By Wawel Mercado

I didn’t quite fathom the depth of our marriage vow until after almost a year of being married to my wife, Mila.  I met her at Basic Advertising where we were officemates.  Later on we became very good friends, and that friendship eventually paved the way for deeper affection.  We decided to get engaged.

Long before our marriage, Mila would go on yearly prayer retreats.  The year before we tied the knot, she wrote in her retreat journal her vision of family life which was very similar to mine: that our family would be like a small church, a community of love where, by loving our children, we could teach our children the love of God and bring them closer to the Father.