For Rose and I, adoption began as a way to have more children when we couldn’t. It turned out to be much more than that. When we began the adoption process we already had two natural children. Alyson, our daughter, was 11 and our son Brantley was 8. They were two beautiful vibrant children and the four of us had been leading a very happy normal family life. When we had become pregnant again a couple of years earlier, we thought it was routine. When we lost the baby with a miscarriage, the routine was gone and the anguish set in. I watched Rose for several months as she mourned our loss. As I watched her pain, I felt totally helpless as a husband. We pursued international adoption not only to provide a home to a baby but to help fill a void in our hearts.
We were matched by the adoption agency to a baby boy in Ryazan, Russia who was born just a couple of months before we began the adoption paperwork. In fact, he was born about the same time that we had been told that our chances of having a third child naturally were futile. After months of background checks, home studies by social workers, visa applications, etc., we traveled to Russia to meet the baby in the summer of 2002. The conditions in the orphanage were subpar to say the least. There were very caring workers who were doing the best they could with the minimal supplies and food that they had available. The numbers of beautiful children were staggering. There was dozens of children needing a home and nobody even came to visit except on rare occasion. I remember thinking of these children and what their futures would be. If they survived the poor medical care and childhood diseases to age 16, they were turned out into the streets to fight for their survival on their own. Organized crime would be waiting to save them for their own profitable agenda. They would be the next generation of gangsters and prostitutes.
When we met “Ruslan” for the first time, our hearts melted right into his. I will never forget the first time I held him. We were standing next to a window and he looked outside and waved into the sky! At eight months old, how could he have known that he wanted to leave the only place he knew? Or was he calling our attention to more?
After we filed the local court documents to adopt “ Denton Thomas Pendleton”, we returned home to await the court date. At this point in the process, we kept our emotions in check as we stayed busy preparing our home for a new baby. Our emotions went into another gear when Rose called me at work and shared a dream she had just had! She dreamt of an infant boy with blonde hair and wearing wings that was floating in midair. The angel, waving upwardly, repeated over and over….” He sent a soul to Heaven, to save a child in need!” Now, the tears began to flow on both ends of the phone line like never before. There was no doubt. God was answering our prayers. We had prayed for a third child. But, God wanted us to have a child on His terms. Rose’s dream made our hearts instantly begin to yearn for our new son.
A month later, we returned to Russia and formally adopted Den. I remember telling the judge, through interpretation, that I would like to bring our son back to his hometown to know his beginnings when he was older. The judge replied to me, “I hope you will return and adopt a little girl”! Ironically, adoptions in the Ryazan region were closed soon after Den’s adoption. Den was one of two babies adopted that day. He was one of the last….
We journeyed home to Montgomery in a trip that took about 24 hours. As our plane touched down in New York, a new American law for internationally adopted children made Den officially an American citizen. The flight from Moscow to JFK had about 20 such children on board. The applause that was heard inside that plane as those wheels touched was emotional as well. We continued home and were greeted by family and friends at Dannelly Field. We were all so proud of our new son.
Looking back on the entire experience, I began to realize that what started out as an endeavor to adopt a third child to fill a vacancy in our hearts turned out to be a lesson in God’s will. God wanted us to know that what we see as bad things do happen. They happen for a reason and the reason is not always for us to understand. We are to trust Him and He will provide for us what He wants us to have… in His own time and means. I realized how much closer this event in our lives brought us to Him. It then occurred to me that Den was not the only one saved and adopted in this story. Our Father saved us all in His own adoption story. “ He sent a soul to Heaven, to save a child in need”. Jesus is our Savior….and the child, it’s each and every one of us!
Four years later, in 2006, we did return to Russia to adopt a girl just as the judge in Den’s adoption had suggested. We felt like we would be more prepared for the process as we had been through the process before. We were wrong. We went to meet a baby girl named “Maria” just as all the local adoption agencies in Russia had their accreditation revoked. We proceeded by granting an adoption “coordinator” in Moscow a power of attorney. On our first trip to visit the orphanage in Ivanovo, Russia, it became apparent that the political climate towards international adoptions had changed. We searched and found loopholes to file the adoption petition. We then returned to the states and waited. As the court date was finally set and approached, we were asked for more and more “busy work” documentation from the Russian government. There was obviously a force working against us. We returned to Ivanovo and endured more requests for information that was impossible to give. They asked us questions that there were no answers to! As we walked into court that day, we were given odds of 50% of our adoption being fulfilled.
It was another emotional moment in court when, through all the Russian being spoken that we could not understand, we heard the words “Eden Marie Pendleton” being said by the judge. This was the name we had chosen for Maria and we would not have heard it if she wasn’t ours!
About a week later, we began our final journey home with Eden at the Moscow airport. As I was checking our bags, I looked over at a young man checking his bags a few feet away. He was wearing a Montgomery Biscuits T-shirt….halfway around the world! It just turned out that he was from Montgomery and a member of Frazer who was with a mission group returning home on the same flight. Another lesson…just when you think you are alone you aren’t! There are angels all around us.
