When you have an awkward first phone conversation with a love interest, many of us believe it is a sign that the relationship is doomed. Add a language barrier and long distance to the mix, and there’s pretty much a zero percent chance there will be a wedding in your future—unless your Christopher and Maru.
Christopher, from New Orleans, had always felt drawn to Mexican culture. Not surprisingly he enjoyed Mexican cuisine, but his attraction was also a spiritual one because of his great love and devotion for Our Lady of Guadalupe. Consequently, he decided that he would do a search on CatholicMatch for women living in Mexico. He contacted Maru in July of 2013.
They started messaging back and forth. Maru read some English but didn't speak it proficiently. Christopher had a very limited grasp of the Spanish language.
First Phone Call
“That first call I felt like an idiot. There was barely any communication and a whole lot of embarrassment!” Christopher, 37, recalls.
He didn’t give up though, and two days later he called Maru again. “The tenseness lessened, but I cannot get myself to say that it was relaxed.”
Christopher found that the online conversations went much better because they could utilize Google Translate.
Too Good to Be True?
When Maru received the first email from Christopher, something in his words struck her deeply, but she wondered if he was too good to be true. She felt cautious, and she didn’t quite trust what Christopher had written. “I told myself that anyone can enter places like this and say what you want to hear. It may be all lies and deceit. Even when it is not the intention of the other person, one can interpret things differently than they actually are,” the 34-year-old says.
Maru wasn’t even sure she wanted to be involved in online dating, but she told herself:“If I don’t do things differently than I always do, then how am I to get different results?”
When Christopher asked her for her phone number after having corresponded quite a bit, she was hesitant to provide the information. Being on an online dating site and giving her phone number and address out was breaking paradigms for Maru.
Christopher pursued Maru by writing letters regularly and by sending her flowers. “I started to value him more because he made the decision of doing something and did it. The other men with whom I talked to online were slow, boring, and not bold—what laziness!” Maru says.
Things were going well, so in January 2014, Christopher flew into Ciudad de Mexico and checked into a hostel.
Visit to Mexico
In the morning, Maru came to pick him up, so that they could go to The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. “We hit it off at the get-go. But I have to say, when I first got in the car with her, I thought she was going to kill me! The drivers in Mexico City are very similar to the drivers in Rome! If you have never been to either place, I tell ya what! It is scary stuff!” he exclaims. “Well, after that first day, she let me drive whenever we went anywhere, and, to my great surprise, driving like a maniac is actually very intuitive.”
They spent the next couple of weeks together visiting stunningly beautiful churches and intense historical locations. Christopher was able to meet Maru’s family, and he found that he liked them a lot.
Love Replacing Caution
Being with Christopher in person allowed Maru to see that he was everything he seemed to be in his letters. “Within days of his arrival, it was clear that he was indeed the person I was
looking for.”
Maru no longer felt cautious, and she let go and began to let herself fall in love with Christopher.
Christopher was able to confirm that they shared the same values and had the same vision for marriage and family life.
Meeting Up in Washington State
In June, they decided to meet in Washington State. Christopher has family that lives nearby, and since both he and Maru are avid hikers, this was a good place for them to meet up. It was during a hike to Indian Point that he asked her to marry him.
“I proposed to my love Maru overlooking the Columbia River for miles on either side, in view of Mount Saint Helens and Mount Adams.”
Maru says, “It was the happiest day of the three-week trip, and thanks to his brother we got pictures of the moment.”
Wedding & Honeymoon
The couple was married on April 25, 2015, in the Cathedral of Corpus Christi in Tlalnepantla, Estado de Mexico. “It was a beautiful wedding in the Tridentine Rite. We had some angelic
voices singing polyphonic Gregorian Chant. My priest, Fr. Van Constant, of Blessed Sacrament Chapel in Gibson, Louisiana flew down to perform the wedding and say the Mass.”
Christopher's small circle of guests were particularly impressed by the fiesta following the wedding. Maru’s father had surprised the couple with a full mariachi band.
The couple spent their honeymoon just outside of Cancun snorkeling, visiting Mayan ruins, and on the beach! They are now living in south Louisiana.
