to commemorate the date.

Several weeks later, I asked her to join me at a local jeweler so we could look at engagement and wedding band sets. We looked at all kinds of rings that matched her description, and including the wedding bands it was almost $2000. I had the clerk behind the counter take our ring sizes and also give us the information for the rings that we had looked at. After that we went out to Wal-Mart to look at the rings that they had, and we realized that in the amount of time and money that we had, that we would have to settle on something that was far less expensive - GRIN.

Armed with the information that I needed to complete the ring, I went back to the jeweler that we had visited and placed an order to make the necessary changes to the engagement ring that God had provided to us. I asked him to change out the center stone for Alexandrite and change the ring size for her size. When I returned

a few days later, I spoke with the jeweler and asked him what the value of the ring was. He told me that he would appraise it at just shy of $1000. I was overjoyed because the final cost for her engagement ring and wedding band was less than $100. Now I had to find a way to give it to her

As part of our previous conversations about the wedding and our engagement, I told Katie that I was going to ask her father's permission to marry her and she told me that there would be some resistance, because I did not have a full time job. Now I did have a little bit of a problem. I had only a part time business where I built websites for a company, and while it did provide me with money to pay for my bills, it was never a guarantee that I would continuously have money. So I set out to peddle my skill set with computers to various computer companies in the area.

While I was dropping resumes off to several companies; I was driving past a pizza shop when