When Cassandra was hired at Westminster Presbyterian Church for her mandatory field education
during Seminary, she got a lot more than course credit.

On her very first Wednesday with the youth group, she had a great conversation with a volunteer and
long-time member of the church in the breezeway right above where the students were playing
dodgeball. She knew she had found a friend when Ray casually quoted her favorite television show of all
time, The West Wing.

Their friendship grew over the summer, and when Ray left to work at the church’s partner mission in
Haiti that fall, they e-mailed frequently and got to know each other even better. That February when
Cassandra visited with a group from Westminster that she first started to think that this might be a
match for her; as they stayed up late almost every night of the trip, talking about C.S. Lewis, the Office,
and their lives under the phenomenal view of the stars from the roof of the mission. Ray was spoken for
at the time, so she tried not to let herself think too much about the attractive, funny, intelligent, and
sweet friend with whom she kept growing closer.

When he came back to the States he became an active member of Reknew, her young adult group and
they would enjoy Pirate games and Bible studies together. When Ray became single, they started
hanging out more frequently but still in a friendly capacity, and Cassandra thought there was no
possibility of him reciprocating her feelings. It was because of this thought that she eventually missed a
variety of signs. (Including, as she later told her mother, how he had a picture of the two of them as the
“wall-paper” of her phone, which her very tech-savvy mother thought meant he had plastered pictures
of them all over his bedroom as wall-paper which would have definitely skewed creepy instead of cute.)
Finally, she started putting the pieces together after an outing to Pirates game that Ray kept finding
excuses to elongate.

Once they realized this was potentially the real deal, Cassandra felt it was best to make sure her bosses
at the church were ok with her dating a congregant- albeit one who had also been an employee of the
church as a mission fellow in Haiti. When she went into Dr. Gilchrist’s office to ask “Is it okay if I start
dating Ray Van Cleve?”, Jim’s response was “Does Ray know?” Jason and Ed also gave their blessing,
and their insistence that they had definitely seen this coming.

It was three years later that Ray had Ed call Cassie into work a little early on a Tuesday so he could
“surprise her”, down on one knee with her favorite flowers (yellow roses with red trim which symbolize
friendship turned into love- pretty fitting, right?) and asked her to marry her. It wasn’t quite surprising
as the night before he had asked her approximately 6,000 times what time she would be getting to work
the next day, but it was still an immensely beautiful and thoughtful proposal that she ecstatically
accepted.

Which brings us to now- celebrating our commitment and love for one another in the church that was so
central to our relationship, with the people who have shaped us and supported us throughout the years.
Our three years of friendship, and now four years of being together have been a spectacular opportunity
for growth both together and individually (especially for Ray who gets to become both a husband and a
Phd in a matter of months!) and we could not be more excited to start this new adventure together as
man and wife.