Once upon a time in April 2006, there was a wonderful young woman, named Erica, who unsuspectedly noticed a guy wearing a green track jacket at a hotel breakfast during a BSU convention in Winston Salem. Thinking nothing of it, she went about her daily business getting breakfast before the second day of the convention. During that day of the convention there was to be a missions commissioning service for anyone going on a summer mission trip. Here, both found common ground… Ecuador. Derek had been one of the people who stood up to tell where he would be going that summer. He was going to Ecuador for his first mission trip out of the country. After the service ended, Erica and a couple of her friends came up to Derek to talk about Ecuador. You see, Erica had previously been to Ecuador for a summer, and was going back for the upcoming summer. After briefly meeting and exchanging Facebook/email information, they went about their days, not thinking about ever seeing each other again.
Fast-forward to July. Erica is now in Ecuador and Derek is preparing for his trip. He messages Erica to see if he would be able to sign up for her mailing list and maybe see where she was going to be while they were both in Ecuador. They were unable to see each other there, but one day when Derek’s team had split up for a free day, some of Derek’s friends actually saw Erica. After having a blast in Ecuador, Derek returned home. Erica was there for the whole summer, so she had a few weeks left.
Once Erica was back in August, Derek wanted to hang out and talk about Ecuador because he really enjoyed it and wanted to share pictures and stories from the trip with Erica. Erica hesitated, but one day Derek was able to visit Campbell University with some friends for a concert that Erica happened to be going to also. So after talking, they decided to meet each other at the show. There… a friendship was born. They began hanging out on the weekends, since Erica was actually from Cary, and Derek would visit Campbell every once and a while.
Hanging out, visiting the zoo, ice skating and many other fun times led to October 21st, 2006… the day Derek asked Erica to be his girlfriend.
They were married on March 7, 2009. They are very excited about being married and how they are being used by God together.