Many people have asked how the marriage to my wife has been so very happy from the beginning and lasted so long. The amazing testimony isn't related to how that happened, but rather when it happened. In the year that we met and got married, it was a time that we would have most unlikely been married at all.

This book has been on a journey of 20 years in the making. God created the true story. Today, it is shared with you.

Immediately following the tragedy of 9/11, the world changed. Our testimony comes from the ashes of that change.

We made a choice from the beginning. We don’t play marriage as a game that ends. We live in marriage in the way God intended. It’s so much better that way. It’s really the only way.

Normally cultural and language barriers would have separated us right from the beginning.

During the September 11, 2001, attacks, 2,977 people were killed, 19 hijackers committed murder-suicide, and more than 6,000 others were injured.

Of the 2,996 total deaths (including the terrorists), 2,763 were in the World Trade Center and the surrounding area, 189 were at the Pentagon, and 44 were in Pennsylvania.

We remember them today in a world that has forever changed on the early morning of September 11, 2001.

Our story is a result of their story: the story of 2,977 people.

Our story comes from the ashes of 9/11 brought forth by God as a testimony shared by his glory. It is a story of marriage: a lasting love.