eMatrimony has some new faces and names, beginning with three new editors!

First and foremost, please join us in thanking Jon and Hilary Olson, former eMatriomony editors, for their service to Marriage Encounter in that capacity. They have done much of the groundwork to make this newsletter what it is today, and we appreciate their time and effort.

Hi! We're Joe & Linda Oppelt, We had planned to send this out in December, but Joe just fell on some ice and ruptured his quad tendon, which required surgery to fix. He is now anxiously awaiting the time when he can start on his rehab...

We have recently agreed to become editors of eMatrimony, the e-newsletter for Worldwide Marriage Encounter. We thought we should give you our vital statistics, and tell you a bit about ourselves.

Both cradle Catholics, we met in college in Massachusetts, and got married on June 14, 1980, in Lowell, MA. We quickly had three children, and in Feb. 1987 we attended our Marriage Encounter weekend in Boston. Happily, the weekend literally gave us our marriage back, and our fourth child was born about a year later. About a year after that we moved our young family to Colorado Springs, mostly for economic reasons.

We have held several loving tasks for Marriage Encounter, both in the northeast and in Colorado. We've been presenting team, World Marriage Day coordinators, "Dream & Action" team, prayer couple coordinators, registration couple, and most recently editors for the Southern Colorado Marriage Encounter "Loveletter". Marriage is a passion for us - not just our marriage, but others' as well. We have seen firsthand what divorce does, not just among family, but also among previously strong ME couples. We believe that couples are under attack - sometimes the most visible couples experience the worst attacks, because it's a victory for the devil when marriages fail.

Other things about us: Joe works in the computer industry, and Linda currently works in the marketing department of a small manufacturing company. Besides ME, we are active in our parish, we enjoy lap swimming and gardening, and love spending time with our two young grandsons. Linda is also working towards a Masters in Theology through Franciscan University Distance Learning. We're looking forward to our first trip overseas, to celebrate our 30^th Anniversary with a trip to Italy in May. (Hopefully Joe's injury will be all healed by then!) 

Please send us your stories - what's happening in your communities that you'd like to share - articles, photos of interesting things going on, and we'll consider including it in this eMatrimony newsletter! Please send them to us at Joe & Linda Oppelt.

Below are introductions from two lovely couples who will be sharing the editorial duties with us. Patricia and Doriano Baisi from Canada, and Hugo and Gaby Tecuanhuehue, who will be our Spanish editors.