Inside Story: Part 5: Love and Marriage

Inside Story for Friday 30th of May 2025

By Andrew McChesney

Diana and Loren were planning to get married in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when they found out that they were expecting a baby. Diana postponed the wedding because she didn’t want the baby to be the reason for marriage.

After the baby was born, the couple moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, where Diana’s parents were living. They had had enough of life in Santa Fe.

Although Diana and Loren weren’t living as Christians, Loren wanted to get married in a church. He chose an Adventist church and contacted its pastor. He also asked his father, an Adventist pastor living near Chicago, to perform the ceremony. This presented a dilemma for both pastors because Diana wasn’t a church member and the couple wasn’t living a Christian life. But after much prayer, they said they felt impressed to “err on the side of love.” Loren’s father gave premarital counseling over the phone.

On their wedding day, Diana was surprised to see church members whom they didn’t know in attendance. Who attends a wedding of strangers? she thought. Her surprise grew when the church members gave them gifts.

Unpacking at home, Diana came across a small book titled Happiness Digest. She thought it was a book from the three persistent women who had visited her in Colorado. She began reading it, and she couldn’t put it down. When Loren came home from work, she excitedly said, “This is truth!” He said, “Oh, that’s Steps to Christ, written by a prophet named Ellen White.” The idea of a prophet confused Diana, but a desire sprouted in her heart to visit the Adventist church and learn more about what she had been reading.

When Diana showed up in church, members didn’t say a word. They accepted her as she was and even took care of her children so she could listen. When she overheard the head elder talking about Bible studies, she told him, “I want to study.” Loren interrupted, “I can tell you whatever you want to know.” He was embarrassed that he hadn’t studied with her. “No, I want to study the Bible for myself,” she said.

The elder, Lorell Herold, and his wife, Carol, came to their home every week for 28 weeks. As Diana studied, her worldly appearance began to change. No one spoke to her about it. No one preached about it. She simply lost interest in worldly things as church members loved her and as she learned about God’s love that was poured out in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Her enthusiasm for the Bible surprised Loren. He wondered what he had missed growing up and began studying the Bible on his own. The two decided to get baptized together.

This mission story offers an inside look at how God miraculously worked in the life of Diana Fish, development director of the US-based Holbrook Seventh-day Adventist Indian School, which received the Thirteenth Sabbath Offering in 2021. Thank you for supporting the spread of the gospel with this quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering on June 28. Read more about Diana next week.