Matt and I first met when I transferred to the same High School during our Sophmore year. We became good friends, but never dated. During our Junior year of High School, Matt discovered that he had testicular cancer. After several months of surgeries and chemotherapy treatments, he was completely cured of cancer, but unable to have biological children of his own.

     After High School, we hardly saw each other. We were both working full-time and I was hanging out with a different set of friends. As a result of that time and my foolish desire to rebel, I found out my freshman year of college that I was pregnant. I immediately stopped hanging out with that crowd and got my life back in order. I moved back home with my parents and continued my education in my hometown.

     My daughter, Jenna, was born that spring. Three months later, I called Matt to catch up on old times and to let him know about my baby. We began dating and after one year, we became engaged. From that point on, Matt was known as "Daddy."

     Our education was very important to us and we knew that in order to provide a good life for Jenna and ourselves, we needed a college education. Therefore, we remained engaged for two years while we finished up our degrees.

     We knew going into the marriage that we would most likely not be able to have any more children biologically due to Matt's bout with cancer years before. Still we pursued fertility tests, but they confirmed that Matt was sterile. Although we were disappointed, we felt that God had other plans for our lives.

     We began looking into adopting, and felt a real burden to do so from overseas. After much prayer and research, we decided to pursue adoptions from eastern Europe. During our search, we came across Cathy Harris' website and realized that we could adopt from Ukraine independently without the high costs involved with using an agency.

     Because we chose to adopt independently, we did not have to face many of the restrictions normally placed on adopting couples by agencies, such as minimum/maximum age requirements, hours of training classes, and having to schedule our adoption around the agency's timeline.

     We hope that through this website you will gain a better understanding of the Ukrainian independent adoption process. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.