Michigan Knight Family Adopt From Ukraine
- Thu, Feb 9, 2023 3:56 PM
Michigan family’s adoption of two children with special needs leads to a medical mission in war-torn Ukraine
Joe and Tiffany Ampe pray the rosary with 10 of their children and a family friend at their home in Gwinn, Mich. Photo by Bryan Rehmann
Joe Ampe and his wife, Tiffany, were raising a bustling family of eight children in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula when, in February 2018, they saw a photo of a Ukrainian newborn.
“My wife and I have always been open to children,” said Joe, who is a member of Msgr. Nolan B. McKevitt Council 689 in Marquette. “Our home was a foster home for a while and we wanted to remain open to the possibility of adoption.”
Tiffany was scrolling through an advocacy website for orphans with special needs when she caught sight of the baby.
“It was a picture of a newborn boy in a pink outfit of all things,” she recounted. “I showed it to Joe and he said, ‘You don’t just show me a picture of a baby and then close the laptop.’ And I said, ‘OK, does that mean you want to investigate adoption?’ He said, ‘Yes.’”
In August 2018, the couple traveled to Ukraine, adopting not only the boy, later named Cazimir, but also an infant named Henrik, both of whom have Down syndrome. By this time, Tiffany was also six and a half months pregnant with another child, Isadora.
“It was similar to what I imagine it must be like to have triplets,” Joe said. “We suddenly went from eight to 11 children, and the blessings never stopped pouring out.”
But this was just the beginning of the Ampe family’s connection to Ukraine. In April 2022, less than two months after the Russian invasion, Joe and his son Evan flew to Poland with essential goods for Henrik’s birth family and medical supplies for a besieged hospital. With fundraising and support from Joe’s brother Knights and the wider community, members of the Ampe family have since made four more trips to deliver urgently needed aid to Ukrainian hospitals struggling to serve victims of the war.
Read the entire article, Ties that Bind, from Columbian HERE