Angels from Near and Far A Resource for Adopting Children

Indrasari at the age of 2-1/2 years, with Carol and Danny, camping at Lake Michigan

The decision to adopt was easy, the hard part was deciding where to adopt from. After undergoing a hysterectomy we started looking into adoption. We picked a local agency to do our home study. We had already decided on an international adoption as neither of us could bear the thought of having a birth mother change her mind, and decide not to go through with the adoption. Danny was born and raised in Indonesia, so we decided to check into their adoption rules. It took us almost a year to get the information we needed, only to be told we were too old - we were both over 40. Next we heard of a young boy in Thailand whose parents had been killed in an accident. We contacted the head of his orphanage. It sounded perfect. The child was 5-years-old, it was hoped he would go to live in America, and there would not be any agency fees. After writing and faxing information back and forth for several months, the director notified us that he had a rule for his orphanage that all adoptive parents had to be married at least 6 years before they would be considered. This left us out as we had been married for only three years. So it was back to the drawing board.

One day I got off work early and went home, opened up a current copy of an adoption magazine, and started calling all the agencies that listed a toll free phone number, asking for information on their programs in Asia. A few weeks later I started getting all kinds of brochures. My head started to swim as I tried to decide which program sounded the best for us, but still didn’t know which country to choose.

By this time we had had our first interview for our home study and our social worker told us we needed to start focusing on a country or program. For our fourth wedding anniversary we went out to dinner and the topic turned to how to decide what to do next. We knew we wanted an Asian child and would prefer a girl (after our disappointment with the boy in Thailand we decided, if possible, we would request a daughter). Just thinking aloud Danny wondered if there were many children available in Hawaii. Hawaii certainly has a large Asian population, perhaps there was a child available through their Human Services Department and maybe we would be lucky and find a child whose parental rights were already severed. I told Danny it just so happened that I had gotten a brochure from one of the agencies I had called earlier that listed an office in Hawaii (along with a toll free phone number) and I said I would call the number the next day.

The next day I placed my call only to reach an answering machine, so I left a message. Within a few days the facilitator called and like most men, Danny told her to call back later when I was home.

She called back later that day and within five minutes I knew she would be the person to guide us on our "fantastic journey" to become parents. She informed us that we wouldn’t have much luck finding a child to adopt in Hawaii, but had we considered adopting from Cambodia. The program sounded too good to be true - we could choose the age and sex of the child we wanted to adopt, one of us would have to travel and could either stay one week and have our child escorted home or stay the entire 5 weeks and take her home ourselves. This country did not have any specific rules on the age of parents or how long they had to be married. She told us that she was going back to Cambodia in a few weeks and stay for five to six weeks. When she returned she would have more information for us on what we needed to do. She also gave us the name of a family in Hawaii that had just adopted their infant son from there. After hanging up the phone I told Danny about this program and he said if I felt so strongly about it, that’s what we should do. We anxiously awaited receiving more information.

Where I work I was not the only one in the adoption process. One of my co-workers, Connie (and her husband Bob) had decided on an international adoption, but were having the same trouble as Danny and I had deciding on a country. They were using the same local agency for their home study and we were at the same stage of the process.

We then started focusing all our energy on Cambodia and eventually so did Connie and Bob. Danny and I decided I would travel there, identify a child, and return home in one week. Connie and Bob chose to travel at the same time and stay the entire time and escort our child home. So in April, 1996, the three of us got on a plane and traveled half way around the world to to change our lives forever.

Stepping off the plane in a developing country is culture shock to the max. We were in no way prepared for the mass of taxi drivers all wanting us to get into their cabs. Within an hour of arriving we were on our way to lunch with the two facilitators who would help us through the maze of adoption. Shortly after lunch we were on our way to visit a government official and get our letter of introduction that would allow us to go to the orphanage and see the children. We had arrived on a Sunday so our first visit to the orphanage was an unofficial one. We were shown each room from the new-born infants to the older children. Most of the children were boys. Most of the girls were already in the process of being adopted. In the older children’s building I was introduced to a girl who was about one-year-old. I was told she had just arrived the day before my visit and the nannies told us they were told she was to be adopted and go to America. I was walking on air the rest of the day and when Danny called me that night I described our daughter to him. I couldn’t wait until the next morning - we were to meet our facilitator for breakfast then go to the orphanage to accept referral of our children. Connie and Bob went first - they wanted an infant girl - as young as possible. They were brought a 4-month-old girl who they were told the day before was to be adopted by a family in Singapore. When they were told they could adopt her they were elated and said yes immediately.

It was then my turn. We asked about the one-year-old I had met the day before. There was a lot of whispered discussion and then I was told they would need to talk to a government official, as that child was going to be adopted by a local family. The government official came to the office and he confirmed that she would be adopted by someone else. My heart fell to my feet. What would I do now.

There were many boys available from newborn to school age, but before I left Danny and I had decided on a daughter (we already had her name picked out) and I was torn about what to do. The directress of the orphanage then mentioned the "little one" was back from the hospital and would I like to see her. I said okay and they brought in a tiny bundle and placed in my arms the smallest baby I had ever seen - she was 10 weeks old and fit in the crook of my arm (later that day I found out she weighed slightly over 4 pounds.) I held her foot up to my hand and it was the length of my little finger. Tears filled my eyes. I didn’t know what to do; we had decided we were "too old" for an infant, so had focused on adopting a toddler. Kravann, however, made the decision for me. She grabbed my finger and looked at me with her huge eyes and stole my heart. I remember saying "do you think we can do this?" Everyone assured me that we could and as they say, the rest is history. Indra's former name, Kravann, means fragrant wild flower.

When Danny called me that night I told him there had been a change and our daughter was younger and smaller than we had anticipated. She had been born February 7th, had lived with her birthmother for a month and then developed severe diarrhea. She was brought to the orphanage on a Saturday, and taken to the hospital for medical treatment. She had been in the hospital for about a month and had just been returned to the orphanage shortly before my arrival. When I described her to Danny and asked him if he thought we could do this, he said yes immediately.

My week in our baby's country flew by. It seemed like just minutes after Kravann was placed in my arms I was saying good-bye and heading back to the United States. It was so hard to leave her, but I knew Connie and Bob would watch out for her and bring her safely home to us.

The next month seemed to fly by and crawl by at the same time. There were problems with INS approval and a question of whether they would issue a visa without my going back to get her. Everything was straightened out in the nick of time and on May 30, 1996 Kravann Rath arrived home in Minnesota and became Indrasari MacKenzie Mursid.

I had been warned that her health was again a concern. When she arrived home she was covered with scabies - she had weeping sores all over her body - she was too weak to even scratch them. We took her to our pediatrician the next day. He diagnosed her as being malnourished - even though she was being fed every two hours she could not digest the formula. Her doctor immediately switched her to a special, pre-digested enzyme formula and told us to take her to the International Adoption Clinic at the University of Minnesota as soon as possible. He said she had medical concerns that they would be best able to take care of.

One week later Indrasari was admitted to the University of Minnesota Hospital with the diagnoses of scabies, pneumonia, a partially collapsed lung, enlarged liver and spleen, a nonfunctioning immune system, and possible tuberculosis. We lived at the hospital for the next five days while she had test upon test. Her scabies cleared up almost overnight when treated (by this time Danny and I had them too and had to be treated). She had a chest x-ray, CAT scan, cultures were taken to see if she did indeed have tuberculosis and they tested her eyes when a therapist expressed concern about her not following toys with her eyes. (They later told us they thought she was blind in her left eye). They told us they considered her developmentally to be a newborn even though she was four-months-old. When they admitted her to the hospital she weighed 5 pounds 14 ounces.

Indrasari was discharged on five medications and the need to be followed daily by a visiting nurse and weekly by her regular pediatrician and the doctors at the University. What a welcome to parenthood. My five week family leave was a blur of hospitals, doctors’ offices, and visiting nurses and physical therapists. The bottom line turned out to be Indrasari had been exposed to tuberculosis and needed to be treated with INH for about 11 months, as did Connie and Bob’s daughter Ivy. She was also found to be near sighted in one eye and far sighted in the other and got her first pair of glasses at age 10 months. She has had biweekly visits from the physical therapist and in the past year also the speech therapist. The health nurse stopped coming to the house about a year ago. Now that Indrasari is three-years-old she goes to a preschool program for her therapy instead of the therapists coming to our house.

People have told us repeatedly how lucky Indrasari is to have us as her parents, that we have done wonders with her. Our answer to these people is that we are the lucky ones. She is the one who had to fight to live and go through all the testing and take all the medication. We just had the job of loving her, holding her, feeding her, and giving her a reason to want to live. Indrasari has been a constant source of joy to us and all who know her. She has become a favorite customer at the grocery store; when the clerks see Grandma on Saturday morning they ask where Indrasari is. One of the deli cashiers told me "She’s so beautiful. I see a lot of children here, but she is special, she has a special glow about her". Danny and I believe this glow is from her joy for living. It almost seems like she knows how close she came to dying - we were told she would have lived only a few more months if she had stayed in her native land - they just didn’t have the proper nutrition or medication for her. Indrasari is doing great now. She is still very small for her age - she has never been on the American child growth chart, but her pediatrician says she is following the "Indrasari growth chart" very nicely.

Indrasari, Third Birthday.