Then, Gary learned through one of his work clients about a couple, also from Indiana, who had raised four biological children and adopted two more from Ukraine. The family shared their story and pointed Dawn and Gary to ukrainianangels.org, a website for people interested in Ukrainian independent adoptions. Those are kids we could adopt, Dawn thought, as she looked through the site’s photos. Wanting to share her discovery, she called her mom, who said she had just been praying that God would answer Dawn and Gary’s prayers regarding children. “The combination made it pretty clear that we were meant to adopt children from Ukraine,” Dawn says. The couple decided to adopt independently rather than go through an agency or attorney. They sought advice from Cathy Harris, a single mother from Florida who runs ukrainianangels.org. Since 1998, she’s consulted with more than 875 families who have adopted Ukrainian children independently. Couples complete their necessary paperwork — including the Immigration and Naturalization Service adoption application, a home study and medical checks — in America and hire a facilitator in Ukraine to serve as their translator. For the Felgers, the process, from sending the dossier to receiving an adoption appointment in Kiev, took about a year. Dawn and Gary were approved to adopt up to three children, but they had their hearts set on twin boys whom Cathy had seen on one of her recent Eastern European trips. Gary’s father and uncle are twins, so they though the similarity would be neat. But ultimately, they left for the 52 | august/september 2011
Ukraine without knowing the number, gender or age of the children they would bring back. “Before we got there, we didn’t know whether to paint the walls pink or blue,” Gary says. “We didn’t know if we needed bicycles, tricycles or cribs. We didn’t know if we were going to bring home one, two or three children or any.”
To Ukraine and back The Felgers arrived in the capital of Kiev in late January 2002. They then hopped a rickety plane to an orphanage in Simferopol, a city on the Crimean peninsula. There they learned that the twin boys weren’t available, so Dawn and Gary were led into the orphanage’s gym, where five or six boys were brought out for them to observe. “One kid was riding a tricycle around the room and came close to Gary like he was going to run over his toes,” Dawn says. Gary smiles. “He wanted to get my attention.”
says. “But when they asked this woman about Hannah, her eyes lit up, and we knew that was a big clue.” Soon after, the Felgers met Hannah, an 8-year-old, named Marina in Ukraine, with brown hair, delicate features and a smile stretched from ear to ear. “We’ll spend five months trying to find a couch,” Gary says. “It took us years to pick out dining room chairs, but we picked out our daughter in 15 minutes.” The Felgers spent about 17 days in Ukraine, a country hit with economic hardships and poverty after the fall of the Soviet Union. While there, they saw street children who had been kicked out of orphanages at age 16. Many had turned to drug abuse, alcoholism and prostitution. Dawn and Gary couldn’t help but think about these children’s futures when they picked Hannah up from the orphanage. “When Hannah gets in the car, there’s 50 to 60 kids waving goodbye saying, ‘Please, take me to America,’” Gary says as he chokes back tears. “Dawn and I and the translator are crying … and there’s Hannah, just happily waving back to them.”
Adjusting to American life Hannah and Joshua don’t remember much about their time in the orphanages. Joshua says caretakers advised him to talk about the positives of Ukraine. Hannah recalls asking for more to eat and being told no extra food was available. “When I came to the U.S., I thought I was just visiting until I realized I’d be living there for good,” she says. For the first time, Hannah and Joshua had their own parents, house and family car, but Dawn pulls out their passport photos, which reveal frightened looks in their eyes. “It must have been so intimidating for them to put be in a car with three adults, not knowing who they are with or where they are going,” she says.
“We’ll spend five months trying to find a couch. It took us years to pick out dining room chairs, but we picked out our daughter in 15 minutes.” That was how they met Joshua, a 6-yearold with the Ukrainian name Roman. As they began the paperwork to adopt Joshua, Gary quizzed the staff about any girls who might fit into their new family. The caretakers mentioned a delightful girl in an orphanage across town. “They were speaking in Russian, so we didn’t know what they were saying,” Dawn
The Russian-English language barrier made the first month in the U.S. challenging. Before leaving for Ukraine, Dawn and Gary had learned 20 to 30 Russian words, but it often meant their communication was limited to one or two words, which sometimes led to frustration. Dawn vividly recalls the day she found Hannah and Joshua sitting on the bottom step next to