(As told by Sanjung)
It was a dark and stormy night. Not really. It was actually something like 10 AM. Daniel and I planned to go to Disneyland. I found out later that was just a scheme to get me to stay in LA one more day before going on my mini-retreat. I woke up and called Daniel. He seemed quite awake. Strange, he usually sounds groggy. Something was up.
Daniel came over to my aunt’s house to pick me up to go to Disneyland. He said he had something to show me, a present he had been working on to give me for Christmas, but didn’t quite finish until now. He wanted me to open it before we went to Disneyland.
The present was a scrapbook. It was a scrapbook of care notes and pictures from close friends and family. The theme was ministry appreciation and just plain appreciation. And encouragement. The design was quite ingenious. There were Scrabble tiles in everyone’s names. It made the scrapbook kinds of poofy, but that’s okay. The overall design was excellent. I read through the care notes and got to a blank page with Velcro and squares on it. Daniel then told me to take of the Scrabble tiles from the previous pages to unscramble them because there was a secret message. Right then, I knew what was happening.
People keep asking, “were you surprised?” Yes and no. I knew he was proposing that weekend because my dad kind of spilled the beans. He said Daniel’s parents were coming in town to celebrate our engagement.
Well. This was the last weekend he could do it. I WAS surprised that it was Friday instead of Saturday. Anyway, back to the story at hand . . .
I guessed the first word. It was Sanjung. The others kind of seemed intuitive after that. The message spelled out “Sanjung please marry me.” AWWWWWWW.
Daniel said, “Sanjung I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet you. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life without you. Will you marry me?”
I said yes.
Then Daniel pulled out a box with a diamond ring in it and he was actually already on one knee. I’d describe the ring here except it’s too nice of a ring to describe and it’s my ring now, not yours, so there. Then he said, “Ummm, I forgot what I was supposed to say.”
Then he talked about the ring a bit. Then he tried to put it on and was afraid it was too small. But it wasn’t. It fit perfectly.
Afterwards, he said he booked tea in Pasadena. I said, “But I thought we were going to Disneyland.” So he took me to Disneyland instead.
On the way to Disneyland, we stopped by to eat lunch at a Thai restaurant. But, before that, we noticed Daniel had a flat tire. We ate lunch first, then had the car parts store guy next door to the restaurant check it out. He said we should probably get it checked out.
Alas! 1 hour detour to Walmart to get the tire replaced. We go on dates to Walmart anyway, so that was fun.
The whole day, I kept looking at my ring and saying, “oooOOOOooo, shiny.”
We took another detour to the Amtrak train station to by me a ticket down to SD for my mini-retreat. THEN we made it to D-land.
When we got there, the FIRST thing we did, was get on the tram. Then, we called people to see if they wanted to come. You know, those passholder people. But they were all indisposed to coming. Actually, they just couldn’t make it down. And then we, got our engagement button!!! One of the few free things you can get at D-land.
We went on two rides. Pirates of the Caribbean. Then, we went on the most romantic ride in D-land: the Matterhorn.
Then, Daniel had to drop me off at the train station. Sigh. It was so . . . movie-ish. You know, get engaged, drop someone off at the train station, but usually you don’t see the person getting dropped off again because somewhere along the way they got kidnapped or sent to war or something. But I didn’t get kidnapped or sent to war.
That was a WONDERFUL day. A very Daniel and Sanjung day, unique to just the way we are. I would not have wanted it any other way.
