A photo of President Maluenda and I. | So this used to be my mission blog, and it still is. I want to continue to share missionary experiences, thoughts, and spiritual moments. It has been a while since I have posted, and I feel y’all deserve an explanation. I had been home 25 days when I met Carlos. It all started in the fall semester when Jessica, a friend from my freshman year, started telling him about me. “I found your wife. She’s finishing her mission in Texas, and then she’ll be here in January,” she told Carlos, jokingly. Meanwhile, last couple weeks of my mission, I was assigned by my mission president to make plans on how I would start looking for my husband. The concept seemed a little strange since I really didn’t know many people in Rexburg anymore. |
One of the last mornings as a missionary, I had the thought to talk to my bishop in the Young Single Adult Ward in Rexburg and ask him who would be some good guys to become friends with. I figured I would make friends, and find my husband through mutual friends. So I wrote down the thought and forgot about it. I finished my mission with an interview and my mission president challenged me to go on two dates a week. “HOW?” I thought myself, but I accepted it.
I landed in the Midwest and spent most of my time with my family, catching up with friends, and then drove to Rexburg January 4, to start school. Jessica was my roommate and I am pretty sure that she told me the first day of school that I should go on a date with Carlos. I laughed and said “why not?”. Sunday I scheduled an appointment with Bishop Strobel and told him my crazy plan to go on two dates a week and then asked who I should go with. He told me Carlos Palomares, a guy in my ward would be a great start. (I really wanted to know who this Carlos kid was because everyone was talking about him.) Not twenty minutes passed after I was home from the interview with bishop and there was a knock at the door. My roommates answered; I heard a man’s voice and poked my head out my bedroom door. It was the infamous Carlos Palomares smiling ear to ear. (You would think that the Bishop called him, but he was just coming over to say hi to his old friends… and meet this girl Jessica was telling him about. I had just changed into my pajamas, thrown my hair in a braid, and taken off my makeup. Here goes nothin’. We talked easily for over an hour. He was a really sweet guy who knew how to listen. I was impressed. I would definitely say yes if he asked me on a date. Sure enough, a couple days later he mustered up enough courage to ask me out. I gave him my number and we had a date the following Saturday. Conveniently, he lived in the apartment complex next to mine (l could throw a rock from my window and hit the building) and so between then and Saturday we found an excuse to spend time together every day. Saturday came; it was snowing the classic Rexburg storm. The other two couples and Carlos and I grabbed tacos from the taco bus, and drove to Walmart. The pavement | My roommate snap chatted this jokingly.After our first date. |
was super slippery, which resulted in everyone having to jump out and push the car a couple times. The date was something called “the Walmart challenge”. Each couple grabs a cart and has 10 minutes to fill it with 10 random things from all over the store, then the couples switch carts and whoever can put all the things back in the correct places the quickest, wins… and of course, we won. I liked Carlos. After, we tried to build snowmen, but it was too cold. He dropped me off, and then I ran over to leave a mug of hot cocoa on his door step. I really liked Carlos.
The next couple of days we continued to conveniently align our schedules to see each other and by Tuesday we “got over the middle school stage” and admitted that we liked each other. We started steady dating that day. He was (and still is) such a gentleman; I’ve never felt so respected and special in my life. The first time he held my hand, he asked. A couple weeks later he did the same when he kissed me. He figured out some of my favorite things to do, and then for some of our dates he took me to the library and read children’s books to me. We rode our bikes to the top of the city and then raced down the hills. He toke his portable speaker and we danced in the park. We found ourselves talking for 3 hours every night instead of doing homework, then had to wake up in the wee hours of the morning to get it done (and somehow, miraculously, it all got finished ). Once, he knew I was tired of being surrounded by people, so he put a sign on a classroom door that read “ASL society party” to reserve the room and no one would wonder why it was so quiet inside. When he brought me there, he flipped over the sign and it read, “Welcome home, Elizabeth”. We went inside and the room had been rearranged into little “rooms”. A table where the “kitchen” fruit and flowers. There was a little |
dance floor with my record player in one corner; he called it the music room. Another “room” had a stack of books for the “library”.
He knows my needs before I do. I get texts that say “It started snowing while you were in class, so I brought you a coat. It’s sitting outside your classroom door.” He shows up with lunch when he isn’t even aware that I didn’t have time to eat that morning. He asks if I want to go on a run when I get stressed. He leaves little bouquets of wild flowers in my notebooks with little notes calling me “E”. He is everything I want. I reeeeeeallllly like Carlos.
He knows my needs before I do. I get texts that say “It started snowing while you were in class, so I brought you a coat. It’s sitting outside your classroom door.” He shows up with lunch when he isn’t even aware that I didn’t have time to eat that morning. He asks if I want to go on a run when I get stressed. He leaves little bouquets of wild flowers in my notebooks with little notes calling me “E”. He is everything I want. I reeeeeeallllly like Carlos.
Machu Picchu is magical. | In the hospital with patients. | In early March, I went on a 10-day trip to Peru to help translate for a group of doctors. That was the first time we had spent time separated since we met. In those couple days I realized that Carlos could be the one. When I got home, I invited him to come spend a week in South Dakota with me and my family between Winter and Spring semester. |
The week before the semester was over, we had three different people ask if we were married. While we were running on the track, a cute elderly couple asked us how many kids we had. We laughed and said, “ugh, we aren’t married.” The woman replied, “Well, you should be.” The next day, we ran into my great aunt Jeanie. When she saw us, she grabbed my left hand looking for an engagement ring. She told Carlos to hurry up. Then we went to see Bishop Strobel and when we knocked on the door he answered asking, “are you engaged, yet?”. Every time we were asked if we were getting married, we would laugh it off (mostly because I was scared… I had just gotten home from my mission! I didn’t think I would meet my husband three weeks after I got home!) We went home to my apartment that night and talked about it. Before I knew it, he came home and met my family, asked my dad for my hand, ordered a ring, and scheduled the Provo City Center Temple.
The day we got engaged was no disappointment. I knew he had ordered the ring, but it wasn’t supposed to get shipped till mid June. Sunday, May 29 came. I like Sundays. It’s the one day where we don’t have to worry about homework, and can spend the whole day together. He didn’t act any out of the ordinary, but something was off with my roommates. Mercy asked if we could all go on a walk after church. They were way too happy about walking around campus aimlessly. I knew something was up. After a while, we ended up on the campus gardens. I saw people running around behind bushes with big white posters. Just then, a random man walked by and said, “It’s a beautiful day.” I started to laugh. If I didn’t know that I was about to get engaged, I knew then.
Out walked Jacob, a mutual friend of Carlos and I, holding a poster that started a children’s story my sweet Carlos wrote. I started to cry. Breanna followed Jacob, then Alexis, then Jeremiah, then Jacob, then my little Prince Charming, Carlos. He asked me to marry him. I couldn’t be more happy to say yes.
Out walked Jacob, a mutual friend of Carlos and I, holding a poster that started a children’s story my sweet Carlos wrote. I started to cry. Breanna followed Jacob, then Alexis, then Jeremiah, then Jacob, then my little Prince Charming, Carlos. He asked me to marry him. I couldn’t be more happy to say yes.
Wedding planning was harder than I expected. Our wedding day is September 9, but I had to be ready before July 20, the day the semester ended. Why? Because I had a family reunion July 20-25, then my family had planned a trip to Europe because we wanted to see Spencer’s mission, then after I came home I would only have August 15-25 to finalize plans, then go visit Texas August 25-August 30. September 3 is our reception in South Dakota, then we go out to Utah, reception September 8, married on the 9th, and school starts back up in Rexburg, September 12th.
We live kinda crazy lives, but I know that everything will work out as long as I do my best to prepare and then trust that God will help me every step of the way. I have learned so much in the last 8 months. I never realized how many blessings God has given to me, and never fully will. All I can do is be grateful, share what I have with others, and follow him. Carlos and I are not perfect, but we are perfect for each other. I love Carlos.
We live kinda crazy lives, but I know that everything will work out as long as I do my best to prepare and then trust that God will help me every step of the way. I have learned so much in the last 8 months. I never realized how many blessings God has given to me, and never fully will. All I can do is be grateful, share what I have with others, and follow him. Carlos and I are not perfect, but we are perfect for each other. I love Carlos.