LOVE IS FOREVER: MARRIAGE SAVERS HOPES TO CATCH PROBLEMS FIRST

Today is Darren and Aimee Rasche's four-month-and-10-day anniversary. And yes, the Cape Girardeau newlyweds still consider each day of their marriage Valentine's Day.

But with divorce statistics on the rise, the Rasches aren't taking any chances. Before they were married, Darren, 26, and Aimee, 24, took part in premarital counseling on the advice of their pastor.

A team of Cape Girardeau ministers hopes the romance that surrounds Valentine's Day points out the importance of working for a strong marriage.

"Arguably the most important part of your life is your relationship with your wife or husband," said the Rev. Roy Jones. "When love is at the center of it, so many of our problems could be wiped out."

Jones, director of missions for the Cape Girardeau Baptist Convention, is among many Cape Girardeau ministers who are promoting a community marriage policy.

About 30 of the city's 45 churches have agreed that couples will complete premarital counseling before being married.

"It's not about how to get married," said the Rev. Arthur J. Hunt, pastor of Christ Evangelical Presbyterian Church. "It's about how to stay married."

Cape Girardeau is the only community in Missouri with a community marriage policy. It started a year ago today.

Just 51 cities in the nation have adopted a similar policy, but local ministers think the trend will grow.

Perryville is very close to adopting one and Jones is working with churches in smaller communities surrounding Cape Girardeau about joining the movement.

Despite the efforts of the group over the past year, divorces in Cape Girardeau County increased: 418 marriages failed in 1996, compared to 399 in 1995.

But the pastors say it is too soon to expect statistical improvements. They look for the number of divorces to decline over the next five to seven years.

The idea of saving marriages rather than ending them started in Modesto, Calif., 10 years ago, spearheaded by writer Mike McManus and his Marriage Savers movement.

"If it can work out there," Jones said, "I have got to feel some hope that it will work here."

Ron Watts, pastor of La Croix United Methodist Church, agreed.

"Our whole desire is prepare the couple to have a more fulfilling marriage, a more satisfying marriage and one that lasts," Watts said. "Divorce is no fun for anyone."

When a couple talk with a pastor about being married in one of the participating churches, the pastor outlines the premarital strategy.

The policy includes encouraging premarital sexual abstinence, a minimum of four months of premarital preparation and a minimum of four premarital counseling sessions, with one devoted to the use of a premarital test or inventory and one devoted to the scriptural understanding of marriage and divorce.

Wes Wright, pastor of Mount Auburn Christian Church in Cape Girardeau, is also president of the Cape Girardeau Ministerial Alliance. His church has joined the bandwagon.

"We felt it was a good way the Christian community and pastors at large make a stand for the family," Wright said.

"I really feel if we stand together as the church across the denominational spectrum, four, five or six years from now we'll see a difference," Wright said.

About 10 percent of couples who go through the premarital counseling choose not to get married. "This is good," Jones said. "Most of those marriages would have ended in divorce. How much better to break an engagement than to have a divorce."

Susan Roper, who with her husband, Mickey, does couples counseling, said, "When people get married they are `in love' and nothing else matters. They think they are special, they are different and they will never experience any kind of problem."

But soon, Mickey Roper said, reality hits. His wife's dad always took out the trash but his mom always did it. Who will take out the trash in this marriage? Who decides what to spend money on? Who balances the checkbook? Where will you spend Christmas and what about children?

"It's a lot easier to confront these issues when you are in love and feeling loved," Susan Roper said.

In addition to premarital counseling, the Marriage Savers concept includes help to salvage struggling unions.

Meetings with ministers and counselors are part of the answer, but pastors hope to develop a core of mentor couples, people who have been successfully married for many years.