Our Journey to Adoption

By Laura D.

My husband and I always knew we wanted a family. After trying to conceive unsuccessfully, we decided to take matters into our own hands. Adoption was an easy decision for us. After attending a Wide Horizons meeting and also hearing local families' testimonials, we were happy with the way WHFC was recommended.

One day I was checking WHFC's website and it said they were starting a pilot program in Kazakhstan and looking for families. After speaking with the program manager, Debbie Mansfield, we set off to begin putting together our dossier. It seemed like collecting all of the paperwork was an endless task, but we took it step by step and submitted our dossier in December 2005. Things moved pretty quickly for us, every couple of weeks we were informed of where our paperwork was and what to expect next. We were open to a child of either gender between the ages of 6 and 16 months. In April 2006 we got the invitation to travel to Kazakhstan, where we would meet and learn about our child for the very first time.

When we arrived, we met with the in-country facilitator Svetlana and I will never forget the first words whe said to us. "Tomorrow you will meet a beautiful little boy, he has dark hair and is no trouble at all." We were introduced to our 8-month-old son from Petropavlovsk. When we held him in our arms we knew he was meant to be ours. We named him Trey and were very impressed with the care he received at the baby house. He was healthy and full of life!

Our time in Kazakhstan was a very positive experience. We will never forget the people we met, places we saw, and culture we experienced. We came home in May 2006 and Trey has adjusted beautifully. He is a very friendly, easygoing, and active little boy. He loves to play outside, look at books, and just be a boy! We are so in love with him and know how lucky we are to have him. To other families considering adopting from Kazakhstan we just want to let them know how beautiful the children are and what a wonderful in-country team WHFC has over there.

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