The Story of How We Met & Married

Married one year! 2008

In the fall of 2000, a small Colorado church hosted a week-long Bible School for youth. My sister and I were told about it and attended, getting placed for the week in the home of the Gerald Nolt family, people we had never heard of before. There were 15 other girls there as well and the Nolts had given the 17 of us full reign of their basement. I don’t remember seeing John that week, except when they gathered to take a family picture on the last day of our stay.

But his brother noticed my sister and the following summer they were married. John and I were Best Man and Maid of Honor at their wedding. I saw the Nolts occasionally after that when we would visit my sister at her new home in the West. And, once, our families went camping together in the mountains of Colorado.

In those days I thought John was a really nice guy but didn’t necessarily think of him as someone I’d marry. But my parents did. Sometimes Dad would lean back in his office chair and grin at me across the room where I worked as the secretary for his auto repair shop. “I think,” he’d say with a twinkle, “that I’ll call John Nolt up and see what he is planning to do with his life.” Fortunately he spoke in jest, as I would have been mortified if he had carried out his threat.

What I didn’t know was that John’s parents really liked me, too, and would tell John, “When you look for a wife, look for a girl like Sara.” (If those were the days of arranged marriages, our parents would have had us tie the knot sooner than we did.)

Well, John went to Ghana for six months, came home and worked on getting his pilot’s license, and eventually ended up teaching school in downtown Reading, PA, a school for both Mennonite and city children. While he was there, he lived with two other guys and easily adopted their goal of living within their earnings. Their positions weren’t volunteer ones, but nobody was going to get rich, either, on the wages the school was able to pay. So they saved cash by doing things like keeping their house at 40 degrees Fahrenheit. (“Worked well,” he says casually. “You never had to put the milk away after breakfast.”) Simple living, giving, kingdom living, a life of service. . .these values were being impressed deeply in his heart.

Meanwhile, I moved to Ghana, too. But shortly before I left, there was a significant event that influenced our future. I was back in Colorado for a wedding. Afterwards, a group of youth were invited to the Nolts' house for the evening. When the party was over, one of the girls needed a ride home almost 45 minutes away. John was elected to take her and his sister was going along. They invited me to come, too. So I did. We talked the entire drive as a foursome, about missions, places we’d like to serve, etc. On the return trip, the conversation continued and the ride was over long before I was ready for it to end. I had seen another side of John and was favorably impressed. And so, he says, was he.

My sister, perceptive woman that she is, read between lines I never verbalized and said simply, “Your eyes have been opened.”

“What do you mean?” I protested lamely. “I didn’t say anything.”

“I know. But I can tell that you see John differently than you did. Am I right?”

She was. But I had no time to think about that, for I was going to Africa for a year. I taught English in a small village that had no electricity or plumbing. I was focused on my work and thought little, if anything, of John. 

With schoolchildren in 2006

Pounding dried fish

Winnowing beans

Rich, deep things were happening to me. I was learning the values of a life of simplicity, of giving, of kingdom living, and of a life of service. My life was deeply enriched through the examples of the missionaries I was privileged to be with.

Halfway through my year, I was asked if I would take on a second term. I didn’t know what to say. My decision flip-flopped for weeks. I asked my parents, hoping they’d have a strong preference one way or another, but they didn’t. They only told me they’d support my decision, whatever I sensed God asking me to do. Disappointed then that they didn't make my decision for me, I realize now that their answer was a God-directed one. He wanted to speak to me Himself and wanted me to have the joy of knowing I had heard His voice.

I set a day aside to fast and pray. They were waiting on my answer. I needed to act. But that day, every time I stepped into my room to pray, I felt God saying to me, “Just wait. I’m going to answer.” I responded to Him saying, “Okay, Lord.” And walked back out of my room. I didn’t really pray much that day, not like I expected to, anyway.

And that evening there was a two-lined note waiting on me when we checked g-mail with a Satellite phone. “There has been a new development,” my mother wrote. “Call Dad before you make any decision.”

A new development? Courtship crossed my mind, but I didn't dwell on the idea. I was in Africa after all. They probably needed me full-time in the office or something boring like that. The evening was a long one for me, but finally I knew Dad would be home from work and I could call. Phone calls from the village were tricky business because the reception was very poor. There were only a couple places where we got any signal at all. I chose the spot by the thatch-roofed sitting place and made the call.

Dad usually beats around the bush until you are almost frantic for the information, but this time he came right to the point: “John Nolt is asking for permission to begin a courtship with you.  What do you think?”

“Are you serious?”

“As serious as a heart attack.”

I don’t remember anything else from our short phone call. I’m sure I promised to think and pray about it, which I did all night because I was much too excited to sleep. Not only was John interested in me, God had answered my prayers and given me direction as clearly as if His own voice had thundered from the heavens. I knew that whether or not things worked out with John, I had my answer: I was would not take a second term. 

John didn't know I was fasting for an answer on that day. He only knew he had been asking God if he should pursue a courtship with me and had been very surprised when, during a random phone call, John’s dad ended the conversation with, “Whenever you want me to call Sara’s dad to see if she’s available, let me know.”

Surprised into silence, John only said, "Okay, thanks.” 

Two weeks later, 

     John called his dad, 

          who called my dad, 

               who sent me an email, 

                      which I received on the evening of my fast, 

                              a fast my family wasn't aware of. 

Believing we had God’s approval, we started to write weekly emails in March 2006. And once a month, when I would get to a city with reliable cell phone reception, we would get in some phone calls that, sadly, weren’t as satisfying as you might expect. Reliable cell phone coverage only meant I didn’t have to climb a tree to catch a signal, a trick that worked in the village. It did not mean we would be able to hear each other very well. We battled with static in the lines, abruptly ended calls, and many, many opportunities to say, “Can you repeat that?” “I didn’t catch that.” “Are you still there?” “Can you hear me?”

Five months later in August, my term in Ghana ended and John was waiting for me at the airport. It was so incredibly good to see each other in person! I had collected a small army of pictures of John over the past few months that I would spread out in front of me when I wrote him letters. But they were a poor substitute for being together. There is something unbeatable about watching someone’s face when they talk or laugh. Or of sitting quietly together and soaking in the moments. Or sharing little love-looks that can’t happen across static-y phone calls.

Roughly three weeks after my return, we were engaged on September 11, 2006. John went with my family on a camping trip that weekend. I can’t believe how unsuspecting and clueless I was, but I never guessed that he had a question burning a hole in his pocket the whole weekend. On the last evening we were together, the family suggested they all go to bed to give John and me a few minutes alone since I lived in Indiana and he in Pennsylvania and it would be a while until we were together again.

It was the moment he needed. 

     We took a walk down to the lake 

          where the moonlight was reflecting on the water

                  and sat on a park bench, 

                          quietly soaking in the last few moments we were together.

Or so I thought. 

    But he was nervous. 

        He smiled into my eyes. 

              He told me he loved me. 

                   Then he dropped on one knee. 

                          And proposed.

My breath caught, of course, and my heart did a double-back-flip and I answered, “I would be honored.”

The next morning when the sun barely opened its eyes, I crept over to my parents, shiny-eyed, and said, "She said 'yes'!" 

Almost three months later, on December 2, 2006, we were married in a blue and silver-themed winter wedding.

We love our story. We love how God impressed similar values and lessons into each of our hearts in the days leading up to our courtship, how God made that email land in my inbox on the day I was fasting for answers, and even how purity was so ingrained in us that physical touch, though we looked forward to it a lot, wasn’t something we were tempted with during our courtship. We had what we call a ‘hands-off courtship’, in which we saved physical touch of any kind until we were married. That looks different to different couples, but to us it meant that we didn’t even kiss or hold hands until our vows were said. (And, no, there were no emotional stresses or hindrances on our honeymoon because of it. Just pure happiness that we were finally married!)

I thought I was in love when I married him, but living with John has caused me to admire and love him more as the years go by. 

Today is our tenth wedding anniversary. John is a real gift, one I still don’t feel worthy of. I know. Twenty years from now I’ll probably laugh at the self I am today, saying I knew nothing about love in 2016.  

July 2016