- Hey everybody, Pastor Steven Anderson here
from Faith Forward Baptist Church in Phoenix, Arizona
with part seven of my life story.
In this video, I'm gonna tell the story
about dating and marrying my wife.
I've already done an elaborate write-up of this on my blog,
and I would recommend that you go read that
instead of watching this video,
because the book is always better than the movie,
and I put a lot of time and thought
into that written version,
so it's probably gonna be a better version
than what I present here, mainly from memory.
So you can just Google S. Anderson 1611 blog,
"My Wife, Zsuzsa Part One," and read the written version,
but I'm gonna go ahead and explain it here anyway,
'cause it's a great story, it bears repeating.
So after I got back from Germany the first time,
I went back to work at Round Table Pizza,
went back to another semester of community college.
This time I was able to jump from German one to German four,
'cause I'd been in Germany for the last three months,
kind of immersed, so I was able to test out of
German two and three.
I was still going to Regency Baptist,
I was super involved there, soul winning,
going to the services, et cetera.
And while I was in Germany the first time,
my mom had actually become a flight attendant.
So you know, I guess when you're gone for three months,
a lot can happen.
So my mom ended up becoming a flight attendant
for American Airlines.
So whereas the first time I flew to Germany,
it was 1,100 bucks for me to fly and coach.
The second time I went to Germany early next year,
it cost me 150 bucks to go in business class.
And so I thought to myself, wow, you know,
I'm gonna be able to take a lot of cool trips like this.
I can use my mom's flight benefit,
you know, the friends and family type discounts
of being immediate family.
And so I ended up taking a second trip to Germany,
but on that trip I did not even contact my wife whatsoever
because I was going to a different part of Germany.
She was in Munich, I was going to Koblenz,
and so I went there for like three and a half weeks.
I worked with Pastor Thomas Hastings and had a great trip,
but I did not call or contact my future wife at all
because, you know, it was a different part of the country
and so it wasn't really relevant.
But, you know, over the course of the 10 months
after that first Germany trip, you know,
she and I did exchange a few casual emails
and casual letters back and forth.
Nothing serious though, I had actually gotten
a bunch of email addresses and mailing addresses
when I was in Germany the first time.
So I had different pen pals going and she was one of them.
But in the course of communicating with her,
she started talking about how she really wanted
to go on a vacation to an English speaking country.
So I told her, I said, well, you know,
you should come to California because first of all,
America is the best country.
And second of all, if you're gonna come to America,
might as well make it California.
So I kind of advertised her all the cool stuff in California
and how if she came out, she could stay at my parents' house
in the guest bedroom and it'd be great.
We'll have a bunch of fun.
And I basically decided, 'cause I was saving up money
for a third trip to Germany.
But I was thinking to myself, you know,
if she comes out and visits me, then, you know,
I can speak German with her and practice.
And so I'll just take all that money
that I was gonna spend on going to Germany a third time
and just use it to do like a staycation in Sacramento
and show her all the sites locally.
Just spend all the money just, you know,
wining and dining her and just having a good time.
'Cause I was thinking, you know,
when you grow up somewhere,
you don't always do all the touristy stuff.
So I thought, you know, it'd be fun
to just take a few weeks off from work
and just do all the local stuff.
So, you know, I communicated this with her by email.
We didn't talk on the phone at all
because it was literally like a dollar
or $2 a minute or something.
This is before any kind of video chat
or FaceTime or anything like that.
So we communicated with some emails
and she ended up agreeing to come out on vacation.
I was like, cool, this will be great.
And I just told her that the only catch was
that if she came and visited,
she had to come with us to every church service
three times a week.
And then she could stay at my parents' house
and the guest room and whatever.
So she ended up agreeing to do it.
Well, here's the only problem is that
I had not told my parents this
or asked my parents permission before inviting her.
So I was like, oh man, how's this gonna work?
So what I did was I basically brought this up
to my mom as like a hypothetical.
I was like, man, wouldn't it be cool if,
instead of me going to Germany to practice the language,
what if one of my friends from Germany
would come out and visit here,
maybe even stay at the house?
And if I had someone visiting,
then I could practice German.
Or maybe if we took in some kind of a foreign exchange
student, that'd be kind of cool.
I'm just kind of like talking about this
with her hypothetically
while she was maybe distracted or something.
Then I had the same conversation with my dad,
also just really hypothetical.
And just, you know, and they're just kind of like,
yeah, okay, yeah, huh, yeah, sounds good or whatever.
And so then finally, after like a week of waiting,
then I just came out and said,
hey, you remember how, you know, we talked about,
you know, that girl coming out and visiting
and, you know, how I could practice German?
Well, she's, you know, she's gonna come on the 28th.
And they're like, what the heck are you talking about?
And I'm like, hey guys,
don't you remember we talked about this?
I mean, is there, I was like, is there a problem?
I mean, do you mind?
And they're like, oh, I mean, I guess it's fine.
Yeah, why not?
So that was kind of a relief because, you know,
I didn't really go about it the right way
as far as asking permission.
And so they ended up being fine with it.
They thought it was okay.
We had an extra room in the house anyway
that was like a guest room for her to stay in.
And I said, you know, she's gonna be going to church
with us and everything like that.
Well, here's the thing, like I barely knew this girl, okay?
Like I literally had talked to her in Germany in person,
probably 40 minutes and then maybe 10 minutes on the phone.
So I've literally talked to her for less than an hour,
face to face, 40 minutes.
We'd exchanged, like I said, a few letters,
a few physical letters, a few emails,
but nothing super serious.
But I was really excited about, you know,
her coming out and visiting and just having a lot of fun.
So once my mom was used to the idea of her coming out,
I sat down with my mom and we brainstormed,
like what would we do for these two weeks?
Like what are the fun places we would go?
So we came up with a list that included
Six Flags, Marine World, Old Sacramento,
River Rafting, Moaning Caverns,
Highway One and, you know, the Pacific Ocean,
going to the beach, San Francisco, Chinatown,
kayaking, Folsom Lake, Lake Comanche, Sunsplash.
There was also a Beach Boys concert while she was there.
So, you know, I bought tickets to the Beach Boys concert.
And so, you know, I just, all this stuff lined up,
just like wall-to-wall activities
of just all this really fun stuff to do.
One fun thing I wanted to do,
I wanted to take her on a tour of Folsom Prison,
but it wasn't going to work out
because she's a foreigner or something like that.
But anyway, so, you know, finally the day comes
that my wife is going to come visit.
Of course she's not my wife yet.
I, you know, barely knew her at this point.
But you know, this is before cell phones.
So, you know, virtually no one had a cell phone.
I certainly didn't have one.
And so I was so paranoid about being late to pick her up
or not being there or just, you know,
having something go wrong on the road
because I lived in Sacramento
and I was picking her up in San Francisco.
So I literally got there over eight hours
before her flight was gonna land.
So I waited at the airport for over eight hours.
So I literally ate like two complete meals
and read a book and I'm just there all day
'cause I was just really excited
and I was just really nervous about not being there
and she gets off a plane in a foreign country,
there's nobody there, there's no cell phones back then.
Back then when you said you were gonna be somewhere,
you just had to actually be there.
And so I got there super early
and then when she was getting off the plane,
I was literally holding up a sign with her name on it
because like I said, I had only met her a few times
and so I kinda knew what she looked like
but there were definitely some other girls
getting off the plane where I was like, is that her?
So I held up the sign and she looked totally different
than I remembered her because that's just the way,
when you don't have pictures of someone
and it's been 10 months since you've seen them
a couple times, you know, so I had this little sign,
she thought that was hilarious that I was like a limo driver
or something, holding up the sign.
So we get in the car, it took us four hours to get home,
even though it should be like an hour and a half,
two hour drive, because it was Friday night traffic.
So we're sitting in the car for four hours,
but that gave us a chance to talk and get to know each other.
I gave her the gospel again, you know,
I'd already presented it to her in person in Germany,
and then I, you know, written about it a little bit
in our communications,
but I presented the gospel to her again.
She didn't get saved.
We just talked, got to know each other.
And then as we're driving by Six Flags Marine World,
I just kind of casually said,
"Oh, that's where we're gonna be tomorrow."
And it's, you know, she was pretty impressed by that
'cause it's a pretty amazing roller coaster park,
and so she thought that was super cool.
So we get back to my parents' house on that Friday evening,
and they met her for the first time.
They had a really nice, friendly interaction.
It was kind of funny, though,
because she presented them with a bottle of wine,
and my parents didn't drink,
and so we kind of just had a good laugh about that.
But, you know, she just was kind of bringing
a standard type of a Germany gift, I guess.
So we get up the next morning,
and we go to Six Flags Marine World.
On the way there, we stopped at the Rite Aid in Vallejo
to pick up, like, some snacks for the day.
And I remember buying a bunch of sour candy.
At that point, I was on, like, a sour candy kick.
So I was buying, like, these sour straws or whatever.
And I can just distinctly remember
being in the candy aisle, picking out the candy,
and she and I got into an argument about spanking.
Like, 'cause she didn't believe in spanking children,
and I was telling her that spanking is right
and spanking is biblical.
And so it was just funny that we were already, like,
discussing child-brewing, and we barely knew each other.
We're definitely not dating or anything.
We're just, you know, a couple of friends
going out and enjoying the time.
So we had that conversation,
and she was just very liberal in all our ideas,
because keep in mind, she's from Europe,
and Germans, especially in the 1990s,
are just super liberal, feminist, humanist,
socialist, left-wing, you name it.
That's just the way that they think over there,
and especially back then, and were brought up and everything.
So obviously, she and I have very different views.
I'm very conservative, she's pretty liberal.
So anyway, we go to the theme park,
and we just had just an awesome time,
just a great day, so much fun.
We're riding the rides, we were just hitting it off,
we just got along super well from the beginning,
just great conversation, great times together.
And I didn't wanna keep badgering her with the gospel,
'cause I'd already given her the gospel
a couple times.
And so I didn't wanna keep badgering her with it.
So one of the things that I did was,
when we'd be in line waiting for the roller coasters,
I would give the gospel to someone else in line.
I would just strike up a conversation with strangers
and preach the gospel to them.
And obviously I wanted them to hear the gospel,
but what I was really hoping is that she would overhear
the conversation and that the seed would be watered
without me annoying her or badgering her with the gospel,
at least, you know, I just keep exposing her to it
by preaching it to other people.
So we had a really good time.
We watched all the animal shows and rode all the rides.
And then I remember on the drive home from that,
the subject of evolution came up,
'cause this was like a big thing for her was she thought,
oh, the Bible's not scientifically accurate,
so it can't be true.
Because her view was like agnostic.
She'd grown up Catholic, but at this point,
she'd rejected Catholicism,
but she didn't really know about evangelical Christianity.
She kind of just thought, well, if it's not Catholic,
then there's just nothing else out there,
so she was just kind of agnostic.
So I kind of preached to her on that drive home,
some things about how the Bible is scientifically right,
and a lot of things that the Bible gets right about science
that were discovered later.
And so I was just kind of preaching that to her,
and that kind of opened her eyes
how the Bible is accurate to science,
and that it's not something
that we should reject out of hand,
because it actually is ahead of the curve scientifically.
So that kind of helped remove that stumbling block
a little bit, I think, when we had that conversation.
So the next morning, Sunday morning,
it's her first time ever in a non-Catholic church.
And so we go to the Regency Baptist Church,
and she absolutely loved it,
because she said it was the first church service
she'd ever been in that wasn't boring.
It was really interesting.
They had like a skit that they did during the announcements
for the Vacation Bible School.
She thought that was hilarious,
and she liked that kind of casual atmosphere.
And then the hard preaching, she liked it.
That afternoon, we picked up some sandwiches from Togo's,
and we went to the river,
and just kind of hung out at the river,
swung on a rope swing, went swimming,
just kind of hung out by the riverside, lazy afternoon.
And then went back to church on that Sunday night.
Well, after the Sunday night service,
there was an invitation,
as they typically do in the old IFB.
And so she ends up, you know,
like raising her hand during the invitation
as being not 100% sure that she's going to heaven.
You know, she's being honest.
So she raises her hand,
and this lady from the church approaches her and, you know,
takes her up to the front in order to win her to Christ.
So this lady goes through the whole plan of salvation with her
and then wants to pray with her at the end.
And my wife said, "No, you know, I don't want to pray."
And she said, "Well, why not?"
And she said, "Well, I already know everything
that you told me because Steve has already, like,
explained this to me a few times.
I'm just not really sure if I believe it.
I just don't know if I'm ready.
So I just need to think about it more."
And so she ended up, you know, not getting saved.
But again, you know, it was just another exposure
to everything.
So then we ended up, after church,
we drove out to a place where we kind of look at the stars.
We looked at the stars.
We were not romantically involved at this point
because she's not saved.
And so, you know, I had it in my mind, like,
there's no way I'm even gonna, you know,
emotionally get involved with somebody who's not saved.
Like, I understood that, like,
if this girl doesn't get saved,
then any romance with this girl is just a non-starter.
You know, it's just, you know,
yeah, we can have fun, speak German, practice, go places.
But like, you know, I'm never going to date somebody
who's not saved.
We're never going to marry someone who's not saved.
So, you know, obviously though,
after spending a few days with her, you know,
I really liked her because before she came out,
I barely even knew her.
And I didn't really have some romantic scheme or plan
because it was just another girl, you know,
I had an open mind,
but I didn't know like this is the one or something.
But after spending the last few days with her,
I was really starting to, you know,
have those feelings toward her and really like her a lot.
So I was really sad that she didn't get saved.
And so that night, on that Sunday night, I went home
and you know, she went up to her room.
I'm downstairs in my room.
And I was just praying for her to get saved.
And I even cried, you know, I was like weeping
and praying for her to be saved
and just begging God to open her eyes
that she would be saved.
And little did I know that literally
as I was downstairs praying for her to be saved,
she was actually upstairs in her room
getting saved on her own.
So 'cause she'd heard it from me,
she'd come to the front at the service on Sunday night.
And even though she didn't pray then and there,
she thought about it more.
She went home, she thought about it in her room.
And then she ended up praying on her own.
And then the next day she told me
that she had prayed and got saved.
And so then, once I knew that she was saved,
then I could kind of like unshackle my feelings toward her
and really like get emotionally invested.
And so, right away on Monday,
I told her how I felt and we became romantically involved.
So, she got there on Friday evening
and she got saved on Sunday night.
Monday, we're romantically involved.
And then, you know, we just spent that whole week
just going and doing all the fun stuff
on that list that I had brought up.
And so, you know, we're going to, you know,
we're going rafting, we're going to the caverns,
we go to San Francisco, Chinatown,
all these different places.
And so, we were pretty much together like all day.
So, the only time we were apart was at night, you know,
just to go to bed at night
and be in our own separate situation.
But every waking hour, we spent together.
So, I mean, we spent a lot of time together.
'Cause, and it was wall-to-wall activities, too.
Like, we weren't just sitting around.
I mean, it was just like every day,
because I had saved up, I think,
like 1,100 bucks or something
that I was gonna use to go to Germany.
And then she had also, you know,
brought money for her trip.
And so, we had the money and I just sat in my head like,
I'm gonna spend all this money.
Like, we're just gonna have fun and just go places
and just do wall-to-wall activities.
So, we were just living it up and having a great time.
Super fun time the whole week.
So, Saturday rolls around, you know,
it's like what, five, six days later.
Saturday rolls around and we ended up going out
to Lake Comanche where my sister and her family
had parked their camper and they were like
doing a camping thing, so we're gonna join them for that.
And we're gonna stay with them in their RV.
And so, we went there and hung out with them
and did that whole, I think we went up Friday night
is what it was.
And then we spent the night on the campsite with them.
And then we ended up on Saturday,
just hanging out with them,
taking a fishing boat out on the lake,
just enjoying the outdoors and stuff like that.
So, this was when we actually had our first fight, okay?
And our first fight was actually
over the subject of the sodomites, okay?
Because somehow the subject of sodomites came up,
and I told her, well, the Bible says
that they should be executed, Leviticus 20, 13.
And this was just kind of shocking to her,
but she's coming from this really liberal upbringing,
and so she's never heard anything like this before,
and so it was just kind of a lot for her to digest.
So she got upset, we argued about it,
and she ended up getting upset and storming off,
like in the evening, late afternoon evening,
she storms off.
Well, the sun comes, you know, I just thought, okay,
you know, give her some space.
Well, the sun goes down and she's not back yet.
So then we're like, what in the world?
You know, do we need to go looking for her,
or is she coming back, or what's going on?
And so, you know, we're out with flashlights,
walking around the lake, trying to find her,
and we couldn't find her.
So then finally she ends up, you know,
coming back into the camp, and you know,
she calmed down and was fine.
And then at this point she spoke with like a really thick
British accent, because she had learned British,
her English was perfect.
She was a hundred percent fluent in English,
but she just spoke with a British accent.
Six months after we got married, her accent was gone.
But anyway, at this point,
she's using British language, British accent.
And so we're like, where were you?
We've been looking for you.
And she's like, oh, was that you with that torch?
You know, I guess they call the flashlight a torch.
So we all laughed about her calling it a torch, whatever.
So then, you know, we go to church again,
Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night,
more activities, more places.
We go all kinds of places.
Well, on the next Saturday, okay.
So this is after she's been there
for like two weeks and one day, okay.
You know, we've been, we were just totally in love
and we've just been together nonstop for two weeks straight
and we're just totally in love.
We were already talking about like getting married
and you know, what our life is gonna be like
and what we're gonna do and so forth.
And the timeframe kind of just kept getting close.
First it was like, oh, she's gonna finish her college degree
then we'll get married.
Then it was like, well, just finish the year.
Then it was like, well,
how about you just finish this last semester
and then once you're done with the semester,
six months from now, you know, then we can get married then.
But then finally on that Saturday, it just became like,
well, if we know we're gonna get married anyway,
we might as well just get married right now.
Now I know that this sounds crazy and it is kind of crazy,
but one thing that you have to understand is that,
you know, again, this is before Zoom and FaceTime
and video chats and the phone calls are like
one or two dollars a minute, okay?
And so a long distance relationship
would have been really hard because
there's no talking on the phone, there's no FaceTime,
way too expensive to do the phone calls.
And then I could easily fly to Germany
with my mom's flight benefit but the problem was
I don't have anywhere to stay when I get there
because if you remember,
I would stay with these different missionaries.
Well, the missionary that lived by her
ended up being this total ruckmanite,
heretic, false teacher,
like believed in wrong salvation and stuff.
And so, you know, I didn't want to stay with that guy again.
I couldn't stay with her
because she didn't live with her family, okay?
She was living by herself in a student apartment.
She was a university student.
She was 20 years old, sorry, 21 years old.
She was 21 and she was a university student
living in a university apartment.
She's not living with her family.
And so, you know, I couldn't stay with her
because that would be inappropriate.
Obviously we can't stay together, we're not married.
I'm not gonna go stay at her apartment
when we're not married.
That would be inappropriate.
And so like, we couldn't really come up with a solution
of like, how are we gonna continue this relationship?
Like, you know, me going there
is probably not gonna work out very well.
I already blew all my money over the last two weeks.
She blew all her money.
She's not gonna be able to fly back
and see me for a really long time.
So it was like, we weren't gonna see each other
for a super long time.
And so the thought was kind of like,
well, if we don't get married,
then we're barely gonna see each other.
We're not gonna see each other for a year or something,
or six months at best.
And then, it's just, I was just afraid that,
I was gonna lose her.
And so we just kind of felt like,
we should just act on this.
Like, we've hit it off.
We're in love.
We want the same things out of life.
Let's just do it.
So yeah, it was crazy,
but we just decided to just go for it.
And I didn't feel bad about like,
not asking her dad's permission or anything
because of the fact that she was coming
from a very broken home.
And so unfortunately her parents got divorced
when she was very young
and she ended up having like no relationship
with her dad growing up.
She was estranged from her dad.
Her mom kind of made sure
that she didn't really have a relationship with her dad.
And so she had only just recently
even like taken up contact with her dad.
And it was just starting to rebuild that relationship.
And he lived in a foreign country, Hungary.
She's in Germany, he's in Hungary.
And he was like just barely re-entering her life.
And then when it came to her mom,
her mom was married to another guy who was her stepdad
who was a literal reprobate.
So it's like, I don't have any respect for that guy.
So it was kind of a dysfunctional situation on that end.
And so we kind of just made this impulsive decision
to just, let's just go for it.
Let's just get married.
So we drive up on that Saturday night
and we're just gonna just drive up
and we're just gonna get married, you know?
And we get up there and we just assume
this is like a 24 hour thing.
But we get up there and it had just closed
20 minutes ago when we arrived.
So we arrive and the wedding chapel
had just closed 20 minutes ago.
So we're like, what the, you know?
So then we drove two hours back
'cause that was Sacramento to Reno, two hours.
So then we drive two hours back to Sacramento.
And the reason we were driving to Nevada