We are the BYU story. If you’ve ever been a student at BYU, you know what we mean. We met in January 1997 at a CES fireside in the Marriott Center. Melanie was a new student that semester, and her roommate was introducing her to some friends in the ward, which included the FHE brothers who were sitting behind them. Sjon had joined the military over the Christmas break, and Melanie offered to shave his head when he went to boot camp. Naturally he couldn’t resist.
A week later we went on our first date – movie night at Sjon’s roommate’s Grandma’s house – a date we can never really truly recreate. Being together was so wonderful, so easy, so right that our entire courtship progressed along naturally until we were engaged on August 2nd at Arches National Park and married December 20th in the Mesa Arizona Temple. That’s when everything got hard.
You always hear that marriage is a lot of work, but it took us a long time to even figure out what that work was. We struggled with communication, finances, schooling, parenting, church service, and every other aspect of marriage. We hurt each other’s feelings, disappointed each other, and even broke each other’s hearts. But through it all we were committed to staying together, raising our family, and keeping our covenants. That doesn’t mean we never wanted to walk away, but luckily we never wanted to walk away at the same time. We have figured some things out along the way.
Throughout the 2 decades we have been together, we have done some things right and some things wrong and learned many valuable lessons along the way. We have discovered how to support each other, how to care for each other, and how to love each other through hard times. And we have found joy along the way. This is our journey…
Sjon and Melanie 