The Stewart Family

Where to begin? When we decided to adopt, Gary and I were already the proud parents of four beautiful, healthy and tremendously active girls age 11, 9, 7 and 6. I had always wanted a boy but God blessed us with our girls because, unknown to us, He had a much bigger plan in mind.

October 1, 2006 Gary and I made one of the largest decisions of our lives by pressing the send button to place our application saying we were interested in Adopting. From that moment on God had full control (as he always does). Once we decided fully on the Kyrgyzstan program and chose our sweet little angel things moved faster than we could have ever imagined. For our piece of mind we wanted to send a Western trained doctor to Kyrgyzstan to check out our little boy just to get clarity on his medical report. Anya told us about the American Clinic in Moscow so I contacted them at 5 PM our time on a Friday afternoon (totally did not think about the time difference it was 3 AM Saturday morning over there) and I actually talked to someone who took a message. Believe it or not, 3 am the following Monday morning I received a call from Maria the clinic coordinator to set up a doctor to go to Kyrgyzstan. On Friday I received an email from Dr. Ivanov telling me he had already booked his flight to Bishkek for the following Sunday. The elapsed time was 4 days after I spoke to Maria. WOW! One week after I spoke to Maria, Dr. Ivanov had already been to Bishkek to give our son a complete physical.

With God's mighty hand of mercy all the fears were erased with Dr. Ivanov's report. The only thing our son needed was a minor surgery and a lot of love and attention. So, with a new mom and dad and four very active sisters he was coming home to the right family. From this moment on it was FULL STEAM ahead and NO turning back, we were determined to bring our son home faster than anyone had ever done, and we DID! Anya and the DWA staff are AWESOME!!!

During our process there were a couple of issues that slowed everyone down but by the time we were ready to go everything had been resolved. Less than six months after we pressed the send button on our application, our court date and our 30-day wait was over and our son was just waiting on us to come get him. We did just that on March 12, 2007.

I cannot say enough about Christian World Adoption and especially Anya. There were so many times that I am quite sure she wishes I would lose her phone number and especially her email but through it all she was calm, completely organized and knew her job inside and out. She always sent us any changes the minute she had them confirmed and told us how they affected our case.

As far as our trip to Kyrgyzstan, I was petrified! I, until now, had hardly been out of the Southeast United States. Our 1O%-hour flight to our first stop in Moscow was long but uneventful and our 12-hour layover was even longer but interesting. Then, thankfully, we left Moscow at 10pm on Sunday evening for our final flight into Bishkek. We arrived exhausted, anxious but relieved to finally be at our destination. By the time we pulled up to the Silk Road Hotel I was in tears ready to come home. Everything there was so much different and in some cases, so much worse than I could have ever imagined. All was erased within about 51/2-hours of landing when we were actually on our way to the orphanage to pick up one of the most wonderful blessings in the world, our son Joshua. Communication can be hard but given time all became second nature. Our stay at the Silk Road was absolutely terrific and the service was great. The second day we were in Bishkek, our facilitator set up a trip to the mountains and that was an experience you would have to live for your self. The sights throughout the drive would take you through every emotion; from fear of the way people drive, depression in how some people live and yet total amazement at the human spirit and survival methods the Kyrgyz's people have learned.

Wednesday, our third and last day in Bishkek we went shopping for souvenirs where we got the CRAZIEST of the CRAZY taxi drivers. Our facilitator made him stop and let us out and then told us "he was a BAD, BAD driver, he is crazy"! After our morning of shopping we went back to the hotel with our gifts only to realize we needed to walk over to the closest BETA store (their version of Wal-Mart) to purchase another suitcase so that we could get everything home. Wednesday afternoon was quiet and restful as we got everything ready to travel across the border to Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Our trip through the borders were relatively smooth, just cold, since we had to stand outside of the Kyrgyzstan tiny Border Patrol building waiting for them to clear us so we could walk about 300 feet to finally be able to go inside and cross into Kazakhstan.

Everything was going smoothly for Gary and I and our American passports until the Border Patrol officer picked up Joshua's Kyrgyzstan Passport. The officer wanted to give us a hard time, but... ta-da!...facilitator to the rescue! She quickly set him straight and off we go for our 31/2-hour trip to Almaty. Finally around midnight we arrived at our original hotel. After seeing how small the rooms were we decided to find somewhere else to stay, and at midnight with a convention in town that was no easy task. After about 45 minutes we loaded up our luggage and went to the Grand Hotel, which for us ended up being in the perfect location to be able to walk anywhere we wanted to go. Our stay in Almaty was truly nice except the one day Gary stayed in bed because he got sick from something he ate. Mainly we just walked around the city but one day we walked about 3-5 miles one way to go to the concrete prison for animals, aka the local zoo/water park. The zoo was an experience and definitely not what we have here in the states. If an elephant has never sneezed you on, you haven't lived!

Please allow me to say this; our experience with Christian World Adoption, Anya, Michael, and the whole CWA family was absolutely the most PHENOMENAL experience in what could have been a trying one. Even though the program was REALLY new when we started they had everything under control and knew what needed to be done and how to do it every step of the way. This definitely includes our wonderful 24 year-old Kyrgyzstan facilitator, who works so hard behind the scenes before any of us ever get there and then just as hard for us while we are in the countries taking care of all our legal matters and translating so that we as families have no issues at the Embassy's, hotels and shopping. Anya was a trooper, there were several times she had to play the calming counselor to me when I did not think things were going as fast as I thought they needed to. My family is now complete thanks to CWA and the Kyrgyzstan program but If I wanted to go through the adoption program again, I would NOT hesitate to go through CWA or the Kyrgyzstan program at all.

This letter is being written in hopes that CWA will share it with all the upcoming families that need a small amount of encouragement in the beginning and during their process while in the Kyrgyzstan program. Even though Gary and I have never personally met Anya or any of the CWA staff, except for our Kyrgyzstan facilitator, they are and always will be a part of our life every time we give our son a kiss good night or a hug when he wakes up in the mornings.

THANK YOU ANYA, CWA, AND ESPECIALLY GOD, FOR HELPING MAKE A LIFE-LONG DREAM OF HAVING A SON COME TRUE.

Gary & Claudia Stewart