LU Student Plans a Wedding a Continent Away From Her Groom Despite Closed Borders and Closed Venues

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For one Liberty couple, planning a wedding meant not only finding the right dress and venue but also navigating a global pandemic.

In late April, Brenda Hill, formerly Queiroz, departed from Lynchburg to her home in João Pessoaa, Brazil. It was a difficult but necessary decision to make it back before borders closed in the wake of COVID-19. 

Her fiancé, Gabe Hill, was planned to join her in mid-July for their wedding in August, but as the date approached, Brazil’s borders were still closed. The country had already extended the opening date twice, with the new opening set for July 29. In a leap of faith, they decided to buy Gabe Hill’s plane tickets for his arrival on July 31. 

On the night of July 29, Gabe Hill was already in Florida in preparation for his flight when they got the news – the borders were open and the groom-to-be would be on his way. 

The next week was a flurry of contacting and coordinating. Along with the border, restaurants and venues were just starting to open. Brenda Hill had made every plan she could in advance, but now that Gabe Hill was in the country, she just had the week to put them into action.

“I didn’t know how the decorations would be. I didn’t know how anything would be. I just came to the wedding. I didn’t have time to be picky, you know, and the closer we got to the wedding, the more I realized that all of those things were the things that mattered the least,” Brenda Hill said.

Finally, on August 8, all that was left for the bride and groom to do was to simply marry one another and celebrate the love that had carried them through an uncertain time.

Their cross-cultural love story began in a way that showcased God’s hand in putting people in specific seasons and places to meet a person that will change their life.

In the spring of 2019, Brenda and Gabe Hill both attended a series of worship nights at Liberty’s prayer chapel. They had not met and sat in opposite corners of the room. 

One week, Gabe Hill brought his friend who had recently become a Christian. His friend shared his number with the group because he was looking for a community of believers to help him begin his walk. Brenda Hill, Queiroz at the time, reached out to the friend to say she was praying for him and they talked about his new faith. At the next worship night, Brenda introduced herself to him. Within two minutes, the friend called Gabe Hill over to meet her.

“We started talking and fell in love on the spot,” Brenda Hill said. 

He asked her out twice that night over text and she agreed to dinner at Doc’s Diner on campus.

Three weeks later, she returned home to Brazil for three and a half months. Even though they were in different countries, their connection was centered around God and grew steadily.

“He called me every single night and prayed with me every single night. Ever since the beginning of that summer, there hasn’t been one night that we haven’t prayed together,” Brenda Hill said.

After the summer apart, she returned to Liberty in the fall, and, two weeks into the semester, they officially began dating. Their relationship only blossomed from there.

“He became my family in the U.S.,” Brenda Hill said.

As the months carried on, God’s will only became more evident to both of them and soon an engagement was on both of their minds. 

“I just knew she was the one for me because Christ made it clear the day that I asked her to make me the happiest man,” Gabe Hill said, “I knew that I wanted to marry her, it was just waiting on her to be ready for that next step and God planning that out.” 

Gabe Hill’s original plan was to propose on the beach, but as beaches closed down due to COVID-19, he decided to propose at Camp Hydaway. 

While the quick and chaotic planning was stressful, the two never strayed from knowing that going ahead with their intended wedding date was the right thing to do, because God had His hand in the situation.

“If you know you really love that person, why wait? The husband and the wife are never ready. The thing is, if we know we love each other, we’re going to have our whole lives to get to know each other,” Gabe Hill said.

After returning to Lynchburg this fall, they had a ceremony for his family and their friends in the prayer chapel on Liberty’s campus, where they had first met over a year before. They currently live in Lynchburg. Brenda Hill plans to graduate from Liberty in May 2022 with a degree in financial planning and Gabe works for a local company.

Nadia Vires is a Feature Reporter. Follow her on Twitter at @nadiavires.