Welcome, Beloved friends and family!!

We were introduced to each other by a mutual friend of ours, Josiah Caberera. I had met Josiah at an in-person YMJA youth retreat in 2019, but had lost contact with him once the retreat ended. But in 2020, of course by April, Covid had shut everything down for a couple months now; so the YMJA did an online retreat instead through zoom. During that retreat Josiah reached out to a group of us and asked if we could all exchange numbers. April 28th he texted me and said, “Hey I’m playing a game with some of my friends here in San Antonio, would you and your sister like to join?” And we said “sure!” So we get into a call with everyone and each person is introducing themselves and what not and thats when I met John. 3 years of friendship, ups and downs, twists and turns, it’s now June of 2023! Specifically June 30th, Erev Shabbat, My family and John’s family were at South Padre Island in Corpus Christi TX, and that was the day John and I met in person for the first time. Afterwards he started coming down to Beit, and everyone came up to me and told me how much they loved and adored John and his family and through lots of prayer, growth and a bit of maturing on both our parts, by September 23rd of 2023 we were officially a couple!

John and I had gone down to Fredricksburg, Sunday, Dec 17th. We were meeting his parents there as it was the half way point between my house and theirs; We first stopped to grab a bite of lunch with his sister and her family as well as his parents; we went to the same resteraunt we had gone to for our first unofficial "date". After lunch he and I plus Sarah and his oldest niece Emeline, walked around Main Street for a little while going into random shops and what not before we headed to the park and met up with his family for ice skating. It was my first time ever ice skating before, and i honestly really enjoyed it! I was terrible at it... but genuinly enjoyed it! After that, all of us walked back down Main Street, and got some ice cream together to finish off the wonderful day. His sister and her family had to leave, but John, his parents, Sarah, and I headed back to the park while we finished our ice cream. When John and i got there we realized we had walked too far ahead of the others, so we waited at the entrance to the park and enjoyed the slow music while we waited for the others to catch up and for the holiday lights to light up every one of the trees in the park. Just before his parents got there, an announcer did a countdown from 10, and one by one the trees and buildings in the park lit up in beautiful lights. After his parents plus Sarah got there, we took some pictures by the trees, then slowly walked through a lit up terrace pathway, where we stopped at an old well, and we started searching for our cars, dreading the thought of having to go home and end such an amazing night. Once I had turned slightly away from him to look for my car he reached into his pocket and pulled out the box, got on his knee, and said "Faith Elizabeth Lovell, the love of my life, Will you marry me?" Shocked and utterly overwhelmed with joy, I shakily said "Yes!"