I mentioned before how we went through Val Cocariu and his wife Nancy for Errin’s adoption. Val and Nancy are both Romanian. Nancy was born here in the United States, however Val was born in Romania. When Ceausescu and the Romanian Communist Party took over the country, Val escaped and made his way to Switzerland. He secured a job working on a cruise ship traveling back and forth to the United States. On one of these cruises, he got off the boat in New York and never went back. Val made his way to Michigan where he had heard there was a large community of Romanian people. He made friends, and they helped him become an American citizen. This is where he met Nancy and they were married.

When Ceausescu's Communist party was overthrown in 1989, and he and his wife were executed on Christmas day, Val knew what the conditions were for the children in the orphanages. He and Nancy decided to start their own adoption agency to see if they could help as many children as they could to have a better chance in life, and become part of a real family who would love and care for them. Unlike many others, Val and Nancy were not in it to make money. Their ONLY concern was to help the orphan children of Romania. These two have earned their sainthood medals in my book!!!

Other families in Utah had gone through Val and Nancy, and that is where our friends, the Randall's heard about them. We were told Val and Nancy were honest and had good intentions. Unfortunately this was not the case with many adoption agencies working out of Romania. At the time private adoptions were allowed and it became a huge money maker. It was a way for the poor and destitute to make a lot of money. At the time the median wage in Romanian was $40 a month. To receive anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 for a baby, would set a family up for life. Many of them were just out to make money buying and selling babies. There are mainly two different groups of people in Romania. The Roma's or Gypsies, who hail from the days of Peter the Great when he infiltrated, raped, pillaged and took over that part of the world. This brought the Roma people to the area that is now known as Romania and surrounding countries. The other group are blonde, blue eyed, and are of Eastern European descent. This group is the minority, mainly because the Roma's marry very young - at 14 or 15 years of age, are known to be extremely fertile, and have lots of babies.

I don’t like talking about the money aspect of adoption, however, it is a BIG part of the process, and as disgusting as it is to exchange money for a human life, it is what it is. I don’t EVER look at it as “buying a child”, I look at it as doing whatever it takes to save a life and complete a family. Because we had always felt there were three children who were supposed to be in our little family, we began saving every penny we could to come up with $18,000 for one child and $10,000 for a second one. Family and friends soon began sending us cards with money to add to our “Romanian Adoption Fund”! For the next nine months, we saved as much as we could. Things were tight, but we always seemed to have what was needed for the costs and expenses that were piling up. This is one of the biggest leaps of faith I have ever personally made. I handed it over to the Lord from the start, and it was blind faith from beginning to end. Ron said, do what you need to do, I’m just going to work hard to make sure we have what we need to make it happen. We each had our role and worked side-by-side to reach the common goal.

We knew we wanted two more kids, and I did all the paperwork to get those two kids. This was a huge expense and a lot of work as each adoption needed 5-6 copies of every single document.

Each document had to be notarized with a raised seal. This was quite a challenge because notary seals had all changed to just a rubber stamp with ink. We were able to find a raised seal at our local bank - Barnes Bank, however it was just their bank seal. Lamont Tingey was so kind to find this stamp and make sure we were able to have someone who knew where it was to stamp all our documents as each file grew thicker and thicker. We had each document notarized with the inked stamp and then with the raised bank seal as well. For some reason in Romania they had to be able to "feel" the seal to authorize it as official and acceptable. The raised stamp could have said "K-Mart" on it and they would have accepted it over a legally notarized inked stamp!

A good friend and neighbor, Bruce Ashcraft, worked for Zion's Bank. We will forever be in his debt for the many late nights we had to call him to notarize last minute document requests. He was always kind and willing to do whatever was necessary to help us with anything that needed to be notarized.

As we waded through the red tape and documentation that seemed to take forever, we were also gathering things from a list of items we had received from Val and Nancy.

They told us these things were necessary to “Help sway the opinions of government officials who had the power to grant or deny adoptions.” I was disgusted to learn the future of innocent children’s lives was based on gifts and bribes to help the process go faster and smoother! And this was all done legally!!! Everything we did was done exactly to the letter of obedience with our government as well as the extremely corrupt Romanian government. This was my first taste of seeing how people in these countries will do ANYTHING to survive. Don’t get me wrong, we met many people who were filled with kindness, compassion, empathy, and the LIGHT of Christ, but the darkness of the adversary was every bit as prominent.

Some of these items included: cigarettes - a shipping box full of cigarettes! Being non-smokers, we had no clue how many different kinds of cigarettes there are?!!! The preferred brand in Romania was "Menthol Cools", which we soon discovered was not a popular brand here in the United States, and very difficult to find. You should have seen us at Sam’s Club asking for help to find these cigarettes.  Other things on the list were ball-point pens, and they were specific the pens had to be “ball-point pens”, disposable shaving razors, cases and cases of pediatric medication, both prescription and over the counter. Most of the prescription medications were antibiotics donated by Dr. Robert Treft and Dr. Corey Ericksen. The over the counter medication was mostly Advil, Tylenol, and Triaminic Cough Syrup.

The paperwork required by the U.S. government as well as the Romanian government was monumental!

I spent hours and hours at INS in Salt Lake City with Stephanie in tow. What a God-send she was for me! She has Ron’s calm and kind temperament - patient, well mannered, and supportive of getting a little brother or sister through adoption. The poor thing survived on Chick-Fil-A nuggets that I would stop and buy on the way to have something else to fill up the time as we sat and waited for our number to be called on the dirty filthy chairs at INS. I didn’t dare let her get down on the floor to play, it was so dirty. Have I mentioned what a germ-a-phobe I am?  Steph has always been wise beyond her years, and at five years old, she was no exception. The next 2-3 years were some of the most difficult I have experienced in my life. I don't know what I would have done without Steph's sweet, loving, innocent, kind service to me and her future siblings.

All the other adoptive parents we talked to had gotten their clearance to leave in 3-4 months. We could not figure out or understand why ours was taking so long?!!!! Ron and I had a crystal clear background check, and had never been arrested or in trouble with the law. I had never even gotten a moving violation! We contacted Senator Orrin Hatch's office to see if they could help us. The clock was ticking and Romanian officials were not happy with the bad press they had received in the 20/20 television programs. Adoptions could be shut down permanently at any given time, and if our papers weren't submitted to the Romanian courts before adoptions shut down, we would not be able to get our children.

Because I knew we would more than likely be leaving at a moment’s notice, I began packing everything we would need months in advance. It was satisfying to see our little stack growing and the visible progress we were making. I love to organize things, and our adoption was no different. I knew exactly what size boxes we could take on the airplane, how many bags we could take, and how much they could weigh. Because we needed six copies of each document, I had all our paperwork in six separate file folders that all fit nicely inside one bigger protective plastic one. Our passports were there, I had the phone numbers of everyone we would need to call at the last minute to finalize our travel plans, and I was so ready to go!!!

Finally nine long months later our paperwork was FINALLY approved!!! And then the wait began for the phone call from Val and Nancy. Around the first of May we received a phone call from Nancy telling us they had a little three year old boy for us. I didn't say anything at the time, but I was actually sick inside as I felt absolutely NOTHING when we received this news! We had prayed for an infant, one who would not have as many emotional issues, why did this feel so wrong to me? I hoped my feeling would change when I actually saw him, but pretended to be excited and went out to purchase diapers for a small under-developed boy who would most likely not be potty-trained and may not even know how to walk yet. Many of the children in the orphanages suffer from "Failure to Thrive", and we needed to be prepared for that. This in addition to poor pre-natal nutrition and care makes for "small for gestational weight" babies. Babies that are small for gestational weight never do catch up.

No sooner had I attained all the items I thought we would need, when we received another phone call from Nancy telling us the little boy was not adoptable. He had a mother and father who were married, although not living together as the father was in prison. The only children who could be adopted had to be deemed a "true orphan", which meant they could not have a mother and father who were married and living together. I felt so guilty as a wave of relief rushed over me . . . for some reason I knew this child was never meant to be ours. My greater fear was that if we did receive another call, would I feel the exact same way? Maybe I wasn't cut out to be an adoptive mother after all?!!! I began doubting my ability to bond with, nurture and love another mother's child.

It was around this time I finally went to the Dr. to find out what was wrong with me. I had been sick for over a month and was not getting any better, if anything I was getting worse. I couldn't imagine why I felt so yucky. Dr. Reiser came in and asked me a few questions and then suggested they run some tests. He knew I was going to Romania any day, and was excited but nervous to have me go. He came back in and said, I think you better sit down. All I could think of was, I have cancer and I’m going to die. The words that came out of his mouth next floored me, he told me I was pregnant! I began sobbing, not that I didn’t want this baby, but knowing how much harder this would now be for me. The very thing I had been praying for over the past five years had happened, however, I KNEW that I also had a child in Romania and this was going to complicate things immensely. I am NOT one of those easy pregnancy kind of women. I throw-up numerous times a day, from day one to the day of delivery. This was NOT going to be the trip I had envisioned. Dr. Riser told me it was good news because now I didn't need to go to Romania anymore. I looked at him and told him he didn't understand. He told me it would be extremely dangerous for me to go to a country in my condition. That my pregnancy was high-risk, and he strongly advised me not to go. It is unbelievable how many things came up that made going to Romania harder and harder. A rational me, would have thrown in the towel at that point, and said two kids are enough. But I knew at that very moment the next phone call I got from Nancy, would confirm to my soul that this child was the one we had been waiting for, and my feelings this time would be much different from her last phone call. Yes, we would have three children, I just didn’t think I would be giving birth to the third one! The uncertainty of not knowing how long we would be in Romania worried me, and I started praying that we could get there and back home sooner than we had been told. Everyone told us to plan on being there at least three to four months! I also started praying that I would NOT have to throw-up in a public place. All I can say is the Lord hears and answers prayers!

We received the next phone call around the middle of May, if I remember correctly, I believe it was the night before Steph's fifth birthday, May 18th, 1991. It was a Saturday morning and the call woke us up. It was Nancy telling us there was an eight-pound-blonde-haired blue-eyed baby girl who had been born on May 8th. Just a few weeks old. Did I mention Ron had a dream a few weeks prior to this that we had adopted a little blonde-haired-blue-eyed girl and she looked just like me? We had a good laugh after his dream, because we had NEVER seen a Romanian baby that wasn’t of the beautiful dark-curly-haired-dark-eyes Roma descent, and we were ok with that! My heart and soul KNEW this was the one, and I would soon be on my way to bring her home. There was no doubt in my mind this time! I knew she was our daughter and somehow this was all in the plan before we came to this earth. She was ALWAYS meant to be ours, I just had to go half-way around the world to get her! I often wonder if this was a test of my faith to see if I would follow through with the promptings of preparation that had started years before. I immediately went out and returned all the little boy items, and exchanged them for little girl items. I remember the butterflies and excitement I felt, and thank goodness this feeling was much different than before.

It seemed things were FINALLY on the right track. I KNEW right and LIGHT would prevail. Yes there might be more road bumps along the way, but my soul could not deny the affirmation I had received with Nancy’s phone call. This baby might not be born of my body, but I KNEW she had been born of my heart. And at that moment my soul was filled with LOVE and LIGHT!!! Stay tuned for more chapters in our adoption saga . . .

Love Ya, Les ☺