In 1986, when I was a sophomore at Stetson University, my parents and younger brother and sisters moved from our home in Orlando to become missionaries in Kenya. The Internet hadn’t been invented yet and the mail delivery system in Africa was infrequent and unreliable, to say the least. With calls costing $1 per minute, my older sister, Pat, and I didn’t have much communication with my family. I was living in DeLand, Florida, with my precious Grandma Weiss, and commuted almost an hour each way to go to a dynamic church in Orlando.

Separated by an ocean from most of my family, my pastor’s family “adopted” me. David and Caron Loveless have been vital mentors in my life and always made sure that I had a home during the holidays or whenever. Over the years, you can imagine the amount of teasing their family has received about their last name, Loveless. That name definitely doesn’t do their family justice. Love was and is a constant in their home. I learned volumes about true love by hearing David and Caron vulnerably share about their marriage mistakes and successes. And I always looked forward to baby-sitting their three boys, Josh, Jon and Joe, as they were growing up.

Early on in our friendship, I asked Caron how I could pray for her. She said, “LeAnn, please pray for my children. David and I are praying that our boys will grow up to be mighty men of God, and we’re praying for their future spouses too.”

That really impressed me, because Joseph, their youngest, was still in diapers, and Josh, their oldest son, was just in his early years of elementary school. So I joined with Caron and faithfully prayed for their boys and their future spouses.

In 1999, after years of praying, I was so excited when Caron told me after a dinner at Disney World with our publisher that Josh was about to get engaged to Rebecca Lujan. Rebecca has a smile that radiates God’s love, and compassionate brown eyes. She’s beautiful inside and out. Rebecca had started working with Josh at our church’s youth ministry in 1997, with a small group of just eight teens. She’s known for passionately serving others.

October 15, 1999, was a thrilling time of seeing the culmination of our prayers as Josh and Rebecca were married. During the ceremony, Caron, a gifted author, read a special piece she had written for them. We shared tears of joy as we celebrated their union.

Shortly after their marriage, their youth ministry exploded to number several hundred young people. Seeing changed lives and rapid growth thrilled them as a couple. Rebecca could have been selfish and focused on her needs as a newlywed and the time she didn’t have alone with Josh. Instead she focused on her husband’s needs. She worried that Josh was on a course to exhaustion and burnout. He didn’t have time to do the things that refreshed him anymore. While he enjoyed what he did, his schedule was constantly overbooked.