Dear Family and Friends,
We hope you and your family had a wonderful 2025! This year has been a year full of joy and blessings! It started off with us living our individual lives, working hard towards finishing the tasks God had led us to complete; for Alan, finishing up his final semester of his master's program at SMU in Texas and for Melissa, taking her last CPA exam in January and working on her MBA in California.
What happened next was quite unexpected and undoubtedly a miracle. In March, we met online and very quickly we recognized that it was special. Alan flew out to California for a weekend in April and in May Melissa flew out to meet the Lemerande family for Alan's graduation. We spent lots of time together going on fun adventures and spending time with each other's families in Missouri and California throughout the summer.
Alan received an offer to teach at Miami Dade College, and our plans came together for a trip to Florida for our parents to meet. After many prayers and discussions, it became very clear that the next step God had for us was to begin our lifelong adventure together. On August 12th, 2025, in Key West, Florida, with the blessing of both of our parents, Alan proposed and by the afternoon we were married!
The story that God wrote for us surpassed what we could have imagined for ourselves. Since then, our marriage has been sweet living in Miami, Thanksgiving with both the Lemerande and Estrada family, and now we are back in Missouri before our next journey to Europe! We look forward to all that God has in store for 2026!
We pray that God blesses you and your family with an abundance of joy and peace.
With love,
"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."
Romans 15:13
