Jim & Gretchen Sexton
Kevin & Pam Frye
Tom & Stacy Hernandez

Jim and Gretchen Sexton
The Sextons had been unable to conceive after Gretchen's dangerously difficult pregnancy. Further surgery revealed that she would be unable to get pregnant. This information coupled with their son's seven-week stay in hospitals after his premature birth helped them reach the decision to adopt. When their son was three, they began the process of open, domestic adoption. Letters describing themselves and their family life together were sent far and wide. Nine months later, only one call had occurred and no adoption plans were forthcoming from it. At that point, it became difficult to think about explaining this process to their son. What if the birth mother changed her mind? How would they tell their son that now he didn't have the sibling they had been hoping and planning for?

With careful examination of these concerns, they decided to abandon the adoption process. Four months later, China opened its doors to families who already had children. Gretchen felt it was time to reexamine adoption and their family. Their son's best friend was, herself, an adopted child from China.

After talking to the professionals at Harmony Adoptions, they decided to proceed with adopting a healthy infant girl from China. The paperwork began in February 1999. In August 1999 (after a lengthy delay by the INS) their dossier made it to CCAI (Chinese Center for Adoption IIII). They waited nine months before receiving a photo of their daughter. Her medical information followed right after that.

The hardest part of the wait had begun. Only six weeks left, but now they seemed like six years. There was a precious girl whose face they knew and whose presence already had a place in their hearts. Preparations were made, and plans for the care of their son were made. Bags were packed and repacked.

At last, the day for their departure had arrived. In their first stop at the Chicago airport they met the other couples with whom they had been corresponding. With only one minor glitch, they arrived in Hong Kong. The two-hour delay in Chicago cost them their connecting flight to Beijing. So, they spent the night in Hong Kong. The next day, they arrived in Beijing.

China was fascinating - and their guide quite helpful and knowledgeable. Sights they visited included: the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, downtown shopping, a jade factory and a famed tourist store. The next day, they flew to the island of their daughter's orphanage. That afternoon, they were escorted to the Administrative offices of the orphanage and had their daughter placed in their arms. The wait was over!

Now began the process of filling out the remaining paperwork. Hours were spent in offices while the Chinese officials and notaries worked at a pace to complete reports and papers correctly. Pictures were taken.

And so it went for the next three days. In addition to doing this required work, they toured the island and got a feel for what it was like to live there. Rolls of film and lots of video recorded sights and sounds. Both Jim and Gretchen kept journals. One day, their daughter would want to know all that could be told about this place.
 
After five days, the paperwork for the Chinese government was complete. The next flight was to the city of Guangzhou, in southern China. At the White Swan, there were lots of adoptive families, all in different stages of paperwork. Each day, another step was completed and they were that much closer to coming home. All the paperwork required in Guangzhou was for the United States to obtain an immigration visa of their daughter.
At long last, the day came to sit in front of an embassy official and swear that this was the child they had agreed to adopt, to care for her as their own, never abandon her, educate her, and make her a U.S. citizen by the age of 16. The visa was granted and they were set to fly home the next day.
 
Thirty-one hours and four stopovers later, they were greeted at their home airport by waiting family. Road weary, but so grateful to have been blessed with this precious baby girl, they began the journey home.

Today, Jim and Gretchen are the proud parents of not only a handsome son, but a lively and delightful daughter. Would they do it again? Without a doubt! The gifts these children bring to their lives are tremendous, and they can't imagine a family without either one.

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Kevin and Pam Frye
Our adoption experience began in 1999. After several years of trying various medical procedures to correct the reasons for our infertility, we decided to adopt. My husband, Kevin, and I did not feel comfortable with the idea of pursuing more expensive and intrusive medical procedures. At this point, we had grieved and accepted our inability to conceive. We had not, however, accepted our childlessness. This led us to the decision to adopt.

My sister, Denise, once told me, “There is a child for you, Pam. It is just a matter of finding that child.” This statement gave me so much hope in a time when I felt hopeless. My husband and I thought that our families would accept an adopted child. We let our families know that we were open to adopting trans-racially. We received only positive feedback from them.

In January of 2000, we began the hard work of adoption paperwork. Our social worker met with us in our home. After receiving detailed information about the process of Chinese adoption, we made our decision to adopt a little girl from The Peoples Republic of China. It took us a long time to get our paperwork together, mostly due to delays with INS. After collecting birth certificates, marriage certificates, background checks, medical reports, our dossier had to be notarized, certified and authenticated. Anyone who has ever been involved with international adoption knows those terms well. This process basically verifies that your documents are real. In November of 2000, our dossier went to China. The waiting process began.

And we waited and waited! We used this time to get our nursery together. Our friends gave us hand me downs. We are fortunate that all of our friends have girls. We dreamed of our little girl. In the meantime, we became the adoption experts. Several of our friends decided to adopt domestically. We gave them advice and supported them. They adopted their babies. We waited!

On November 29, 2001, I got the call we had waited for so long. Our little girl was coming home. We raced home from work to see an emailed picture of her. She was bald and very solemn looking. Her name was Tang Siwei. She was nine months old. That evening we went to my father’s 70th birthday party with a picture of his new granddaughter. It is an evening that we will never forget. The next day, we received a Fed Ex package with our acceptance letter and two pictures. Let me tell you, those pictures become the most precious things that we owned. We hurriedly signed our letter and mailed it back.

On January 17, 2002, we left for China. We celebrated my 38th birthday in Beijing touring the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. It was so cold that we wore sweaters, coats, gloves and hats, and we were still cold. The next day we flew to Guangzhou where we stayed for the remainder of our trip. For nearly two weeks, the White Swan Hotel became our home.

On January 21, 2002, we became mamma and dad. We were instructed to wait in our rooms and that our daughters would be presented to us in our rooms at 3:00. We waited! At around 5:00 P.M., we received the call. I thought to myself, “Is this what it feels like to give birth?” We were told that there would be a group presentation of the girls on the fifth floor. Our entire group ran to our meeting spot. There stood six young women holding six baby girls. We thought that we recognized our daughter, but were unsure. I ran up to all of the girls and checked them out unaware that we were supposed to wait to have our daughters presented to us. When I finally realized the procedure, I stood back and looked. I was pretty sure that I recognized her. She was the most animated one. She was smiling and reaching out to be held. The moment finally came. I ran up to grab her. My husband stood back and took pictures to immortalize the moment.

The remainder of our time in China seems like a blur of touring, signing paperwork and adjusting to parenthood. One moment stands out for me. As was our daily routine, we went down to the restaurant for breakfast. I was overcome with emotion to see the restaurant filled with all of these families and their new daughters. There were younger and older couples. There were Caucasian, Asian and biracial couples. Several single women fed their daughters. It reminded me of that song, Happy Adoption Day, by John McCutcheon:

Some parents come different, some come the same.
But whether they're single or pairs,
You’re never alone you’re always at home
Wherever there's love we can share.

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Tom and Stacy Hernandez
For me, Stacy, the desire to adopt had been placed in my heart by God, long before my own birth. Something inside of me always wanted to adopt a child, but I had no idea that it would ever come to be. When I met my husband, Tom, at the age of 35, we talked about whether or not we would want children and we discussed adoption. We decided because of my “advanced maternal age”, that we would try to have a biological child first and then adopt later. Well, God had other plans for us….

We began trying to have a baby not long after I turned 38 and I was able to conceive; five times actually…but sadly, all of my pregnancies ended before 16 weeks. We finally decided that there was no reason for us to wait any longer on starting the adoption process, so in October of 2000, we began the paper chase. Our hearts were drawn to Guatemala and we were able to find a truly amazing agency with an outstanding program in Guatemala. Again, we were being led by God to the child He had planned for us. We were fingerprinted in November, and mailed off our completed dossier at the end of December. The wait for INS approval was excruciating, as our agency will not put us on their waiting list until we received our letter of approval.

I ran home every day at lunch to check the mail, and finally, on February 8, 2001, we were approved and officially on the waiting list. We did not specify what gender of child we wanted, (we knew that God had already picked our child for us). But, because so many people wanted girls we started at number eight on the list for a boy, and 25 for a girl. We knew we were going to have a boy! I was overjoyed!

The waiting truly was the hardest part. At least when we were running around getting our paperwork notarized and sealed, we had some control over the process; but now it was totally out of our hands. In April, our agency’s Guatemala director called to tell me that we were next in line for a boy! We received our referral on April 26th. The agency called and then immediately e-mailed me pictures of our beautiful baby boy and all of his medical information.

We were so excited…we called everyone we knew that night! We accepted within a few days and then the really hard waiting began. You see, in Guatemala, your court processes begin AFTER your referral, so you know what your baby looks like, and where he is, and you watch him growing via videotape, but you can’t go get him and hold him in your arms! It was the hardest wait of my life. It seems like there wasn’t a minute of each day that I didn’t think of him.

Our process seemed to move through the court process really quickly at first, and it seemed that we would be going to get our son much sooner than we had thought! But, my world came to a screeching halt when our agency called to inform us that instead of releasing our case, they wanted us to redo one of our documents. That meant running around for signatures, notarizing, driving to Nashville, then waiting weeks for the embassy in D.C. to release it back to Guatemala. Finally, the last week of August, we were told to book our flights!!!!

We arrived in Guatemala City on September 2, 2002. at around 9:00 p.m. Guatemala time. We were exhausted, but we knew we were going to be meeting our son that night, so we were so excited and anxious. We thought we were going to be meeting him in the hotel lobby, but our agency representative met us at the airport and said “He’s in the car!” I couldn’t get there fast enough! They opened the back door to the van and I climbed inside and there, sleeping so sweetly was my beautiful baby boy. I couldn’t believe it! He was even more beautiful and amazing than I had imagined. We checked into our hotel, turned in all of our paperwork and went to our room and just stared at Jacob for hours. We just couldn’t believe that we were finally there…with our son!

The next morning, we were taken to the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City and we signed our paperwork and swore an oath and that was it…we were done and our adoption was final! Our agency coordinator would pick up Jacob’s visa that afternoon and we would fly home the next day!

Later that day, we were taken to the facility called “Hannah’s Hope”, that is run by our agency. This is where Jacob had lived, been loved, and cared for since his birth. The facility was so amazing…warm and inviting and obviously the best care our son could have received until we could bring him home. Several of the workers came and hugged him and cried to see him leave. We were in awe of the amazing staff and facilities of Hannah’s Hope.

That evening we had the privilege of meeting Jacob’s birthmother. We talked through an interpreter for about 45 minutes and answered any questions she had for us. We wanted so much to reassure her that her beautiful baby boy would be loved and cherished and taken care of. It was a very sad and bittersweet meeting, but I am so glad that we had the chance to meet her. She hugged me and kissed my cheek when we parted, and I just pray that she has peace with her decision. My feeling was that she was happy with us and felt reassured with her decision. I promised to send her photos and letters and that if Jacob wanted to meet her when he was older, that we would bring him back to Guatemala to find her. She smiled through her tears, and we cried and prayed for her.

We left early the following morning and we were greeted at the airport by about 30 of our friends and relatives. We were exhausted, but glowing with happiness. Jacob has been home now for about six months and he is the absolute love of our lives. I think sometimes that I couldn’t love him any more than I do, my heart is so full…but somehow my love for him grows more every day.

Adoption is the most amazing experience of our lives and we are so glad that this was God’s plan for us. In fact, we have just finished our dossier to go back to Guatemala and hopefully sometime in the next year and a half we will bring home our baby girl!

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