The day after he returned from his mission, Alex del Mundo sent a Facebook friend request to the woman who would become his future wife, all because he had seen her picture in a Mormon Newsroom article.
Alex del Mundo of Ontario, Canada, served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Philippines Iloilo Mission. On one of his preparation days, he checked the Mormon Newsroom Canada website to find out how the church was doing in his home country.
He found an article about the Canadian response to the 2012 missionary age change. As he read the article, he noticed a photo of Ariana Limas, now Ariana del Mundo.
“I noticed her name is Filipino, and I’m half Filipino,” Alex del Mundo said. “I was also serving in the Philippines, so my interest was really piqued.”
When he returned home, Alex del Mundo sent her a Facebook friend request. She had also recently returned home to Ontario after serving as a missionary in the Missouri St. Louis Mission. They wrote back and forth on Facebook and met a few days later at a local Filipino Christmas party.
“I have been attending the Filipino Christmas parties ever since I was a toddler, so I was waiting for him to come, and I was super excited to meet him,” Ariana del Mundo said.
Alex and Ariana del Mundo continued talking after the party and eventually started dating. They decided to get married and set a date for August 2016.
While listening to general conference in April 2015, their plans changed. A quote from Elder L. Whitney Clayton of the Presidency of the Seventy particularly impressed Ariana del Mundo.
“Over time you will come to see that you have made the best choice you could possibly have made,” Elder Clayton said in his conference talk. “Your courageous decision to believe in (Jesus Christ) will bless you immeasurably and forever.”
After hearing that, Ariana del Mundo said she knew she needed to get married sooner than August 2016. After praying and attending the temple, the couple decided to move the wedding date up a full year. They were sealed in August 2015 in the Toronto Ontario Temple.
“It felt more right the more that we worked towards it and the more that we acted in faith,” Ariana del Mundo said.
When people ask the del Mundos how they met, Alex sometimes says he added her on Facebook.
“They think I am joking, but I’m actually serious,” he said.
Looking back on the process, the couple said they see the hand of the Lord in their courtship.
“When I sent that picture to the Mormon Newsroom for the missionary age change article, I was dating someone else,” Ariana del Mundo said. “I didn’t know I would meet my future husband through that article. For those that do know the whole story, they see that there was a bigger picture other than what I was seeing at the time.”
Lindsey Williams writes for the the Faith and Family sections of DeseretNews.com