Here we are, in Kazakhstan!

I can't believe it. It's been almost two years since we started this particular adoption. We started our home study with Focus On Children in April of 2003. As for adoption in general, we started trying to adopt from Kazakhstan with LDS Family Services even before that. So this trip has been several years coming. Wow. It has been so long that it started to feel more like an idea, than something that was really going to happen. With LDS Family Services, we started out trying to do a domestic adoption. Kevin and I had decided that we wanted to adopt, so a few things had to happen first.

At the time we were living in a small one bedroom apartment in The Avenues: an old neighborhood in Salt Lake City. Kevin and I had talked about adoption before we were even married. It was something I always knew I wanted to do. It just felt right. But because of our finances, it just wasn't an option in the beginning. So we tried to start our family the old fashioned way. After a few years it became apparent that it wasn't happening. We had good health insurance that covered infertility investigation, so we took the big step and began going to a fertility specialist. Well, after two years of being poked, cut open, injected, x-rayed, and various other awful things, I decided I had my fill of being "investigated." By this time our financial situation had improved some, so we thought we could afford adoption.

Frankly, I think the Lord has been preparing me for adoption my entire life. For most women, finding out that you are unable to bare children can be heartbreaking. I, however, was at peace. I was going to be a mother; I had no doubt of that. There were children that were meant to be mine. But we weren't ready to adopt quite yet. First, we needed to move out of our apartment. No adoption social worker in their right mind would allow a child to come into our small apartment. So we began shopping for a house. After about six months we found a house. Boy did we find a house. It was a small house built in 1940. It had a HUGE backyard, perfect for children to run and play. And it was right in our budget. The problem was the house was condemned. There were holes in the roof, in the floors and walls. There had been a fire in the kitchen. The backyard was filled with mounds and mounds of trash and broken cars. It took us three years, doing all of the work ourselves, to finish that house. But we did and it's wonderful.

At first our intention was to finish the house and then begin our adoption paperwork. We had looked into LDS Family Services and domestic adoption of a newborn infant was surprisingly affordable. That was the plan. Then one day I got a phone call from the little sister of a friend of mine. I went to high school with Ashli and we had kept in touch. I barely knew her little sister Rachel. So getting a phone call from Rachel was quite a surprise. We had only been working on the house for about a year. It was far from finished. She told me that there was a woman in her ward in California that was having a baby. This woman had decided that she needed to place her baby up for adoption. Rachel had heard from Ashli that we hoped to adopt, so she wanted to know if we might be interested in this woman's baby. What a surprise phone call in deed! This woman was signed up with LDS Family Services, which meant we had to sign up. So we called our local agency and began our paperwork. What an exciting and stressful time that was. We completed our homestudy and paid the first part of our fees. After a few tense months, we found out that this woman decided to go with another couple. We were heartbroken. But at the same time we felt strongly that this was the Lord telling us that it was time, time to start preparing for a family. So we continued with LDSFS. What followed was the most annoying time of our adoption.

Our social worker was about to retire in a few months. He could care less about his job, let alone us! Getting a hold of him was impossible. Getting anything finished was a nearly impossible task, but we felt we were on the path the Lord wanted us to be on, so we plugged along. After one life changing meeting with our social worker he told us that Kevin was too old. He wasn't too old to adopt, but most birth mothers were only interested in young couples, we were not a "young" couple. So our wait could be a long one. We were definitely discouraged. It was at that point that he told us they had just started a new international adoption program. International adoption always interested us but there was just no way we could afford it. But through LDSFS, the cost was significantly less. So after some prayer, we felt this is what we needed to do. So we signed onto the Ukrainian program.

We were passed on to a new social worker. By now our original social worker had retired already but that didn't matter. For international adoption we had to change social workers anyway. Unfortunately we were given to an intern from BYU. He had just started interning for LDSFS and didn't have a clue about anything. Because he was a student, he was only available two days a week. If we had a question that he didn't know how to answer (and that was every question we asked) he had to ask someone and get back to us the next week. The next week would come and go and no phone calls, so we'd call him only to hear him say "oh, what was I supposed to be finding out for you?" I don't know if I can even describe the frustration we were going through.

I began researching international adoption on the internet. I found the answers to my own questions and then I would call our "intern" and tell him what I found out. It was all news to him, so we began meeting with him and I essentially began training him on his own job! I actually put a folder together for him! The irony that we were the ones paying him, didn't escape me. After more months we were called into his office. We sat down and he said congratulations, you have been approved to adopt from Kazakhstan! Kevin and I just stared at each other. We had signed up to adopt from the Ukraine. We had never even heard of Kazakhstan. He then told us that it was another former Soviet Union country. While LDSFS did offer a Ukraine program, the only country they had successfully completed an adoption through so far was Kazakhstan, so they would rather we adopted from there because they were more familiar with it. I don't think we knew what to think. So, we went home and again, I did a little internet research. It turned out that Kazakhstan was a rather large country, bordering Russia and China. Not only that, it bordered the tiny country of Kyrgyzstan… the country of my grandfathers birth. My grandfather passed away when I was in college. It was really hard on me. I barely knew him. I hadn't seen him since I was 12 years old.

Looking at the a map of the world, seeing Kyrgyzstan, such a tiny country barely seen next to the large country of Kazakhstan, I thought of my grandfather. I knew then that this is where we were supposed to begin building our family. I thought of my grandfather and had the distinct impression that he had some hand in this. Needless to say, we agreed to adopt from Kazakhstan. Our intern was just as "helpful" as always, so I continued to do research on my own. I began reading about older child adoption and Kevin and I both felt this was something we wanted to do. When we approached our BYU intern with this, we found out that LDSFS doesn't allow the adoption of children older than two years old. Since two years old was the oldest child we could get, that's what we signed on for. We began making preparations. We even decorated a nursery, with a crib, a stroller, a car seat…the works. We were amazed at the path we had taken, what had led us to this point.

We thought our journey was coming to an end but we couldn't be more wrong. Not long after finishing the nursery I began doing internet research on roses. When we bought our house, there were several roses in the yard that needed a lot of care. I knew nothing about roses. It was on a rose internet forum that someone mentioned an international adoption forum that I had never heard of. I looked it up and discovered that there was a separate forum for adoptions in Kazakhstan! How exciting. It was only weeks later that I saw a posting on that forum. An organization named Focus on Children was sponsoring a summer hosting program, bringing older children from Kazakhstan to Utah for four weeks. I'm telling you, the Spirit was so loud and clear, the Lord must have been shouting, to be sure I would hear Him:. I called Kevin at work, I was in tears. I told him about the posting, I didn't know any information at all: cost, how the program worked, nothing. But I told Kevin we were doing this! I sent off an email and got a response almost immediately. All we had to have was a finished homestudy (which we had through LDSFS) and pay $250. That was it.

Focus on Children was giving a presentation on the program in Provo. Kevin worked nights but managed to take a few hours off to attend. It was there that we found out the costs of adoption through Focus on Children. Kevin and I just looked at each other. There was no way we could afford to adopt through this agency. But we looked at the board of photos: the children that were coming. It was hard to ignore the faces of these children. There was one boy, an 11 year old named Valera. We both felt instantly drawn to this boy. I had never thought of adopting an 11 year old! We were thinking a 5 or 6 year old would be nice. We couldn't shake him from our thoughts though. So we signed the paperwork and requested to host Valera.

We were the first family to sign up for the program. After that we found out the LDSFS wouldn't release our homestudy. They wouldn't let us use it with another agency. Apparently that was illegal, but even so, they wouldn't budge. So we redid our homestudy with a social worker recommended to us by Focus on Children. Diane, our new social worker was very nice. She felt sorry for us because we had to redo our homestudy so she did it for half the price she normally charges. She came to our home and was very knowledgeable and she gave us a lot of good advice. We really liked her. We managed to complete our new homestudy in May of 2003. All that was left was for her to fill out some paperwork on her end.

The children were supposed to come in June, but because of passport delays they didn't end up being able to leave until the end of July. A few weeks before the children were to arrive we got a phone call. Valera wasn't coming. At the last minute the director at his orphanage had decided he couldn't come. Apparently he wasn't interested in being adopted. Not only that, we found out later that he had some pretty severe emotional problems and I didn't think we would be able to properly care for him had we adopted him. We had felt the Spirit so strongly. We knew we were supposed to host him, so this was very confusing. Scott Banks, the director at Focus on Children told us that Valera was being replaced by another, younger boy. An 8 year old named Fedor. Because Fedor wasn't originally supposed to come, his photo hadn't been posted on the board at the first FOC meeting. Scott forwarded a photo of Fedor to me, on my email. He was a cute little boy. We were so confused though. It was Scott that said to me, "I know you guys felt so strongly about Valera, but maybe this is the reason why. I think some things happen for a reason." So we agreed to host Fedor.

Two weeks later the children arrived at the Salt Lake International Airport. We recognized Fedor as soon as we saw him. He was so small for his age, and so cute. He was drawn to Kevin immediately. Kevin was taking photos of everything for Focus on Children and Fedor thought his camera was cool:. That night is a blur. If we didn't have photos, I don't know if I would remember anything that happened. I remember lying in bed that night listening to Fedor whistle and sing a little tune in Russian. Kevin turned to me and said, with a huge grin on his face, there's a little Russian boy singing in the next bedroom:. The next three ½ weeks were unlike anything we had ever experienced.

There was one night during the summer program that Fedor asked me what "mama" was in English. I said "mommy." He touched my face, looked me in the eyes and said "mommy." I gave him a kiss, said good night and walked into the living room, where I cried for an hour. Needless to say, before the day came that the children had to return to Kazakhstan, Kevin and I had signed an adoption contract with Focus on Children. Fedor was our son; there was no doubt about that.

Again we thought we were set. But no…. because of troubles in the country our adoption was delayed for a year and a half. All that time went by and I thought of our little Fedor. Kevin and I refinanced our newly renovated house to help pay for our adoption. We also received some help from A Child Waits Foundation. We were so anxious to go. But during that time we realized that we wanted to adopt two children. Not just one. There was a little boy Sergei that came for the summer program as well. His host family backed out of their adoption for him so we decided to adopt him as well. We were disappointed to find out from Coleen at Focus on Children that we couldn't get any grants for the adoption of Sergei. For a while there we didn't think we'd be able to come up with the additional money to adopt Sergei. But we sold our Jeep, had yard sales and borrowed money from family. Finally we were ready to adopt our two boys.

When we finally arrived in Kazakhstan we were told that Sergei wasn't available for adoption after all! What painful news. But then we met our Misha. When we saw him, we knew he was our son. So after 10 weeks in Kazakhstan (more delays!) we brought home our two boys… John Fedor and Robert Mikhail. John was now ten years old but he still remembered us and has been waiting for us. Robbie is eight years old and happy to finally have a family.

We've been home four months now. The four months have been crazy, exhausting, and wonderful. Both of our boys have some pretty severe emotional issues that we've all been trying to deal with. But we still have fun times and lot's of snuggles. We are so thrilled to have these two boys. They truly are OUR children.

Anita Schley

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