ABOVE: Buckner International President and CEO Albert Reyes officiated the wedding with Family Hope Center Director Ricardo Brambila. LEFT: Six couples shared in the wedding ceremony, exchanging rings as a sign of their commitment to each other and their families.
“We’re going to church now,” Gonzales added. “Everything’s chang- ing. Our life is changing a lot.” Now Gonzales will come home from work and take his children to the park. They like to play all kinds of sports. “He spends more time with them than I do!” Aleman said with a laugh. “He won me over again.” When Gonzalez and Aleman went to the altar, together they won their children over. “Once my youngest asked, ‘Mom, are you married?’ I said, ‘No,’” Ale-
man remembered. “Then he said, ‘Mom I want you to get married.’” That conversation was not an unfamiliar sentiment in the minds of
some of the families exchanging vows that night. More than 25 years after their bond began, Evangelina Saldivar and her husband Arturo Martinez wanted to make sure their two daughters knew that promise was key to forming a family.
“They’re such good girls,” Saldivar said. “I want good things for them. They should try hard in school and never give up. I want them to have a career and not have to be dependent on someone to live. But I want for them to know how to form a family.” To anyone watching the two partners join forces officially
for the first time in 25 years, the question of their overwhelming commitment could, for intents and purposes, be satisfied. But Saldivar and Martinez sought something else, they sought
promise. They sought legacy. “Sometimes I don’t know how we made it as long as we did,”
Martinez said. “But we wanted to set a good example so they don’t have to struggle in life.” Forsaking all else, for reconciliation, for love, for commitment, the
couples joined in matrimony union and made a promise not only to each other, but to their families – “til death do us part.”
54 BUCKNER TODAY • Spring 2016
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