Her Story

Within the first week of arriving in Bogota,  my family and I worked at school until late in the evening and called an Uber to go home. A tall, English-speaking person walked out of school needing a ride home and asked to join the Uber ride. We couldn’t say no, so Mark joined our ride home and that was the first I heard this handsome Argentine’s story. 

His Story

I found out that Olivia was coming to Bogotá long before I met her. So one day (July 23, 2018 at approximately 6:00 pm, but who’s counting?), I was leaving school for the day and didn’t want to take the bus home. So the guard pointed out Olivia and her parents and told me they had a car. So I walked over, presented myself, and asked if they were heading the same way I was and would let me ride along.

Olivia

Friends at school joke that our first date was school lunch that fall. We would chat every once in a while. And then my friend was coming to town and I wanted to take her on a hike, so I heard Mark was the one to ask! And of course, in his kindness, he offered to join us on a 12 hour Colombian adventure day!

And again a few months later, he agreed to go with my other friends and me to a Fusagasuga coffee farm. After that 15 hour adventure day, I thought surely a date was coming soon…

Mark

After that initial encounter, Olivia and I didn’t interact much for a few months, until one day at school, she asked me if I could recommend any natural parks around Bogotá to visit with a friend who was coming to visit. So I told her about a park that I could also offer to help her find. That was a fun hike!

After that, we didn’t talk much for a while, but then we started having occasional lunches together, and by mid-December, I had gotten the idea that she liked me. I’m not sure if it was the way she seemed to light up whenever I walked into a room, or the way she would text me for no apparent reason.

Then I left Colombia for two months with pretty minimal communication during that time. When I got back though, our shared lunches continued, and eventually I got another chance to join her on a weekend adventure, this time to a coffee farm.

After that, I knew something needed to happen.

Olivia

After the coffee farm, we hung out, ate some ice cream, and ate school lunch together. So then I invited myself to church with Mark where he was preaching and planned for us to go to lunch and the science center for the first official date. We had many hours of fun, during which I was so nervous but having such a good time!

Mark

Two days after our trip to the coffee farm, I asked Olivia out for ice cream after work. In my mind, it was a date, but since I didn’t actually call it that, I came to find out later that it left Olivia guessing.

So that week, I had all kinds of thoughts swirling through my head, trying to figure out what the future would look like if we started a relationship (spoiler alert: it’s been way better than I could have imagined).

By Friday, Olivia decided to make it really clear to me that she was interested, so she asked me if she could accompany me to the church I would be preaching at on Sunday, and then she asked me to go on a date afterward to a math and science museum. We had a blast!

Olivia

To try to throw me off of predicting the proposal, Mark planned a week of adventures.

First we went to a downtown university library and a very romantic dinner. Then we went to a beautiful bookstore and a super cool brick-oven pizzeria! And the next day we went to the library we went to for our second date (noticing a pattern for our love of books?!). But this time we were going to figure out how to get to the roof because it was almost sunset, so how cool will that be! Turns out, Mark had organized it all for us to be on the roof during a beautiful sunny day sunset when the roof was closed.

And then he gave me the most beautiful ring and said even more beautiful words!

Mark

We talked so much about getting married that I figured I wouldn’t be able to surprise Olivia about the general timing of our engagement. I figured my best bet was to give her a lot of false positives so she’d just have to keep guessing as to when exactly I’d be popping the question.

Starting around Valentine’s Day, I told Olivia I’d be asking her out on lots of dates over the next week. Since she loves books, I included a fancy library as part of one date, and a quaint bookstore in the next, in hopes that on Tuesday, she wouldn’t think anything was out of the ordinary if I took her to another library.

I was right about keeping her guessing; almost too right. Other things came up that day that made us almost have to change our plans.

But in the end, it worked out. I stuffed the ring in my sock, picked her up from her apartment, and we went to the beautiful Virgilio Barco library. After asking for permission from some staff (who made it evident that I had already talked to them about it) we were able to go up on the roof.

There, with the sun setting on the horizon, I asked Olivia to marry me, and she said yes!