An International Adoption Story

It all began some time around the 1st birthday of our second child, Ian. He had completely weaned himself by this time and my arms were feeling just a little empty. I began to consider when we might add another arrow to our quiver when I had the most queer thought: adopt your next child! Where did that come from, I wondered. As if I didn’t know but really, at that point, I didn’t know for sure that it was God planting a seed in our lives. And it was even more unclear when I tested the waters on my husband, Karl. He looked at me like I had finally lost my mind when I suggested that we adopt our next child. In fact, I think that,s what he asked me, “Have you lost your mind? We have enough going already with homeschooling and the baby. No, we don,t need to go looking for that kind of trouble.” So, OK...must not have been from God, I thought. Must have just been a hormonal power surge, I decided and did my level best to forget I even mentioned it.

But I couldn’t forget. The thoughts of adopting a child were invasive. I couldn’t shake them! Nor could I stop running into people who were adopting, or who were adopted. This went on for years and annually, I would try the idea out on Karl just to see if anything had changed in his camp. Finally, after years of praying for clarity and a signpost on this matter, Karl and I had a life changing conversation. We were reckoning our taxes and talking about what a fabulous year we’d had. Karl smiled and said the next year promised to be even bigger and wanted to know what in this world he could buy for me, his beloved. Did I want a new car, or a trip? What about a wonderful piece of jewelry? I could write my ticket, he said. Then I hit him with it - I am sure that I want to adopt a child. That’s what I want. Months later, when we were talking to my father about this decision, Karl explained to him that when a man tells his wife she can have whatever her heart desires and she bypasses all of the “frou-frou” to announce she wants to adopt a child, you know she’s serious! So he got serious, too, and asked me to do all of the research on the matter and we would talk again in 6 months. All of this time, the Lord had been preparing his heart for this and now the soil was ready. I read everything I could get my hands on about adopting and in 6 months we were committed.

We decided to pursue an international adoption for a variety of reasons. The next step would be to find an agency. I attended a seminar in Texas given by an east coast agency that seemed to have their ducks all in a row and we all set to go with them until my Mom, who lives in Charleston, asked me if I,d ever heard of Christian World Adoption? Well, I had. I had all of their literature and video but hadn’t really looked closely at it for some reason. She had stumbled across their name and thought to ask me about them. The rest is history. I revisited all of the literature they sent me and this time, seeing it through fresh eyes, I was sold. I could totally relate their motto: We believe God is in control of every adoption. Well, I was staking everything on that. I believe it, too.

We sent in our application to CWA without so much as a phone call to them first to get to know each other. I knew in my bones that this was the agency that would bring our child to us. I called the office on a Friday, around dinner time thinking I would get an answering service and just leave a message. Nope. I got Kevin Weirman and he spent about 30 good minutes talking to me about what we could expect and forewarning me very honestly to expect those things we would not expect. I said something to Kevin in that phone call that later came to bite me in the tail. Of course, I can laugh about it now but would you believe I said to Kevin, “And listen, we are not in a hurry. We know it will take some time but we are patient. It will take as long as it takes. Yes, I said that. I meant it at the time.”

We officially began with CWA in May of 1998. We received our referral for Valentina, then 18 months old, in October of the same year. Kevin let us know that DHL (beloved DHL) would be delivering the video and medical information on Saturday. If you have children, you know that a Saturday in the fall is completely packed full of soccer games and that Saturday was for us! We took turns in between games driving back to the house to check the porch for packages. Nothing came....until Monday morning. I called Karl at his office and told him I would wait 10 minutes for him to get home to watch the video with him. If he dilly dallied, I was watching it without him! Neither one of us could wait to see this little girl. Our boys were perched on the coffee table in front of the TV and when Karl walked in door, the very minute he was in the room, we tapped that play, button and there she was! Curly headed, steel gray eyes, foot propped up on the table singing “doe doe doe DOE! Da da da DA!” We were goners!

We pored over the medical information, watched the video a thousand more times. We took everything we had to our friend / neighbor / pediatrician and he looked it all over with us, as well. Next was to send the package to Dr. Johnson in Minnesota. The outcome and consensus was that Valentina had some pretty scary looking things on her medical but her video didn’t bear any of that out. But by this time, our hearts were hers and we had concluded that we would handle anything she needed us to, just to bring her home to our family.

Recall what I said to Kevin in that initial phone call - about not being in a hurry. Now we were in a tremendous hurry! Paper work was flying around my house, flying to Baton Rouge, flying to North Carolina, papers flying everywhere. All that was left was a court date. Maybe December but most likely January, Kevin lightly suggested. I called Kevin every Friday, whether we were anticipating news or not, just to check on “things. No news on January. No news on February. Dozens of phone calls, dozens of emails later, all of the families like us waiting for children in Irkutsk learned that our cases had hit an extraordinary snag with “the judge. It was a snarl with Russian law, a Russian judge, and the USCIS. Extraordinary.

It’s hard to say how many families were held up waiting for their children at that point. There were eight families, however, who kept in very close touch by telephone and email during this wait which lasted through March, April, May and June. We became sort of electronic friends. None of us had actually ever met except on line and later by telephone. But friends we became nonetheless. Friends pray for each other, encourage each other, hold each other up and set each other straight. That,s what we did for each other during that waiting time.

We decided not to put off our family vacation any longer in the hopes that Valya would be with us to take it. We took a couple of weeks at the beach and flew home tanned and exhausted. We were happy to be home. The boys rushed out back to see their dogs and cat. Karl checked out the mail piled up on the dining room table. I checked the answering machine. There was a message from Kevin: “Nia, Karl, I,m leaving messages at all of the numbers you gave me. Call me as soon as you get back in town.... Who knows what he said after that. I was dialing. It was “the call.”

Our court date was scheduled for August 20, we would be leaving August 16. Two weeks to get ready for the trip of a lifetime - hers and ours! Everything fell into place -visas, airline tickets, house sitter, dog sitter. Then there was the big goodbye to our boys. We sent them to stay with my parents in Houston which would be a huge treat for them but so hard on us. We had never left our children for more than a day and now we were saying good bye for weeks. There were tears, mostly mine.

Karl had traveled all over the world. I had not. I tried very hard to look sophisticated, self assured and knowledgeable about airports, passports, exchange rates and all that sort of thing. But that went right out of the window once we landed in Irkutsk. We landed at 5AM and were dismissed from the airplane into a dark, cold and rainy morning, not at the terminal but practically out on the runway. No cover, No gate. No umbrella. No clue. I stopped at the top of the steps leading out of the plane and turned to Karl, “What do I do? He said, cool as ever, “You go. So we went. Next was an exciting, sort of scary ride with Victor and Valentina to the Intourist (every ride with Victor was exciting and sort of scary!), checked in and started our next 24 hours of being awake!

The day I had dreamed of for months had finally arrived and we were seated in a pleasant, but very warm, waiting room. Someone was going to find Valentina and bring her to meet us for the very first time. I can,t say how excited I was, for I felt mostly numb. I remember telling myself to be still and concentrate so that I could memorize every single second of the moments to follow. Meeting our daughter for the first time would be placed in my memory on the same plane with the birth of our sons and I didn’t want to miss a single detail. Then, there she was - arms locked around the neck of Olga, her caregiver; red and white polka dot dress; curly hair pulled up on the top of her with a tremendous bow; eyes big as saucers - a scared little bird, I thought. Now, I never expected her arms to fly open when I invited her into my arms, but I never thought she would cry. When I held out my arms to take her, she initially came to me but in just about 10 seconds she was reaching for her beloved Olga and crying. I never expected that and it put me off balance. What should I do? Never fear - cool Karl, thinking on his feet, pulled out the box of animal crackers and put several in my shirt pocket. She came right to me, ate the crackers that I had, then stretched her arms out to the man who had the rest of them - Daddy. From there we went on to field all of the incredible “firsts with our girl.

We spent three wonderful weeks in Russia completing the adoption of Valya. We were incredibly lonesome for our boys but we decided to savor every moment with just Valentina to concentrate on. It would her only time to have us all to herself - at least until she is about 13 when her brothers leave for college - and then she probably won’t want to hang around her old parents! We made up our minds to eat, drink, experience everything offered to us while in Russia and to take in as much of the culture as we could so that we would have those good “stories to share with our daughter when she was old enough to want to know them. We took tons of photographs, hours of video, met lovely people, and bought precious souvenirs. Among the souvenirs we brought home are a bracelet and pendant we are keeping to give Valentina on her wedding day. Also, while we were at Lake Bakal for the day, we filled up a bottle with water from the lake which we used at her baptism.

Coming home with Valentina has been a mixed bag of experiences. The first two or three weeks were not real life. Our door bell never stopped ringing with friends who wanted to see Valya. Everywhere we went, we bumped into someone who wanted to OOOO and AAAAH over her. She had celebrity status for weeks! I know that our decision to adopt her is not an everyday thing and our friends wanted a part in that blessing to our lives. We appreciated so much the loving care our family and friends heaped on us at homecoming, but I secretly longed for it to die down. I was very anxious to get on with the real, day to day living as a family. But what a surprise for me! Have you ever heard parents say about having another child “Oh, what,s one more? or “You’ll never notice one more? Well, I,m here to tell you that “one more is “one more! I never knew what hit me! It really wasn’t the amount of extra work that needed to be done with the addition of Valentina. It is more the amount of extra time it takes to do anything with a 3 year old and two other children, besides. I had forgotten about that toddler stage and the demands it imposes. I was quickly reminded! It took several months for our household to run smoothly with some semblance of order and routine.

When we were in the praying and waiting stage of our adoption, we also prayed that our adoption odyssey would influence just one other family to pursue adoption, as well. We knew we couldn’t adopt all of the children who needed families but we could adopt one, and we prayed that we might inspire another family to open their hearts to one more. To date, two families who are friends of ours are in the adoption process through CWA, and another is working with another agency to adopt from the Philippines. Supporting these friends through their adoption process gives us great joy and satisfaction. It helps to know that our blood, sweat and tears during our time “on the line can now benefit others who are going through the same experiences.

Our family will always be grateful to the staff at CWA, especially Kevin Weirman, for their thorough attention to every detail of our case. We were always handled with respect and understanding. At all times, we knew we were in the prayers and hearts of the case

managers and facilitators of CWA and we recommend them to absolutely anyone who expresses a desire to adopt internationally. They were the instruments used by God to find the little girl from a small village in Russia near a city we had never heard of, on the other side of the planet, who is today our daughter.

I pray this story will be a blessing to all who read it.

Ourania Mitchell