Met on the 'Net by Sally Nichols, Outpost Contributor   Lisa Hill would not be where she is today if it weren't for the Internet. She would most likely still be living in Astoria, Ore. with her two teenage children and running her beauty salon. Instead, Lisa is married to Gregg Hill and the two reside in their new home in Stead. She met him unexpectedly on the Internet. "I was just sitting at my computer one night when an advertisement came on the television that gave the website address for a matchmaking system, so I tried it out for fun," Lisa said. Little did she know that it would change the rest of her life. After perusing through the hundreds of matchmaking websites, a Christian site caught her attention. The next step was to fill out an essay questionnaire and the computer would "make her a match." The system found her to be compatible with over 500 people. Her solution: "I decided I would stop at the first name that looked interesting. I saw Gregg's profile and thought the first name looked interesting," said Lisa. The computer found him to be only 16% compatible with Lisa. She did not even consider this after becoming impressed by his writing in his personal essay. Lisa sent him a letter through the matchmaking Bulletin Board System (BBS). In it, she included the address to her own web page she dubbed, "Sweetie Pie's Comfy Home." It was her web page that spawned an eight-page response from Gregg. The two continued to converse via email for a month. They suddenly lost touch for two weeks, "just like it is with everybody on the net," Lisa said. Lisa had not been online for that time, but when she decided to go back on and contact Gregg, she received an email from him at the exact same time she was sending him a message. "Talk about God having his hands in this," Lisa said. They engaged in telephone conversations. The first one was eight hours long. Gregg picked up the tab, keeping one tradition of the man paying for the first date. "We never ran out of things to talk about, we never do," Lisa said with a smirk. Gregg most likely did not run out of things to talk about on their first meeting. It was January 3, 1997. The flood had caused Gregg's flight to Portland to be cancelled. He drove 14 hours in spite of this. For the next nine months, Gregg would fly to Portland every two to three weeks, rent a car, and make the two-hour drive to Astoria. "Realistically, what he saw was not a comfy home. He wanted me to have a comfy home," Lisa said. In September, he proved this to her by proposing to her. In November they married at the courthouse, an appropriate non-traditional Christian wedding for a non-traditional meeting. "If it wasn't for a computer and the Internet, I would have never met Gregg. I suppose God would have put us together," Lisa said assuredly.   copyright May 1998 Nevada Outpost http://www.jour.unr.edu/outpost