Val: After a Chi Alpha service some friends and I were playing “what are the odds” outside of the Retama at UTSA. It was my first time playing the game so they just explained it as a dare game. The dare was to wear a onesie during the whole service of Chi Alpha. So of course I lost and I had to do the dare they made for me. Being new to Chi Alpha, I really didn’t want to wear it but I didn’t want my new friends to think I was lame so I did it! It was weird at first but then I realized no one was judging me for wearing a silly outfit. What I thought would be hard and embarrassing turned out to make me feel welcomed and more comfortable with the new friendships I’ve made. Little did I know, a certain someone would notice me and three years later he would be my handsome, God fearing fiancé ...so I guess some dares are worth doing. Mark: It was all lead by the the Holy Spirit. One Thursday afternoon as a born again Christian I longed for more fellowship and had remembered about a Christian fellowship named “Chi Alpha” that one of my classmates told me about. So I texted my friend to ask what time/day the service was held and she informed me they were on Thursdays. Perfect! However, I was on the road at the time so I had to attend the 8:30 service. I went to my place, grabbed my Bible, and boarded the bus to campus. Being new in my faith I had no idea what to expect so I prayed the whole way asking God that everything spoken there was according to His Word. As I arrived I immediately saw a large crowd of people waiting to go into the Retama, but out of the hundreds of people one person stood out to me. For whatever reason that person made me feel more comfortable about where I was. She was a 5’1 young woman full of spunk (that I had no idea I would fall in love with and marry one day) wearing a pink onesie surrounded by friends. I immediately thought that many of the people attending Chi Alpha truly loved Jesus and did not care how the world viewed them.

Mark: I was actually introduced to Valeria by Aileen Lopez one night after a Chi Alpha service. For some reason I thought she looked familiar and I asked her if she was from my hometown, but we had actually never met or seen each other before. This is cringey, a few weeks passed and I "stumbled" upon Valeria on social media so I sent her a personal message. Not knowing what to say I decided to state the obvious after seeing a picture of her with a new hairdo called an "ombre," and asked her "You're the girl with the ombre right?" Valeria: I remember receiving that message, I thought it was creepy! However, since I knew he was from Chi Alpha I thought I'd be nice and keep the conversation going until it died down (it never did). Mark was very persistent and kind so I just kept talking to him as a friend. We decided to remain friends for about a year and in time we learned more about each other and decided to make things official.

Since I am a super ninja and Mark isn’t that great in keeping secrets, I had an idea that he was going to propose on July 25th! He overreacted when I told him I was working on the 25th and then miraculously my boss told me I didn’t have to work that day. He was always talking about how he was going to propose soon but not “too” soon! When that day finally came, I was expecting my parents to react but they did a good job on not reacting and Mark wasn’t dressed in any fancy outfit so I figured he wasn’t going to do it. He also asked me what I wanted to do and I said go hiking, and he said okay. At that point I was thinking to myself, either he isn’t going to propose or he is just winging the proposal. I fell asleep the whole way to the mystery destination and when we arrived he told me we were at Enchanted rock! I had always wanted to go! We took a couple of pictures before the hike. I thought it wasn’t going to be that bad but in the middle of hiking I told him that we should just go back down because it was super steep that I literally thought I was going to fall down! When we finally made it to the top I looked back and you could see such a beautiful sight. When I turned back, I saw some signs and I just thought it was random they had signs up there. I couldn’t read the signs and It honestly didn’t click until I looked at Mark’s smile. He got down in one knee and asked me to marry him!