Lesson 4 - A Contract or a Covenant? When my husband and I were married, we were blissfully unaware of the challenges that would lie ahead. We began dating when I was in high school and after a time we broke up. We got back together, and he left on a church mission the same month I entered BYU as a college freshman. While he was out serving, the Church changed the length of missions from two years to eighteen months which was probably divine intervention, because I was seriously dating another young man. Ray got home from his mission February 1983, we were engaged by April, and married in July. Prior to our marriage, we didn’t have any serious discussions about our future. We didn’t discuss how many children we wanted or how we were going to raise them. I do think, however, that we both knew the other person was committed to making our marriage work and that gospel living was an important element to our future. We have now been married for almost 36 years. We have exp...