Two weeks after I had met Gio and been messaging with her I was sitting in church on a Sunday morning. A couple from my church , whom I had befriended a year previously when they first began attending, was sharing a testimony from their work in the mission field. I had known they were missionaries, but it wasn’t until that day I found out they had been based in Bali, Indonesia.

I found this a curious connection and sought them out after the service to learn more. Scott and Jenni McAlvany had attended YWAM’s Discipleship Training School (DTS) for missions in Perth, Australia before eventually settling in Bali to start their ministry.

By this point I had also discovered Gio had attended a Discipleship Training School at the YWAM base in Bali in 2017. This was long after the McAlvanys had already graduated from their own school, but knowing that YWAM was a tight-knit community, I asked Scott and Jenni about their leadership and ministry partners, curious if they had any mutual friendships with Gio.

Gio wrote me back later that week, having discovered that one of her friends did, in fact, know Scott and Jenni. This mutual friend sent Gio a photograph of the couple. It wasn’t long until Gio messaged me again. “Andrew, I met Scott!”

Back in 2017, apparently Scott had been a guest speaker during her 6 month DTS in Bali. She even showed me notes she had taken from his message to the students. During this time he had prompted the students to write down any dreams they believed God had given them. In this notebook from 2017, Gio had written a dream of meeting a “handsome, beared white man.” Needless to say, I found this both amusing and endearing…and wildly provident.

What were the odds that this couple would wind up over 5 years later in my tiny, rural Pennsylvanian town, choose the church I attended – all within the same time that I met Gio? Not everything means something, but some things mean more than we think. I believed God wanted Gio and me to be connected.

Pictured above is our first video call, including Scott!