WE DO!

I guess he liked my prayer. Sounds cliché, yes, but Matthew and I did indeed meet in our Young Single Adult ward at BYU-Idaho. It was a late April evening. After our first week back to school spring semester 2019, our YSA ward, the 102nd ward, held an opening social. I was really close to not going to this social, but I'm glad that I did! My Relief Society president asked me to say the opening prayer. I walked to the front and prayed. Then I sat down behind ... the answer to my prayers. My seat was right behind Matthew's, so he turned to me, quietly, and introduced himself. The get-to-know-you game we played was a simple game of 20 questions that found the names of various people in the ward. We wandered from person to person, asking prompted questions. We collected signatures. He found me because I served a foreign-speaking mission. He thought I was "cute," and so he sat by me and eventually cleared his throat and asked for my number before we both left. We went on our first date a couple of weeks later. We went to an escape room in Idaho Falls, and we ate a custard concrete at Freddie's. The rest is history! And what a history it's been. Matt returned home to Sandy for Fall Semester 2019 and and took a class online, so we drifted into a five-month, long-distance relationship. We talked nearly every night through video calls. I looked forward to his return, but COVID-19 struck, so we went into social distanced safety as he returned to Rexburg. He stayed in his apartment, and I stayed home. That was tough. But we talked as before, and we worked to be exact -- that's a trait I love about Matthew. Finally, he began joining me on family dinners and dates and studying sessions, and we rekindled our relationship more deeply.

Over Memorial Day weekend 2020, Matthew and I took a weekend trip to Sandy, Utah, to see my brother and sister-in-law and some of Matt's family. On Saturday, we spent the morning visiting some graves of Sophie's family in Provo, after which Matt told me that he had some "homework" to do. Well he did... but that wasn't all he had planned to do. ;) I was suspicious that something was happening that evening. The suspicion grew because he'd worn my favorite outfit of his. After he picked me up, we drove to Draper and up a long dirt road to a really pretty view above Utah Valley near the Draper Temple. There he had flowers lined as a heart, and he got down on one knee and said "Will you marry me?" and I said "Of course!" Can't wait for forever together!