Gerard and Cheryl

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From Us to You

Dear Mom,

We truly admire your courage, strength of character and love. The thought process involved, the anxiety, the fear in choosing the right family to raise your precious child, are already a tremendous journey. So for you we already have tremendous respect and admiration.

We’re also embarking on a journey filled with similar kinds of emotions in many respects. We pray and have the belief that everything is going to be alright for you, for us and, most importantly, for the child/children you currently carry. My husband and I have slowly accepted the realization that, although we may not be able to have children biologically, adoption is a God-blessed one, because He, our Heavenly Father, has adopted us and He wants us to be committed to raising children in an environment that is safe, filled with love and God honoring. This is a real demonstration of selfless and generous love. We will be doing our best to fulfill these goals for your child in the best way we know by God’s help and guidance. We’ve been working with young people of different ages all our lives as Youth Leaders serving in church. As our families are large, we do a lot of fun-filled family activities, outings within and outside of the United States, plus get-togethers for special occasions and holidays, all the time. Your child will not lack for fun, love, acceptance and warmth and will be immediately surrounded by solid family values.

Our families are largely Christians, including ourselves, and are very involved in church related activities; and especially in the area of music and administration. As we’ve been blessed, we’ve been using our talents and gifts to honor the Lord. We see church as a strong part of a great supportive community to be an influential role in the raising of our children to become socially aware and kind. With that, we also plan through extra curriculum activities to nurture our children to explore their creative capacity. Children need love, care, compassion and a safe place to grow and develop to the best of their potential. Children also need guidance, and we believe that good parenting is about tough love to establish boundaries. So, we plan to be compassionate but firm, loving while setting boundaries.

We adopted our son just over a year ago, and he is thriving and keeping us busy. He’s everything we dreamed of and more. Our family has been the better by having him and he’s bonding in well. We’ve been loving on him and staying true to our promise to keep him safe, comfortable and loved. We took home a keepsake from the hospital from his birth-mom and, although he’s too young right now to grasp the significance, we want him to become fully comfortable with the adoption journey when the time comes to understand more.

So let’s journey together. We will be praying for you along this pathway as we seek God’s blessings, favor and kindness. We won’t for one moment hesitate to tell your child about this life altering change and about their brave and courageous birth mom.

Cheryl and Gerard

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About Cheryl

My beautiful wife, Cheryl, is a woman of noble character and a wonderful mother. She is first a child of God and is very caring and passionate about the less fortunate. She is very supportive and has a pleasant personality. She is able to laugh at herself and also make me laugh. She plays the piano very well but is more passionate about singing. She sings with a local group and a chorale of which is one of the most prestigious chorales nationwide. Some of her more noted performances have been at Christmas Trees production at the first Baptist church in Orlando and being a backup singer for Andrea Bocelli during his last tour in Florida. On a social front, she is very active in our community where she volunteers to help underprivileged kids with homework, recreation and Sunday school. Many children either call her Miss, Aunty or Mom. With our son, motherhood takes on a new meaning and I can see the joy she has while caring for, playing with him, teaching him letters, colors, shapes, etc., making sure Laurent is a happy, well behaved and smart child. Laurent responds with joy and delight each time his mom is around, and the bond of love is strong between them. It’s no wonder everyone remarks how they look so alike in features. That’s a miracle right there.

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About Gerard

My husband, Gerard, is a wonderful and very caring man of God. He loves God, is strong in his faith and places God at the center of his life. I was attracted to his warmth and sense of humor and humility. He hums a lot and sings around the house and has a very great sense responsibility. He enjoys playing the keyboard, drums and piano and loves all genre of music. He is very supportive of me and my pursuits in my career and other areas and especially as it relates to music and my love for singing. He is very good with kids and plays well with them. His nephews and nieces are always very excited when he is around because of how involved he becomes in their activities. He is a youth leader and also an advisor for many persons within the Haitian community in the United States. Although he is very gifted, he is also very humble and never seeks to take credit for himself. Many friends count on him for advice, not only concerning computers, but about personal matters involving home and family. He is quite a professional and very good at his job as an IT Operations manager for a small company. As a testament to his level of dedication, his boss places a lot of confidence in him. I believe I am blessed with a very good husband. He checks off a lot of the criteria for a good husband and an exceptional father in my books.

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About Us

We met each other through a mutual friend and then went on our first date in Jamaica in 1997. We dated for about a year and got married in 1999. We are opposites but largely complement each other. We’re both quiet but Gerard is more the talker and Cheryl is more a listener. We laugh together and love to be involved in church activities. We eat out and love to explore new restaurants, and travel often for date nights and special occasions. We have many friends but a small and close circle of good family friends with a heavy dependence on our family bond since we have a very large and dispersed extended family.

We are both blessed with good careers, are able to live a comfortable life and, more importantly, help others. Our home has always been open to family, friends and neighbors who have come to appreciate our warmth, sense of humor and more importantly our love for God and the less fortunate. The Good Lord did not see it fit to grant us any biological children, though we have helped many kids over the past years. Life in America can be pretty busy for some, and we have made ourselves available to assist parents with their kids when needed. Through the World Vision program, we have been sponsoring a child in Africa and have been blessed to see how he has grown.

We believe that children need time, commitment, love and discipline to achieve their God-given potential. By God’s grace we will raise your child in love, care and instill in him/her respect for life and respect for others.

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Our Families

Gerard has 7 siblings who are all are married with children of various ages; some are even on their own with their own children. Cheryl has 2 brothers who have married into large families, and some are married also with big children living on their own with their own families. So currently we are a huge family. We were raised on Christian principles and firmly believe in the Bible. Our families are very spiritual and religious, involved in music in particular, and are active members of their churches. A few of them are Pastors and Ministers, and others serve on their church board or work as Youth Fellowship Ministers, Worship Leaders, and Sound & Media Ministries. Music is a huge part of our family so between us all we could be like a choir with a complete band. We’ve been using the talents that God has blessed us with to His glory, so we really try to give of our best.

We are all so close to both sides of our families that we often and go on vacations together and spend a lot of time connecting, eating, laughing and just having good times. Friday nights are like games night, and we take turns during the holidays to host dinners at each other’s homes. It’s really a blessing because we just have good vibes and energy when we get together. We are just grateful to God for the possibility of raising children in this kind of environment where there is so much love, comradery, fellowship and fun. In summary, your child will be surrounded by family and love from the beginning and throughout his or her life. Our family story can only get better as the family expands.

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Our Home

Home is where the heart is, and our home is comfortable. We feel blessed to have this place which we believe that God has provided for us is nothing short of a miracle. Our home is our happy place. We live in a family home; 5 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. It’s in a new housing development and is equipped with fire alarms and a security system. We have lived here for a few years now and were the first owners. It’s a diverse community and the association is very active and schedules many community events for families and children. We do have a swimming pool in our home which has the necessary child-proof protection fence in place. It’s a quiet neighborhood and has all the necessary signs and warnings around for the safe well-being of children. We get along very well with our immediate neighbors who look out for us and we do the same. In the Caribbean we have a saying that it takes a village to raise a child and so we do believe that a good neighborhood is conducive and needed for growth and development of children. It helps them to feel safe, loved and special. After a long day at work, it’s always a joy to come home.

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Our Family Traditions

As Christians, many of our traditions are morally based in principles from the Bible and this has become our foundation for living. So, we set aside time for corporate worship and we’re involved in ministry teams. We observe most holidays with some meaningful celebratory tradition, but Christmas is by far the most loved. We do a gift exchange and enjoy dinners with relatives and friends and do all the decorating, putting up Christmas tree, baking and caroling that goes along with it. It’s our belief that the family that prays together stays together, so we’re keeping that alive with devotions at home, in addition to designated mealtimes, as much as possible. We believe in vacations and life celebrations, and at least once a year we all vacation somewhere together.

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Our Lifestyle

We spend our time now as busy parents involved in Church ministry and as professionals in our jobs. We have set aside time for relatives and friends as much as we have dedicated time for our family and home, and we try to maintain a balance. We love to find new restaurants and we celebrate life changes with our relatives and friends as often as possible. There’s also recreational time where we’re pursuing our hobbies individually or together, whether it’s in music, on the piano or singing, or we’re just watching television. Parenting has been a wonderful learning experience with more activities to be figured out with each stage. We’ve incorporated more close, family moments where we have fun time, devotional time, or mealtime with our son as we watch him grow and develop. It’s truly a busy time as we embrace potty training, school pick-ups and drop-offs, figuring out what to give a picky eater, how to contain a drum enthusiast, music lover, and a budding conversationist all in our daily, sometimes fast-paced adventure. We have a good support system, so home is a safe and enjoyable place for all of us as we try to make sure Laurent can watch our values and behavior and so grow feeling loved and comfortable. We are so grateful that we are now blessed with the ability to work from home with few days in office. This new job world has allowed for more work balanced life, allowing us to spend quality time with him. Awesome God! That’s how we describe it!

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Our Relationship with our Son's Birth Mom

We met with our son’s wonderful mother and her family at the hospital on the day of her delivery. Cheryl was invited into the room and allowed the awesome opportunity of sharing in and witnessing the labor and delivery process from start to finish and then going home elated with a precious baby boy. That day is forever etched in our memory as one of the best experiences of our life and, from then on, the wonderful, life-changing moment of the adoption finalization. From meeting with the birth mom, establishing a connection and sharing in a common goal made for a lasting impression. We made sure to take a keepsake along with us and took family pictures so that we have all these details to share with our son as he grows up. As we now have story time before bed, we incorporate the adoption story in our routine, using age-appropriate adoption books or spiritual examples from the Bible. We are opening up more to help him understand that he’s doubly loved because he has two moms. That makes him special times two! Our bond is fostered more as a result of a shared folder for pictures and other updates which is fully accessible to her so that she can also share in the experiences as her child grows and matures. We want that bond to be there for our son to be able to know about his biological siblings and other family relations.

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Why We are Choosing to Adopt

Our first experience of adoption was inspiring and life changing. Our first reason to adopt again is the joy and wonder to be able to mold and mentor another child so that we can be a part of their development towards feeling safe, secure and loved. The other reason is so that we can contribute meaning to a child’s sense of being sociable, of a sharing, caring and kind person reaching out to those around them as a part of a wider community. One of the ways to enhance this experience is through a sibling relationship so we want to connect our story of completion through another adoption for a baby brother(s) or sister(s) for our son. This would be an exciting and fulfilling experience for us and we look forward with much anticipation to yet another miracle.

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Our Promise to You

We promise to love your child as our own and teach them well. Children are a gift, and we have a short window of time to make impression on their lives before they head out on their own and follow their pathways towards independence. Our promise to you is to ensure that your child receives all the best physically, mentally, financially and spiritually so that they can make great choices and follow on to excel in every area of their life. We will create an environment where your child can feel free to be creative in becoming their best and to set the tone and foundation of moral values and principles which will help them to be responsible and practical in their decisions. In seeking to make them feel whole and loved, we will have that space of freedom for them grow to know and meet all their family relations that have been instrumental in their journey towards adulthood as they take their place in this world.