Paula: Jon and I met through mutual friends in a network marketing opportunity back in 2015. He had become acquainted with my brother Everton and I, but we all lost touch after a couple of years. Fast forward to 2019, Jon had joined a men's Bible study and they later invited him to attend a service for the young adult's ministry at Calvary. After service that night, everyone was in the lobby socializing, and we saw each other and had a chance to catch up a bit. A week later, I went on my trip to Brazil and stayed there for a month. When I came back, I realized that Jon had started hanging out with some of our now mutual friends. From there, we started getting to know each other a bit as our friends would get together, but had no romantic intentions for each other until.... Jon: The Lord slowly began to draw my attention to Paula (although I wasn't fully aware of it at the time). As I continued to pursue the Lord, He opened doors for me to start serving in the young adults ministry and shortly after, I was invited to join a men's discipleship group. This was everything I wanted at the time and come to find out, the Lord had brought Paula down that same path about a year or 2 prior! Just before Christmas 2019, I won some Dolphin's Football Tickets at work (which NEVER happens to me lol), so I knew I wanted to bring someone special. This is when I realized that the Lord had been drawing my attention to Paula more and more. After mustering the courage, I asked Paula if she wanted to go with me and that's when she gave me her first, "Yes!" At the end of the game, I realized that we barely watched the game as we spent most of our time getting to know each other. We ended up going out for dinner after that (at our now favorite sushi spot in Hollywood) and once I had dropped her off at home, I looked at the clock and saw that we had been together for 9 hours?! Not bad for a first date right? Haha Come to find out, we had much more in common than I had thought and the path that the Lord had brought us on individually was very similar. I couldn't believe it.... This is Us: Since then, the Lord has brought us on an incredible journey of growth. Growing closer to Him and to each other as we strive put Him first in our relationship, daily. It has been nothing short of a blessing to experience a relationship like no other we have had before. November 27th, 2021 (a day after my birthday), Jon prepared the most beautiful proposal on the beach. As the sun was rising, we had the blessing of being able to spend some time in the Word and celebrate communion with each other before he popped the question. And of course I said "YES!"