A Match Made in Heaven: How We Met

In May of 1998, Kristi and Anna Dyess get back from a week of InterVarsity leadership camp on a Friday night at about 1 am. They had promised their friend Jamie Elmer, who was volunteering with InterVarsity at Hood, to help him move from Frederick to Falls Church, VA on that Saturday. Being so tired from that week of camp (Kristi had been there two weeks!), they slept in that Saturday. When they called Jamie, he said to just help at the Falls Church side.

So Kristi and Anna journeyed down to the Peachtree Apartments to help Jamie. But when Kristi knocked on the door, someone else answered, presumably one of Jamie's two other roommates. Kristi explained that she was a friend of Jamie's and that they were there to help him move in. The guy at the door (Brian) didn't budge and simply said that he thought Jamie was done moving. While Kristi and Anna stood there in the doorway, pondering what to do next (because Brian didn't seem to want to let them in), another guy (Chris) emerged from the background where he had been tinkering around, arranging things, and introduced himself as a roommate of Jamie's and let us in.

Kristi and Anna were really too late to help move anything. They arranged a few CD's and went out for dinner with Jamie, Chris, and Tim (Jamie's friend who had actually helped him move.) At dinner at California Pizza Kitchen, Kristi and Chris ended up sitting across from each other. Kristi was explaining how excited she was from camp, because one student had expressed interest in going on an overseas mission trip the next summer. She and Kristi had tossed around the idea of going to China. Chris picked up on that discussion because he'd made a commitment to go on a summer mission trip by the year 2000, and he had always wanted to go to China.

Chris and Kristi became friends, and would occasionally do group things together. Those group things turned into just-the-two-of-them things, and they officially called it "dating" on March 30, 1999.

An ironic twist to the story is that, soon after they started dating, Kristi ended up going to Guatemala for the month of June, and Chris went to China for July through mid-August. Chris flew out the same day Kristi flew back, so they didn't see each other for 11 weeks that summer!