Her brother and his girlfriend picked them up in Bogata, and at her family’s “finca,” or country home, outside Bucaramanga, instead of exchanging gifts, her family continued the tradition, started by her father, of handing out gifts — including dolls, soccer balls, colored pencils and shoes — to about 300 children from rural areas on the day of Christmas Eve.
“It was truly amazing to see kids line up for blocks for hours,” he said. “It was very moving.”
In 2014, Ms. Pinto, moved to Slinger. She left teaching behind, and joined his company helping out mainly as a corporate trainer.
They loved to travel, and last spring, after Mr. Stensrude had his revelation in Israel, he bought her a Mikimoto pearl “proposal” ring when they got back on the cruise ship. She later helped design a more formal ring.
On May 4, after they got to Istanbul, he proposed in a park between the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, and she jumped into his arms.
“Even though it’s been 12 years,” she said. “It’s the right time.”
On Dec. 6, John A. Best, a supplemental court commissioner in Washington County in Wisconsin, and a friend of the couple, officiated at their house in Slinger, before her brother, and his wife.
In Jerusalem, on Dec. 20, the Rev. Dr. Jack Sara, an Evangelical Christian pastor, led a religious ceremony before 17 guests at St. Andrew’s Scots Memorial Church. Later, they arrived by bus for the reception at Studio Arcadia, a glass-enclosed restaurant, in the village of Ein Kerem, as the sun set over the Judean Hills.
