Our Journey
How our paths intertwined
Artem and Rachel met on New Year's Eve at the end of 2024, in what could have been a Hallmark movie. Rachel came home for Christmas from Germany where she is living and met a family friend, Artem. At the time, the thought of a setup situation made Rachel cringe, and even refuse to go ice-skating at the zoo with everyone, just to avoid the potentially romantic scenario of getting caught on the ice with this guy who could probably ice-skate much better than her (and by the way he can). While neither of them were looking for romance in that situation, as fate would have it after a few weeks they did find a connection and realized that the other was quite a special person to come across in life.
Despite the objectively difficult circumstances, and Rachel clearly telling Artem, "I only come once a year", they agreed to stay in contact and see how it would play out. When Rachel arrived in Germany, she was shocked that for the first time in her life, she wanted to text someone back in an appropriate amount of time, and couldn't get Artem out of her head. Artem continually brought creative ideas on how to get to know each other and spend time together. Texting went to voice notes, Facetime calls for hours on end, and after a few months, they agreed to start a relationship.
In February of 2026 Artem proposed, and now they look forward to celebrating with you! They both find each other God's greatest gift and a testament to his love and faithfulness to care for us better than we can imagine. Now after dancing around time zones with Facetimes, tragic phone battery losses (only from Rachel's side), shared time in Tennessee, Georgia, Oregon, and California, an embarrassing amount of hours playing Catan, an insufferable amount of PDA when they're together, Artem and Rachel cannot wait to have their own home in one place, one time zone, and see what the Lord has in store.
