Letters

Kathy and Steve Schultz

Brecksville, Ohio

May 2005

My husband and I adopted two Brazilian boys in 1991, with LIMIAR’S assistance. When we adopted them, Adriano was 7 years old and his brother Leandro was 5. Adriano is now 21 and has just finished his sophomore year at Valparaiso University; Leandro is 19 and will begin his freshman year at Valparaiso in August. They are both fine young men, good students and good athletes (both will run track and cross country at Valpo next year), and I would list their adoption at the top of my life's resum é as the best thing I ever did.

When we first started looking into foreign adoptions, we decided not to consider any South American countries because they all required long stays and we had heard too many stories about under-the-table adoptions there. Then we started attending presentations by foreign adoption agencies. Many of them were high-pressure sales pitches, delivered to packed auditoriums: hurry up and get all your paper work done so you can be the first in line for a good baby. The fees in some cases were prohibitive, and I couldn't help wondering where all the money was going. And some of them had insultingly invasive requirements, such as signing an agreement to use birth control during the adoption process.

We looked at LIMIAR mainly because the US office was located in Hudson, Ohio at the time, close to where we were living, and we figured why not. This was 15 years ago and I don't clearly remember my first contact with Nancy Cameron. But I do remember that my husband and I went to a Christmas brunch to meet some of Limiar's adoptive families, and that we talked with several parents and some of the older children. This was where it started to feel like adopting from Brazil was the right thing to do. There was a close-knit family feeling to the whole gathering, due mainly to Nancy's loving matriarchal presence. She knew each family personally. I also remember clearly one of the older Brazilian girls telling my husband and me quite frankly that there were lots of Brazilian kids that needed parents, but that mostly we needed to get some kids!

Adopting through LIMIAR appealed to us because they had a good history of bringing kids to the US, they worked directly with the courts in Brazil, the fees were modest and so did not give the impression that there was a profit margin involved, and mostly, it was obvious after meeting Nancy and several of the families that LIMIAR truly had the interests of children as their first concern. LIMIAR still retained the feeling of a grassroots organization. We also liked the idea of adopting older, healthy children who needed a home, without having to start out as foster parents. (We did look into adopting older children in our home county, but there seemed to be no way to adopt without going through the foster care system. We were concerned that there was no guarantee we'd be allowed to adopt the foster children, and that they might end up be returned to their parents.)

I spent 5 weeks in Brazil with the boys, and my husband was with me for the first and last week. (He returned home for 3 weeks to work. Note: This arrangement is no longer possible.) Going to Brazil was an adventure that I admit I did not always enjoy at the time, but now I'm very glad I went. Five weeks out of my entire life now seems very short, particularly for something as important as the adoption of my children. Since my boys were young when they came to the US they don't remember too much about Brazil, and I can actually tell them a little bit about what it was like. The Brazilian people we met were friendly and patient with my attempts at Portuguese, and many of them went out of their way to tell me they were happy to see these boys being adopted by Americans. It was very clear that Brazilians love children.