People ask me all the time how and when I knew Landon was the one I wanted to marry. Its a hard question to answer because it's so many series of events that lead up to our decision to get married. But ill give it a shot..  

I NEVER planned on ever marrying Landon. In high school it was just a fun idea to think about but was never actually a serious thought. It would be too perfect to be true. So I just knew I could never end up marrying Landon.  People would always joke around about us getting married and I just always brushed it off. 

Marriage was never something on my mind, I was too young to even be considering options and in my mind that was meant for when I went off to school someday and found someone outside of Elko. I always knew though that Landon was the type of guy I wanted to marry. Landon told me once and it was what we stood by ever since then.."If I don't marry you I want to marry someone exactly like you"And we basically just left it at that.

Before Landon left on his mission we both agreed we just wanted to be friends so we both could focus on our missions. This was a lot harder than we thought and he ended up leaving with us not on the best terms. We wrote occasionally but I was convinced our lives were going to go in different directions. One month before I left on my mission I had an overwhelming feeling I needed to talk to Landon again. By this point I thought I was over everything but the feeling wouldn't leave. I prayed to know what I needed to do and the answer I got was that Landon still needed to be in my life and that I could not leave on my mission until I fixed all hard feelings and forgave him. So I did, and we began writing again but still only as friends. Looking back now Heavenly Father was definitely guiding us to where we needed to be.It wasn't until both of us being on missions that reality finally began to sink in. I realized that after I came home marriage was the next step in my life. I learned and studying and watched a lot of families on my mission and began planning and writing down what I wanted for my future family. In one email from Landon he asked me what I wanted my future spouse to learn from his mission. I thought about that for a whole week and came up with these 4 answers.

1.     Charity and priesthood duties: Loving everyone and putting aside differences. Willing to put others, family and the Lord before personal needs. Having the pure love of  Christ and being selfless. Worthily and willing serving others constantly. 

2.     Atonement: Knows his savior and what he did. Knows and understands it. Has experienced it. Felt it. And depends on it. Applies it everyday

3.     Goals: Knows how to set high goals and reach them. Goals to consistently be progressing.

4.     Doctrine of Christ: Understands and has gained testimony of the Doctrine. Loves and knows the Book of Mormon.

5.     Enduring: Applies all he has learned  in the mission to the rest of  his life. Changed forever.

I asked Landon to do the same and we shared our answers with each other. And they ended up being almost identical. I knew Landon had the same goals in life as I did. And that was exactly what I was looking for in my future spouse.We never did talk about us ourselves getting married until right before coming home. Landon was very straight forward and told me that marriage is exactly where he wanted things to go when we got home and if I didn't agree to let him know now and not waste our time.My answer was simply that I couldn't promise anything but I was willing to try things out again when we got home.

Through out my mission I will admit I thought about whether I wanted to marry Landon or not but it freaked me out so I usually pushed it out of my mind but after this I began thinking more in depth about it. I did at one point come to the conclusion that Landon had been a part of my life for 7 years. And so many times in those years we kept being brought back together and if I didn't end up with Landon there is no way my husband would let me still be close friends with a guy I liked for 7 year. It became kind of an all or nothing. The thought of all our memories and experiences over the past 7 years having to be completely erased was not worth any other person I could possible meet. It was proof enough that I wanted Landon the one in my life forever.Buuut, just to make sure. I prayed. I was still a missionary so I didn't want to pray to know if Landon was the one I was suppose to marry, so instead I prayed to know if Landon was suppose to stay in my life and why he needed to be there. Even though I already basically knew I wanted a confirmation. And I got a very bunt answer.Before every General Conference I think and come up with 3 questions that I hope to get answers to while listening to living day prophets. I had various questions about spiritual things and doctrines but the 3rd was this question, what Landon's role was in staying in my life.I was blow away when my first two questions were very obviously answered. It was like the speakers were speaking directly to me on the topic I had questions about. After the first two questions had been answered I began to become a little nervous. I even thought to myself how could a question like this receive a direct enough answer for me to even recognize it.

In the Sunday Morning session our beloved prophet President Monson shared a story about a missionary who was assigned to a south america mission but because of visa delay got reassigned to the states where he did not feel the missionaries were being very obedient. He suffer medical problems and had to return home. When he had recovered and could return he was told he would be returning to that same mission where he did not feel successful. He went to the temple seeking guidance and peace. President Monson went on to say, "Another who entered the Celestial room shortly afterward was a young man whose name is Landon."As soon as I heard the prophet say that name the thought popped into my head "Well you can't get a more direct answer then the prophet himself saying his name" The thought stunned me and I sat there in shock, the more I thought about it the more I began to doubt that was my answer but I knew it had to be.

President Monson went on to tell how this boy named Landon felt prompted to talk to the boy in the temple. The boy told him about his problems and concerns and  Landon told him all about his great experiences he had had on his mission. As the conversation continued they realized Landon had served in the exact same mission in which the boy was returning to, To read the rest of the story Click Here

I wasn't yet prepared to accept that as an answer but soon after, My last time in the Lima Peru Temple before I returned home from my mission I received another personal confirmation inside the temple that Landon loved me. Whatever happened I knew that his love for me was real. I no longer worried about what would happen when I came home and felt very at peace.From there basically from the moment we both got home from our missions Landon and I talked about marriage. We both new that was the next step in our lives and we basically had to decide if that was where we were headed or not. We talked about literally everything; our goals, how we would handle situations, raising kids, traditions ect. Our conversations went from "If we got married...." then gradually made there way to "when we get married...." and finally ending with a ring on my finger.About August is when we both knew and had received our own personal confirmations that we wanted to get married. Landon felt very strongly about January, I agreed that sounded like a good idea until he told me that we would have to be engaged in about a month and a half. That freaked me out! But I knew it was right. Landon asked me to start looking at rings but I was almost trying to delay everything and would never show him anything I liked. Ha. He actually picked me up one day and wouldn't tell me where he was taking me and he ended up taking me to get my ring sized after 2 weeks of asking for it. ha ha ha. But he finally got enough information about what I wanted and I let him do the rest.Okay now the actual Engagement Story..On our missions I told Landon how I had never been to General Conference, so he promised me he would take me when we got home. Well he got tickets pretty early and got really good seats and I was so excited to go! So we drove down to Utah and enjoyed a wonderful Saturday morning and afternoon session of conference. He had mentioned to me that he wanted to take me to THIS IS THE PLACE monument because I had never been. I didn't think anything of it because he had just barely gotten my ring size a week earlier, so I wasn't expecting anything. After the priesthood session he came back to the apartment and I was half asleep on the couch when he woke me up and said "let's go" My response was "Do we have to go tonight" he firmly said "Yes."So after dragging me out of the apartment we finally made our way to THIS IS THE PLACE monument. We walked around and Landon told me all the cool stories about the monument

We were looking over the Salt Lake valley and all the pretty lights when Landon asked me to count how many temples I could see. We couldn't actually find any. Our conversation was pretty simple then Landon said "Its too bad President Douglas didn't get called into the seventy cause now he can't marry us' The comment kind of threw me off to where he was taking this so I got nervous and just said "Yeah too bad" This threw Landon off cause he was trying to use that as his gateway to the conversation, so finally he just said  "You know I didn't just bring you out here to look at the temples and talk about President Douglas." At this point i was just smiling from ear to ear and didn't say anything cause I knew what was coming. He went on to say that he had asked my dad about marrying me. I was freaking out inside and couldn't even think of anything to say. So I didn't. We were hugging at  this point and he pulled me out a little and asked "Did you hear what I said" I replied "YES, keep going," then he said "I'm just gonna get right to it"  He then knelt down, told me he loved me, pulled out the ring and asked me to marry him. I immediately said yes with a huge smile and we hugged some more as a newly engaged couple.