to me. Joe came in late and took that seat and I have to admit, my hands got a little clammy and I was excited that I had an excuse to talk to him, but I didn’t expect to be his friend or anything. When it came time for the class activity, everyone else got placed into groups of three or four but Joe and I were left to be in a group by ourselves. Because he’d only been coming to class for a few weeks, one of the instructors hadn’t ever seen him before so when we got up to present, he looked at me with a knowing smile and asked, “Amberly, who is your friend?!” I didn’t know how to respond, I felt awkward and I’m sure I was bright red.
After class, Joe sat and talked to me for a bit and mentioned that he sat at home and doing nothing all the time because he hadn’t started working yet and didn’t have any friends around to hang out with. I told him that he should come hang out with my group of friends sometime because we did stuff every weekend. From there he got my number, later that night we became friends on Facebook, the next day he text me, and that is how our story began.
Portions of this post taken from How We Met, published on Life with Amberly & Joe in February 2011.