We met at a Christian camp in the misty hills of Kodaikanal. We were thirteen, full of energy and confidence, and had absolutely no idea what we were doing. One afternoon a group of us set off trekking through the forest, and Asritha confidently led everyone in completely the wrong direction. A search party had to come looking for us before sunset.

Not the heroic leadership moment anyone had imagined. But for Elvis it was the first glimpse of something unforgettable — a girl who could lead an entire group into the wilderness and still make the journey worth laughing about years later.

Little did we know we would spend the next decade and a half finding our way back.

We lost touch after camp, and years passed before we found each other again in 2011, as friends. Before every moment had to be documented online, we recorded little songs together just because it was fun. No audience to impress, no followers to entertain — only friendship and the joy of making something.

Then life moved us on again. Asritha immigrated to the United States. Elvis married, and although that chapter came to a close, it brought into his life one of God’s greatest gifts — a daughter who still fills his heart with joy. Asritha, meanwhile, was discovering that the dating world is an excellent teacher of patience and discernment.

Neither of us realised that God was quietly writing a much bigger story.

In 2022, Elvis was in the States for work and met Asritha and a group of friends in Austin. Something quietly shifted. No fanfare, no dramatic movie moment — he simply began to see her differently.

She, however, did not.

In 2025 life brought us together again, under very different circumstances. Asritha was walking through one of the harder seasons of her life, and without trying to impress her or change her, Elvis simply showed up.

He listened. He prayed. He stayed.

Then Asritha stepped away from her career to follow a different calling, and came home to India. The distance of years simply disappeared.

Phone calls became coffee conversations. Messages became walks. Time zones became shared sunsets.

It was never a fairy tale. We are spectacularly different: one of us is friends with the whole room before dessert arrives, the other with the family dog. One dreams first; the other would like a spreadsheet before agreeing to the dream. We collided, often with remarkable efficiency.

But every disagreement sanded away a little pride, and every difficult conversation became another stitch in something we had not designed. Around eight months in, the striving stopped — not because we had become perfect, but because we had stopped trying to be the authors.

From two teenagers lost in a jungle, to two friends separated by continents, to countless phone calls and second chances: every detour was part of the journey here. We did not find a perfect love story. We found a faithful God, who knew long before we did that sometimes getting lost is the first step toward finding exactly where you are meant to be.