Homeless Iraq Veteran Given Special Wedding Celebration

Matthew 25
35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ 40 And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers,  you did it to me.’

Think about those words for a second. That is how people can show love. They can show it strangers they will never meet. They can show it to people without expecting any personal gratitude because their generosity is blended in with many other caring hearts.

The following story has it all. It is about the generosity of others making sure a couple were able to get married. It is also a story of love lasting through the worst circumstances. This couple, along with their two year old daughter, were homeless. The new husband is an Iraq veteran.

Homeless veteran thanked with free wedding — tux, dress, rings, cake and all
My Conestoga Valley News
By JOE HAINTHALER
Staff Writer
February 22, 2014

Lea Lutman, the 21-year-old bride, was a little nervous.

“I’m holding it together in the heels,” she told her father, Rich, as they waited to enter.

“I hope so,” he said, “because that corner table’s going to laugh if we fall.” His date and a friend were sitting at a table in the corner of the main dining room of the Greenfield Restaurant.

Lutman’s husband-to-be, Pfc. Ryan Sexton, an Army veteran of four years’ active duty including two tours in Iraq, was suffering no jitters.

“The last time I was nervous was when I landed in Kuwait (in July 2007) and they told us to lock and load just in case,” said Ryan, 29, a Solanco High School graduate.

All went well during the noon ceremony held before 30 family members and friends Saturday at the East Lampeter Township restaurant.

“I didn’t fall, didn’t break a heel or nothing,” Lea (pronounced Lee-uhh) said after she and Ryan became husband and wife.

All had not gone quite as well in the three-plus years since the couple met in September 2010 when they were working as emergency responders for the Providence Ambulance Association.

They had financial troubles.

It was difficult making his quarterly paycheck last, Ryan said.

He lost his job.

And then came homelessness.

They were living with a friend of his in York until the friend’s landlord threw them out in October. At that point, the couple and their now-2-year-old daughter, Rylee, joined the ranks of about 2,400 homeless families in Pennsylvania that include a veteran with at least one child under age 18, according to federal statistics.

When Janell Berté, the owner of POSH Bridal in Lancaster, worked with Brides Across America to donate 25 wedding gowns for military brides in November, she and her staff spoke with Ryan and Lea.
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1 Corinthians 13
English Standard Version (ESV)
The Way of Love

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,[a] but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[b] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.