I don’t have a lot of time, but want to place just one more story about a blessing up on the site. i feel like it really needs it right now with all this other stuff going on.
I'm not even going to proof read this yet. just going to post it here as I wrote it. A new version should be out in a few days, minus this paragraph.
This is definitely one of the key factors in why I will believe in God for the rest of my life. It’s just impossible otherwise.
Here’s the super short version, and I’ll flesh it out with details later.
My wife Joisy, I found her on Instagram in January of 2021. Covid was wreaking havoc, so I had started to try some dating online. Initially I met this other Einstein of a girl from Colombia. Full scholarships to university, and she could talk around me in the bible. I was so impressed.
I started learning Spanish, and decided I’d pay Colombia a visit. But then, my little candle flame of a relationship went sideways when we had a crisis in faith. She went to a Seventh day Adventist church in her town, and returned saying that she could never become a Seventh day Adventist. I don’t know what happened at the church that day, but she was certain. I had a burden that I needed to not pair up with someone who wasn’t in the same faith, so I told her that we needed to break up.
Now Colombia was in my heart! I had to go. The hope of finding a woman so beautiful as one from Colombia had sparked my interest. So, I started searching #adventistascolombia on Instagram. After a few sessions of searching and saying hello to several people, I found this young woman who had made several videos for her church.
I had no idea what she was saying, but she spoke with such authority and confidence that I knew she really knew what she was talking about. for her it wasn’t an act. I just kept looking at her, watching the video again, and I was in awe. Then I went and looked at her profile. She was so simply beautiful. I every time I looked at a new photo it was like I could feel myself pulled out towards her.
And somehow, right then and there, [I’ve never done something like this before] I got down on my knees in front of my computer, and I prayed to God. I said, “God, this woman here, I see the way she works for you. She’s doing the same thing I’m trying to do. She seems perfect to me. I don’t know why I feel like this, but I just want to say to you that perhaps, if I could marry that woman right there, if you know it would be good for me, I would want to do it. And I don’t even care what you have to put me through, you have my permission if it was right for me, you can drag me through anything and I won’t care. And if not her, then someone just like her, because that’s IT right there.”
Looking back, I probably shouldn’t have tried to promise that I wouldn’t be upset with him, because I would cause an emotional scar or two, and receive a few of my own before it was all done.
I don’t want this story to go sideways, so I’m going to tell how the story goes before explaining the whole thing, otherwise it will seem like the buildup is going to fizzle at the last moment.
Essentially,
I message her, and she has a boyfriend
I find another woman that makes me laugh so much, so I go to Colombia to meet her. And we even fell in love enough that we were saying we should get married.
I asked that woman to marry me even though when i arrived in Colombia I knew it wasn’t right from the first day. I just kept telling myself I’m stupid if I think that I can’t work passed this –She was a good woman after all.
Eventually my heart hurt so much that I prayed to God in a taxi while sitting next to her. My heart hurt so big it felt like it filled the entire street. I asked God to show me what to do.
While I was praying I had a fear that perhaps I would doubt if I actually knew God had influenced me, so I asked for something specific. “Please show me in a dream, and then wake me up. I want to be so awake and coherent that I know it is impossible that I was just sleeping –and then I’ll know that was from you”
I put the matter behind me, hoping that like Daniel, someday in the future I’d get my answer. That very night, the very night I prayed, I had a dream!
In that dream God showed me what he wanted, and he showed me what was going to happen, but the dream was so coded that I didn’t understand that he also showed me what was going to happen. –I’ll explain in full detail later
And then I woke up, 100% coherent like I had just been doing something else like working or something. I was shocked! The same day! This is insane!
I called my mother and told her all the details of the dream the next day. She told me that they must all be symbolic if the dream was really from God (and she was right, as we’ll come to find out). I also explained this dream to many people, in Colombia and at home. I was continually looking for meaning in it.
I also broke up with my fiancée that same week. I needed a few days to sort things out first.
I ended up going to Medellin and spent almost a year in South America. My first weekend in Medellin I met this really pretty Adventist girl named Sara while I was on a mountaintop. I wondered, if maybe it was her. She wasn’t into me.
A few months later tried to visit my now wife Joisy when I was in her city, she was single now, but she told me no to a quick coffee. Joisy tells me it’s because she couldn’t afford to pay for her own coffee and didn’t want to seem like that kind of girl if I for some reason wasn’t expecting to pay.😄
I went to Peru to chase another potential partner, she was a liar,
I went back to Medellin and tried to help every emergency my crush there had, until it was thousands of dollars and I started to wake up to the scam
In April 2022 went back to Canada, moved to Toronto and started working for IBM. My crush there made me feel awkward several times, so I gave up on that.. Maybe it was because I had made other friends who were girls. I don’t know, but, heck this was a hell trying to be selective and successful at the same time.
I kept thinking about that dream though. The dream was in Colombia, in the Andes mountains. The woman had to be from Colombia.
I kept hunting on Facebook, and flew to Colombia several times, mostly with the excuse of dental work, but also to use my time wisely. I went to Bogota to see a girl in the fall of 2022. She seemed to have a lot of connections to the dream I had, and had come to meet me in 2021 after a pastor told the conference we were at that I was single. It wasn’t it, my heart wasn’t in it.
Then again I flew to Colombia in December to meet a new crush. Wow, I thought she was too beautiful. I think this time it was her that didn’t like me, but quite possibly there was another reason. They were from a really dangerous part of town and she was super cautious due to her mothers concern. I cancelled our last meetup based on the vibes.
I remember talking to my mom while getting ready to fly home and preach on New Years Eve 2022. She was trying to make me promise to never try with another Colombian again. I thought about it hard while we were on the phone, and said, “well but there’s Joisy, I’d always say yes to Joisy.”
I text Joisy when I got home, we hadn’t spoken in a while. We used to text back and forth daily for weeks, maybe even a month at a time. I explained to Joisy that I had a dentist appointment in Colombia scheduled in two months (I did, and it’s cheaper to fly there and get the work done, then it is to have a root canal or crown done without insurance in Canada.)
Joisy said I could come and meet her! Oh my goodness what news.
Joisy and I spoke every day again for more than a month, until… Well, there had been this other girl I was speaking to over the summer…
This girl said hi to me again after I commented on a photo in Facebook. We chatted via Messenger for a bit and then she asked, “so do you have a girlfriend yet?”.
“no”, I said jokingly “I’ve been waiting for you all this time’, trying to be flirt.
She said, “oh, I would really like that”.. and now I was in trouble. She was really cute too, but that was besides the point. I felt really bad now, Colombian girls aren’t usually like that. I felt bad because that meant she really liked me if she wasn’t going to at least play more games and make it easy for me to backup.
Eventually I reasoned that maybe Joisy was going to be a dud, I mean, she had been telling me No to me visiting her city for well over two years! My mother was really serious about never going to Colombia again, so this would be my last chance if I was going to try to listen to her wisdom.
I ended up telling Joisy that I really liked her and hoped that when we met we hit it off and that then maybe I could officially dream about more with her.
“No.” she said, “I’m sorry but I can only be your friend”..
–Let’s be fair. This was actually what one would expect of a typical Christian Colombian girl. Typically they need to be the boss and tell you, otherwise, they’ll stiff arm you even it its just to save face and still be the boss 😂
So, there it was.. Joisy, was going to be the same she had always been. I actually felt really disappointed. I went and told the other girl that I’d come and visit her and that I was willing to try.
When I told Joisy I was going somewhere else, she was not happy with me. I felt kind of nauseous, maybe even wondered a bit about her games –if I was stupid–, but I was over games at this point. I wanted solid ground for my feet.
Before my flight to Colombia, a missionary friend came over to my house, and we were talking about my dream I had in Bogota when God answered my prayer. In my dream I had been standing on top of mount Montserrat, and I had pointed at a woman when I saw her and I had said “I want her” and I woke up immediately.
I had known that wasn’t my fiancée in the dream, and that was my answer. As we’re about to find out, everything about this dream pointed to Joisy, because, if you remember, I had gotten down on my knees and asked God to let me marry Joisy if it was going to be a good thing. It was kind of an insane thing to do when I think about it, but she was also working in ministry and I was so taken back by everything about her. Just like the dream, I had already pointed at someone and said “I want her”, but for some reason that never came to mind.
I asked my missionary friend if flying over the exact point where I had been in the dream, when I to go see this new girl was potentially a sign that this was the one. We pondered it, got out Google Earth and drew a line from one airport to another. it missed the spot where I had been standing on the pathway on top of Montserrat in my dream by about 200 meters/yards. My friend reasoned that was much too far. it would have to be within a stones throw of the location, otherwise, there was no sign.
We tried by drawing a line from the airport I was leaving Bogota from to her house. Again, it missed the spot by about 200 meters/yards on the opposite side. We also drew lines from the apartment i had the dream in, but it wasn’t any closer. Okay, so we knew this wasn’t a clue into who the girl from my dream was. It was interesting though. I mean we were really chasing this dream thing!
I had actually really been chasing it for a long time. in the dream, when it started i was super tall, like tall enough form my head to touch the sparsely placed clouds. It was dark in the dream, full moon, stars, just one or two clouds. I could see Bogota below me. I was like a giant.
But then I shrunk down to a normal person size, and I was now on the ridge of a mountain above Bogota, Montserrat specifically. There is an old Catholic monastery there in real life. The monetary was not there in my dream, but a cobble stone pathway was, much like in real life.
That’s where i had seen the woman, hair to her middle back, and I had pointed directly at her and said, “I want her’.. That was it.
My mother had told me maybe the mountain meant something symbolically. If it was from God, then the imagery should have clues in it. Symbolically, mountains and governments are a thing. And this particular mountain had a church on top of it. For 1.5 years I had kept saying that if there’s something to the dream, then this woman in the dream must work for God somehow.
The crush in Medellin who had eventually asked for thousands of dollars was a Pathfinder leader – sometimes they even paid for some of her work. I had figured maybe that meant something. I mean, she grew up at the very base of the same mountains below Bogota. I used this notion to convince myself it was safe to keep giving her money. The dream really meant something to me.
So anyway, I get to Bogota and we leave on the jet to go to the deep interior of Colombia where people get taken hostage and the ex FARC rebels are all from. This is where this other girl lived –super rural. As we are in the jet we fly directly over Montserrat. It was the weirdest Deja Vu because I was looking down at the mountain, and it was as if i was in the same exact spot from the dream I’d had! Same exact height, just about at the clouds, some were even passing below us since it was a steamier day.
As I looked down I could see the pathway, and suddenly I had an idea. Just the night before we had been drawing lines. Now I’m on the plane and have little to do for the next 50 minutes. Why don’t I see where the line goes when you point up the pathway the way I did in the dream.
I grabbed my phone and opened Google Earth, an app where you can actually draw lines. I drew a line up the path, and kept following it. The was nothing for hundreds of kilometers. Eventually though, it landed in the city of Maracaibo Venezuela.
I pondered for a minute. who was from Venezuela? .. Joisy, she said she was born in Venezuela. I still had signal in the plane! So I send Joisy a message.
“From where in Venezuela did you come” I asked.
She text right back, “Maracaibo”
A chill went down my spine. But, wait, Okay so if 200 meters is too far, then there’s no way this one is going to work! I inspect Maracaibo and then ask, “From what neighborhood?”.
“I’m from San Francisco”, Joisy responded.
Sure enough, the line hit San Francisco, but it’s a wide area. I had a mixture of feelings. Scared that maybe God knew all along and I was jus sitting here being stupid, but also that I can’t think like this because i already told this other girl I would try. I needed to be a man of my word, and if I took this further i was going to be unfaithful to what I said I would do.
After that day, I spent a month in Colombia. I stayed at the girls grandmothers house. I had a good time, but somehow I was just sad inside. The girl asked me many times what was wrong. I couldn’t shake it.
On my way home, I told my mom something was wrong.
“It’s me this time, just like the first time I went to Colombia.” I said.
My mother asked me to stop chasing it and potentially move to the United States. I told her I’d try, but I also said, to be honest, my heart is in love with Joisy, and I know it. I just need to be single because of that.
It wasn’t ready to try to do something new after we had spoken throughout the day from New years eve through to February.
I broke up with the girl in Colombia as soon as I got home, and by the next Sunday i told Joisy about it.
The weirdest thing happened that day. Wow, just thinking about it, while writing this, –for the first time– I almost feel like I have tears welling up, mainly because I’m just so thankful about what happened next.
That very same day and every day thereafter, Joisy kept talking to me, not even a few hours would go by without a new text, and that continued every day from the beginning of April through until June 18 when I flew to Colombia again to finally meet her. I suppose after that, the rest is history.
Except, i didn’t tell you about the dream and how it all ends. Joisy didn’t know the exact location of the building she had lived in, so i asked her father after Joisy and I decided to be a couple officially –you know, after she shot me down when I tried to kiss her the first time–..
Granted there is a fair amount of play when pointing up a pathway to something just over 700 kilometers away, but not enough to select anywhere in San Francisco, Maracaibo, Venezuela. It’s because this neighborhood is very thin and stretches from one side of the city to the other. it is very strange.
But you can draw a line, from the point in my dream, to the very house the lived in some 711 kilometers away.. It blew my mind. And after all this time, there was my new girlfriend, who was a secretary for the Seventh-day Adventist church.
This woman from the dream, the one I said likely worked for the church if the dream was from God, was Joisy, and even the direction I pointed in leads to Joisy.
I’ve double checked the mountaintop paths from the point where my dream had happened, just to be sure wasn’t just making assumptions in the plane that day. The path certainly is very wide from that location, and I had chosen the most path worthy direction in the plane. The way the path trends from the point of my dream.
Now, if I point along the other side of the pathway, then I recently found that I could point directly to Joisy’s house in Colombia. Hey, it still works! I hadn’t considered it in the plane, but in the dream the woman was closer to the west ledge of the pathway. So, it still worked! 🤷♂️
I don’t know what else to say besides God for some reason showed me what he was going to do. i didn’t understand. i didn’t remember that i had already asked God for someone. id didn’t even remember that part Intil I arrived in Colombia to see her. it all started to make sense.
I spent 1.5 months in Colombia, got to know her family, and then returned in another 1.5 months after leaving. I asked Joisy to marry me, she said yes, and we were married within another 4 months.
I can’t imagine that I could have a better person for me, and usually, I think she feels the same way. I say that mischievously.
This will remain yet another reason that I believe in God, because, in the strangest way, he has shown me what was to come. Or at least what he wanted for me –and in such detail that I can not deny it.
He knew I’d chase the dream and figure it out. Prophecy is kind of the same. We chase it, we learn while chasing it, especially in searching for symbology. it’s a beautiful thing the way God works, and ultimately, for those who have faith, prophecy is one of the tools we have to see that God is really working.
I’m sure that will lead into my next article in this Why I Believe in God series, since –>
Next In This Series:
The oldest copies of Daniel chapter 9 that exist in the world today are from around 160-165 BC, and Daniel chapter 9 contains a prophecy about when the Chirst would arrive, that he would come and die for our sins, put away a reason for sacrifice, and that he would be the Messiah. It gave the year he would start his ministry.
The wise men who arrived at his birth must have used this prophecy and other scriptures to know when the Christ would be born in Bethlehem. And certainly the men who kept the dead sea scrolls were also looking for his arrival, as there are non canonical scrolls that were found with the dead sea scrolls that talk about the messiah coming “Just as Daniel the prophet wrote” in his book. They knew Daniel knew, and they were expecting it to happen. They even link the Messiah and Melchizedek. it’s really cool!
Physical copies of these prophecies are more than 190 years older than the ministry of Christ. That I do believe is amazing.
Some people might say, well someone faked the life of Christ because they knew the date, but that makes no sense in light of Christian experience and miracles that happen within it worldwide.
I’m the kind of person who would feel foolish saying that, but I also have been witness to them happening. I will say no more.
May the Lord continue to bestow upon his people a good testimony.
