It sounds just like the plot from a Nicholas Sparks novel – only the love story Alina and Nathaniel Perry are sharing with me is so much more beautiful and exciting because of the Author who continues to write it.
Alina and Nathaniel PerryAlina leans forward, eagerly telling their story, only stopping for her husband Nathaniel to offer details she has left out. Mostly he grins, quietly sitting beside his wife as she relates the story that he could listen to over and over again.
When Nathaniel Perry, a member of Fountain Inn First Baptist, rededicated his life to the Lord in 2003, he began searching for opportunities to minister. So when he heard that the Master’s Mission needed volunteers for their Joy Box Project to carry gift boxes to children in foreign countries, Nathaniel signed up.
Darrell Rooks, the president of Master’s Mission, jokingly threatened his volunteers, “Don’t fall in love or date the translators in Ukraine.” In the past, most of his translators had gotten married to volunteers on previous trips and then moved to the United States.
Love could not have been farther from Nathaniel’s mind when he stepped off the plane in Ukraine and met their translator, Alina.
“He was cute and everything,” Alina grins toward Nathaniel. “But I didn’t have any butterflies or anything.”
Nathaniel and the other volunteers rode a bus into the heart of the country where they would pass out the boxes in orphanages. On the long rides, Nathaniel began to notice Alina – and the snacks that her mother always sent with her.
“He noticed my coffee,” Alina supposes, mischievously. “Nathaniel loves coffee.”
As the couple began to talk and get to know one another, Nathaniel became impressed with the love and desire Alina expressed to serve the Lord. Even then, they had no idea what would come of the growing friendship.
But God had been planning Nathaniel and Alina’s love story and would soon unveil his first chapter.
If their story was a novel, the prologue would include Alina’s struggle to gain a visa to visit America. After three years, she finally received it – just in time to travel back with Nathaniel’s group to America and stay in South Carolina with Darrell Rooks, who knew Alina’s father, a pastor in Ukraine.
In South Carolina, Nathaniel gave Alina tours of Charleston, Myrtle Beach, and his home in Fountain Inn – all the while falling in love with her.
Though he said nothing to Alina at the time, Nathaniel admits, “I knew in my heart ‘I’m gonna marry her.'”
After Alina’s five-week visit to America ended, the couple decided to seek God’s will about continuing their relationship. Every Tuesday for the next several months, they fasted and prayed.
Nathaniel worked all spring and summer with a construction company until he had earned enough money to buy Alina’s engagement ring.
In late August of 2004, Nathaniel felt peace about the relationship and traveled back to Ukraine to “do some more missions work” – or so he told Alina.
Nathaniel had never met Alina’s parents, but they agreed to let him stay with them for the six months he would be in Ukraine.
Three days after he arrived, Alina’s family was leaving on vacation to the mountainous region along the Black Sea, so Nathaniel decided to go along. However, he did not know a word of their language, so Alina had to translate for him – making it difficult when he wanted to ask her parent’s permission to marry her. But God provided a way. With that obstacle conquered, Nathaniel began to pray that God would provide the perfect place and time for him to propose.
When the family pulled out of the driveway, Nathaniel felt a nagging suspicion that the vacation would hold the perfect proposal place. But the only problem was that the ring was still in the upstairs bedroom hidden in his clothes drawer. Frantically, he told Alina to tell her father that he needed to return to the house – he had forgotten something. After retrieving the ring and creatively escaping an explanation of what he had forgotten, the vacation began.
On Sept. 12, a Sunday morning, Nathaniel suggested that he and Alina take a walk along the rocky coast of the Black Sea. So just before sunrise, they set off, with Nathaniel lugging a duffle bag stuffed with a pillow, a basin and a bar of soap, not to mention the jar of water he carried in his other hand.
“When she asked, I told her that in case we got thirsty, we’d have plenty of water to drink,” Nathaniel explained. Thankfully, Alina did not ask anymore questions. When they reached the top of a rocky incline, Nathaniel laid the pillow down for her to sit on and then gently washed her feet, proclaiming his desire to serve her.
Nathaniel recalls the memory like it was yesterday. “I pulled the ring out and said, ‘Make me the happiest man in the world and be my wife.'”
It was clear to Nathaniel and Alina that God had brought them together. “Although we were stepping into darkness, we had peace,” Alina remembers.
But the next months would test the couple’s trust in the Lord and show them his goodness and approval of their union.
Nathaniel flew back to the United States to find a job and save money so that he could prove to the immigration officials that he could provide for Alina. He also hired an immigration attorney to handle the difficult process of bringing her to the U.S.
In July of 2005, he returned to Ukraine with his parents one week before the wedding date. But Alina had not yet been approved for a visa. They traveled to the U.S. Embassy three times, paying a $100 fee each time Alina walked through the door. Every time, the embassy refused her visa, telling her that she needed to provide some other form of verification or paperwork. Miraculously, she was able to immediately get the correct paperwork that usually would take months or a year to obtain.
Two days before their wedding, the exasperated couple returned to the embassy one final time – if they could not get the visa, Alina could not apply again for a year. This time Alina had everything they required, but when the officials saw Nathaniel’s income, they said that he did not earn enough to support her. In helplessness, Nathaniel turned and looked out at his dad in the other room, “I threw up my hands and mouthed the words, ‘Dad, I need help.'” His father walked up to the desk and pointed to the line that showed his own income.
“Dad told them, ‘I’ll be co-supporting the couple,’ and the official said, ‘Okay. Alina, I’ll need your fingerprints right here.'”
On July 17, 2005, Nathaniel and Alina were married and days later came back to the United States to begin the new chapter of their lives together.
“I call Alina my ‘Little Ruth.'” Nathaniel says Alina is like Ruth in the Bible; she uprooted from her own culture and came to a strange land.
“Boiled peanuts and iced tea; ‘hey’ and ‘y’all.'” Alina proudly displays her easy adaptation to the ways of the South, although occasionally Nathaniel has to translate some of the Southern expressions.
“I miss my family,” Alina admits, “but God is with me here, so I’m cool.”
God’s direction gives the Perrys the suspicion that he has not finished writing their story yet and furthers their hope that an even bigger adventure lies ahead.
While they wait to see what their next chapter holds, Alina translates First Baptist’s faith team visitation program so that her mother can use it in Ukraine. Nathaniel and Alina also teach a Sunday school class for single adults in their home.
“There is the same need (as in Ukraine),” Alina expresses. “You can be a missionary in the same town you live in.”
Nathaniel and Alina hope that one day they can minister in foreign countries – perhaps even back where their story started in Ukraine.
“We’re partners,” Alina smiles at Nathaniel. “In marriage and in life.”