Candid. Intimate. Words of endearment. Krisxan (Krickitt), 28, and Kimmer (Kim), 32, Carpenter are so much in love that they celebrate two wedding anniversaries each year?the "real one" in September and the "second one" in May. Three years separate the two weddings?three years that seem like a lifetime of marriage.

But two weddings in three years? For the Christian couple from Las Vegas, New Mexico, it was part of marital survival.

On Thanksgiving Eve 1993, with almost ten weeks of wedded bliss behind them, the Highlands University assistant athletic director/then baseball coach and his beautiful bride were heading with a friend, Milan Rasic, to Phoenix, Arizona. At the other end, awaiting their holiday arrival, were Krickitt's parents, Gus and Mary Pappas.

Everyone was looking forward to the break. Krickitt took the wheel of their brand-new Ford Escort at 4:30 p.m., while Kim, nursing a cold, tried to get comfortable in the back seat. Two hours later, night had fallen on I-40.

Krickitt has no recollection of what happened six miles outside of Gallup, New Mexico. Just ahead of their car, a slow-moving truck carrying auto parts was obscured behind a cloud of exhaust. Krickitt saw the truck just in time. Hitting the brakes and swerving left, she clipped the left rear of the vehicle. A pickup truck following the Carpenters' car swerved simultaneously and hit them with such force, the Escort flipped one-and-a-half times and slid down the interstate more than 100 feet.

"I screamed and screamed for Krickitt," says Kim, who remained conscious through the horrifying collision. When the Escort flipped, Kim was thrown onto the ceiling inside the car, his back exposed to the asphalt through the shattered "moon roof." His legs were pinned and he couldn't locate his wife. She didn't answer him. Their friend Milan was still in the front passenger seat.

Secured by her seat belt, Krickitt was hanging upside down in the driver's seat, head tilted, unconscious?the roof of the car crushed around her skull. It would be twenty minutes before help arrived and another thirty before Krickitt was in the back of the first ambulance heading for Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital in Gallup. Kim and Milan (who suffered a separated shoulder) were transported in a second ambulance.

A doctor in the Gallup emergency room handed Kim an envelope with Krickitt's rings and watch. "I'm very sorry, Mr. Carpenter," he said. She's dead, Kim thought. Miraculously, the former Division I collegiate gymnast was hanging on to life by a thread, despite severe bleeding in her brain. Her chance of survival was less than one percent; the decision was made to airlift Krickitt to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque, 140 miles away.

Kim made a decision, too. Refusing treatment for his own injuries (a punctured lung, bruised heart, concussion, broken hand, and facial lacerations), Kim called his dad to pick him up. He would follow his wife to Albuquerque. "If she was going to die, I was going to be there beside her."

After midnight, Gus and Mary Pappas's phone rang. One of Krickitt's girlfriends was calling to give them the news. The still to be made home-ground wheat rolls and pumpkin pies, and the traditional Pappas day-after-Thanksgiving get-together to cheer on the University of Arizona's football team weren't that important anymore. Getting a flight from Phoenix to Albuquerque with their son, Jamey, a Campus Crusade for Christ staff member, was.

Almost upon arrival, after seeing Krickitt and talking with the doctor, the family (with Kim) began daily prayer vigils on the ICU wing. As specific medical problems arose, the group would pray. They asked the Lord to lessen the pressure on Krickitt's brain. Then on Saturday, when Krickitt's blood pressure dropped dangerously low, they prayed for it to come back up. Pastor Fred Maldonado and members of the Carpenters' church, Calvary Baptist Church, in Las Vegas, New Mexico, drove two hours to join the intercessions. Jamey's wife, Gretchen, started a prayer chain originating from Phoenix, fanning out across the country and even reaching fellow Campus Crusade for Christ staff in Russia. The swelling began to subside in Krickitt's brain.