Our Adoption Story – Orenburg/Orsk trip with Frank Adoption Center – Raleigh, NC
The following is a summary of our experience with Frank Adoption Agency of Raleigh, NC. We attempted to adopt two Russian children that were “healthy” or at least had issues that were “fixable” or considered “mild & correctable”. Many items that these children suffered from could be fixed with a little love, nutrition and western medicine.
After completing the volumes of paperwork (with changing standards) – our home study was completed by January 2005. Being new “entrees” – we are required to wait “our turn”. After seeing many families receive their referrals of single children in the summer and two “false starts” that evaporated after months of hope, we requested to Frank on October 10th, 2006 that we change our request from two to one child since in appeared to us that this was part of the reason for our delay. A funny thing happened – the very next day (October 11th, 2006) – we were told that two children had been hand picked by the Andrei (Frank’s Orenburg / Orsk coordinator) and we must travel within the next few days. The only “catch” was that the referral was “blind” (no medical information would be provided until we were there in the region). We did receive date of births and were assured that the coordinator has hand picked these children for us and they would easily meet the requirements outlined in our dossier of healthy or mild & correctable. If the 2 children we were traveling to see did not work out for health reasons, we were told there were numerous other healthy children to choose from. Our social worker told us that the worst thing that would happen, would be that we would be required to stay in the region for a few days longer than anticipated while the Andrei located other children for us. We happily accepted and due to that unlikely possibility – we should only purchase a last minute / refundable / changeable / expensive airline ticket (i.e. -- 3 days advance purchase / changeable / international airfare is NOT cheap !!). We also padded a few extra days onto our trip while preparing the last minute visa (expensive, but Frank was able to help out for a fee).
Again, on the advice of our social worker – we opted for the services of a Russian based doctor to review the medical information that will be provided to us once in the country. We felt that this was a good move since neither of us had any type of medical background (again, last minute). We were lucky to find a highly qualified doctor in Dr. Vadim Ivanov. He is Chief Pediatrician of the American Clinic in Moscow and is a certified doctor in Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Frank approved our selection. What we found out later was how ethical he was.
Going through the last minute checklist with Frank – we were told not to declare any of the approx. $8,000 in cash / currency (USD) to the Russian customs officials. To say the least – carrying that amount of cash made us nervous, even more in a land far, far away. We obliged and put faith in our trust for Frank.
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