It would be impossible to describe all that God has done in and through our lives throughout this entire process, but I would like to share at least a glimpse into what has happened. This is a long story (and one that will continue far into the future) (actually God knew about it before the creation of the world, but we’ll stick with the bits we saw!). We’ll start with a timeline . . .
1984 — God put it on our hearts to adopt children in addition to hoping for the blessing of biological children, before we were even engaged to be married.
1985 — Paul & I got engaged in April and married in November. Some time during the course of the year (we’re a little foggy as to the exact month :)) we talked about hoping to have both biological and adoptive children “one day.”
1990s — We were blessed to bring four beautiful biological children into the world, three boys and one girl.
March 1997 — God spoke to us regarding two girls we would have one day (during my pregnancy with our first precious daughter). He gave us two girls’ first and middle names, and gave us the impression they would be twins. We tucked that away in our hearts, wondering when that would happen. This kind of information was unusual, but God had given us our other daughter’s name in a miraculous way, too (and He had spoken to us in unusual and significant ways several times before), so we felt sure that God would bless us with two more daughters “one day.”
February 2000 — Unbeknownst to us, two precious girls were born in Bucharest, Romania (but nothing is hidden from God!)
March 2000 — Our adoption dream started to become reality when we sensed God say “go” in March 2000. Although I had been “ready” for *years* đ Paul gave the go-ahead to begin the adoption process. As you can see from this timeline, God allowed us to discern His timing because the girls had only just come into the world a couple of weeks before! Our “one day” was starting to become a reality! We announced to our friends and family in person and via email that we intended to adopt. By faith, we shared that we believed God had twin girls for us in Romania named E J and K P. At the time, each of the 20+ adoption agencies we contacted mailed us an information package. As we prayerfully and carefully looked over materials and contacted agencies, we ran up against many negative responses, e.g. “you have too many kids to be able to adopt”, “you are too old to adopt” (we were 36 years old at the time, and on average international adoptions at that time took 3 years to complete), “you’ll never find twin girls”, etc. But we hung on, in the certainty that God would keep his promise to us because He had been faithful to us in every other situation. This was part of our learning curve in realizing that whenever children are involved, whether they come to families via birth or adoption, there is spiritual opposition. Throughout the Bible and other historical sources, we see time and again that when evil is prevalent, the children suffer. There is a very real battle involved in bringing children to birth and an even greater battle involved in rescuing children through adoption. It takes grit and determination and prayer and encouragement and the grace of God to decide to do it and not give up. We birthed children for the glory of God. We adopted children for the glory of God. They are His children first and foremost and we are honored to have been chosen by Him to parent the precious ones He entrusted to us. Back to the story â as we received responses from the many adoption agencies to which we applied, our options were gradually narrowed down to being eligible to adopt from countries in Eastern Europe. We prayerfully decided upon Romania, largely because of the relaxed requirements for parental travel (for Romanian adoptions, one parent could travel there for a total of 4 days; for Russian adoptions, both parents were required to travel there for 30 days – we did not want to leave our other 4 children for such a long period of time).
We finally selected an adoption agency, Cherished Children, but it was brand new and not yet licensed to operate, so we were unable to officially apply to that agency. We selected the largest Christian adoption agency in our area, Bethany Christian Services, in order to begin our home study. They required us to do an extensive home study (normal for all adoptions and foster care placements). Here are some of the items they required, culminating in a HUGE dossier:
- Paul & I were required to give an extensive history including relational, physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, social, academic, work history â a very comprehensive long document from our early childhood to the present. It specifically required us to go into great detail on all traumatic events throughout the course of our lives and to describe how we responded to them. We had to write about how we would deal with physical, emotional, mental, relational and educational challenges. Our social worker gave us much encouragement in this area, as many prospective adoptive parents are turned down on the basis of this step, because adoption is sometimes entered into with rose-colored glasses. She commended us for the ways we had overcome very difficult circumstances already, including my momâs suicide, the premature birth of one of our sons, moving across the world and adapting to a new culture, hosting troubled teens in our home for months, and so forth.
- all six Sculleys were interviewed (even the youngest siblings) to ensure that each one enthusiastically desired two additional younger siblings
- all six Sculleys plus the two young men who were living with us at the time had to be fingerprinted twice – by our local police department and by the INS
- all eight residents of our home were required to have medical physicals to verify that we were in general good health
- every room in our home was thoroughly inspected, and the room in which our adoptive daughters would live was scrutinized
- we had to have our septic tank inspected and repaired
There were many more steps, but you get the picture!
June 2000 — We finished our home study paperwork with our first adoption agency, Bethany Christian Services. It often takes six months or more to do this, but we were so excited about everything that we worked hard to get that part of the process over and done with quickly. So now we waited to receive our adoption placement, trusting God completely for our girls, His perfect timing, and His provision of finances, patience, strength, and other resources. It was during this waiting period that P and I took our first trip to Russia. This gave us valuable experience and insights into the particular difficulties involved in post-Communist Eastern Europe as regards interacting with authorities, communicating with the help of a translator, getting things done in a timely manner, and the challenges of finding information.
August 2000 — Out of the blue, and far more quickly than we expected, our waiting came to an abrupt end. A friend of ours from another state (S.G.) called to say that her pastor had just been offered twin girls to adopt; her pastor and his wife were planning to turn down the offer the following morning, because when they prayed about it, God assured them that He had another child (single) for them and had another family in mind to adopt twins. Because we had emailed everyone we knew six months earlier with very specific details of what we believed God to have spoken to us, this friend sensed that maybe these were our daughters, so she called to see if were we interested. During that phone call, we knew immediately that these were our girls. At the point of decision, we knew nothing other than the fact that there were two girls in Romania. We didn’t know their names. We hadn’t seen any photos. We had no medical records. Literally, we decided that if they were green with purple spots, they were ours. God gave us great assurance by His Holy Spirit. We had walked every step of the way prayerfully and carefully; we had done our due diligence; now we watched in awe as God answered our prayers.
The following morning, we called the adoption agency. Guess what it was called? You got it – Cherished Children, the exact same agency that had been our first choice months earlier. At this point, they had just received their official licensure and begun operating, so their wait list was extremely short. So short in fact, that there was no one on the “seeking to adopt twins” list. We went right to the top of the list. If we had waited for this agency to receive licensure (instead of getting our home study done via Bethany Christian Services), we would still have been at the top of the list. This showed us that one way or another, God intended to bring these girls into our family – through this huge confirmation God really encouraged us and gave us confidence that He was guiding us every step of the way!
Our new adoption agency sent us the tiny bit of information they had (two first names, a short video, and obviously fabricated medical records â this was the first of many realizations that widespread corruption and poverty in Romania resulted in almost no factual records, not only for us, but for many other adoptive families). The agency told us that our girls had been abandoned at birth, not held or named by their teen and unmarried birth mother(s), so the hospital in which they were born had assigned them traditional Romanian first names. They had been placed in an orphanage in which the conditions were so terrible that the Romanian government shut it down when our girls were six months old. The agency gave us seven days to make a legal commitment to adopt them. During those seven days, even though we had decided that no matter what the experts said, we were resolved to adopt our girls, we did our due diligence and mailed the video up to the Mayo Clinic for review. The report we received was that the doctors could give no conclusive diagnoses because there wasn’t enough information, but that it was possible that our girlsâ limbs had significant issues (since in the video, neither girl moved her arms or legs at all, which is obviously abnormal for children of that age). It was also possible that they were in good health, but there was simply insufficient evidence. The doctors noted the obvious neglect, as shown in the lack of facial movements when held by caregivers in the video.
There were additional hurdles involved with changing adoption agencies. Changing agencies meant higher fees and a lot more paperwork, but both agencies worked with us to minimize the extra costs, for which we were very grateful. At six months of age, our girls were significantly underweight, weighing in at only 10.5 lbs each (in the US, the average weight for children of that age is 16.1 to 17.5 lbs). But as soon as we said “yes” to adopting them, we paid for them to be placed in excellent foster care. At the time, the average income in Romania was $30 / month, and we paid $600 / month each for them to be cared for in a foster home. The evidences of corruption in the adoption process were everywhere. We decided very early on that it was more important and more loving to rescue two children from being stuck in an institution for life than to not participate in adoption because of the obvious and widespread corruption.
I want to at least mention the disgusting practice that exists in some parts of the world where children have been stolen from their families, presented as orphans, and then matched with adoptive parents in order to make large amounts of money for the (fraudulent) adoption agencies. We were aware of this kind of corruption but proceeded with an extremely high level of confidence that our girls were in fact completely orphaned, with no possibility of biological family. We did as much research as was possible at the time. We were (along with the rest of the world) very aware of the sad legacy left by the Romanian dictators Nicolae & Elena Ceausescu, who, among other atrocities, forced every woman to bear a minimum of 5 children (many of whom wound up in terrible orphanages and other institutions, often for life). Myriads of these children were abandoned and crammed into inhumane facilities, devoid of human touch, completely neglected and often abused. Because of their extreme developmental delays and disabilities, we know that our girls would most likely have languished in tragic institutions for life (or been tossed onto the streets at 17 and wound up in prostitution, trafficking, drugs, or lives cut short), which has been a sad reality for hundreds of thousands of orphans in post-Communist Eastern Europe. More than half a million children were institutionalized prior to the fall of Communism in Romania, with hundreds of thousands more since then. We couldnât rescue all of them but we could rescue the two we knew about. We decided to fight for K’s & E’s lives. There are many other battles to be fought – adoption corruption is an evil that must be fought to protect those who have no voice. But we fought the battle that God assigned to us, which was to rescue K and E while there was a chance to do so.
While we’re on the topic of money, God provided a way for us to pay for all of our adoption expenses ($50,000 plus travel expenses and “gifts”, in addition to the foster care fees) without going into debt (on our single income, while also hosting two young adult ministry interns who brought in no income). We have experienced God’s supernatural provision every time we have stepped out in faith to do something God-sized for His glory that is beyond what we can calculate in a spreadsheet. We give Him all the thanks and praise and glory!
November 2000 — After our girls had lived with their foster family for 3 months, we received an updated video and medical records for the girls–wow! The love, care, and good nutrition provided through their foster family had been wonderful for them! Not only had they gained a *lot* of weight, but they looked visibly happier and started to be more mobile! And they were wearing the clothes and holding the toys we had sent in a care package! We were all starting to really pine away for them. Paul & I and our four older children prayed daily for them and couldnât wait to hold them in our arms.
December 2000 — Our final court date went through on Dec 18th, meaning the girls were legally ours in Romania! Just nine months had elapsed since we began our process – we had waited for the length of a normal pregnancy – this is amazing and far shorter than the vast majority of international adoptions (which at the time took on average three years to complete). God had shown Himself to be faithful to us in ways we could never have imagined. We had to wait for the mandatory waiting period to pass, then travel to obtain the girls’ visas to enter the U.S.
January 2001 — Four days before our friend Stephanie and I were set to travel to bring the girls home, we received the devastating news that at the last minute, an appeal had been brought against our case because on two pieces of paper out of the *hundreds* in our file, Paul’s middle name had been abbreviated or omitted. Although this is considered normal and legal in the U.S., it is not acceptable in Romania for middle names to be abbreviated. With sadness in our hearts, we realized it would be yet another wait until our girls were home with us. But we also realized we had the opportunity for me to go be with them briefly (we had already bought our plane tickets, of course). Paul held down the fort with our four oldest children while Stephanie and I traveled to Bucharest (in the middle of winter)! We cared for K and E in our rented apartment for 48 precious hours! I will never forget the first time I held my two youngest daughters in my arms, aged 11 months!! Such sweet moments! Oh, the memories we made–so much loving to do in such a short time! I remember fondly peeling off their 8 layers of clothing and 3 layers of hats, to see their gorgeous dark curls and cute tummies. I got to meet their wonderful foster family, too, and was greatly relieved to see that the girls were being well-loved and cared for (by elderly Corneliu & Cristina and their 40-yr-old son Valentin). They hung an icon of Jesus on the wall beside their cribs (very likely Romanian Orthodox believers â we could not communicate very well without a translator). (For several years, we mailed family photos to this dear family and stayed in touch, but lost contact by the time our daughters were five years old, by which time we suspect one or both of them may have passed away.) And K & E were soooooooo beautiful and wonderful and even had Sculley mannerisms! Did I mention how cute they were? There was a shadow over the trip, though, as we began to see more of the pervasiveness of corruption in not only the world of Romanian adoptions, but in Romania overall, a devastating legacy of the Ceausescu regime. There was abject poverty everywhere, packs of wild dogs roaming the streets, crumbling grey unmarked high-rise buildings, and desperation and deep depression written on countless faces. We knew we had to rescue our girls. God gave us a sense of urgency that we didn’t yet understand. My heart was ripped out of me as I had to hand the girls back to their caregivers. I wept all the way home. The de-icing of plane wings seven times during a blizzard at takeoff meant nothing – I just missed K & E too much đ I was greatly comforted being back home with Paul and our four beloved older children. We resumed ânormalâ life as much as possible, but to keep from falling into depression myself, I decided to create a family website to encourage others in home schooling and adoption.
February 2001 — I pined away. I belatedly realized that our girls’ Romanian names are the same as the two women who had influenced me most as a mother years earlier. These Romanian names were assigned by a hospital, but God knew, God saw, God cared so much about every detail. Only God could give us *so* many confirmations that he meant them to be our daughters! We also realized, to our astonishment, that all three of our daughters have one name meaning “Grace”âhow amazing is that? Godâs grace definitely rushes forth in abundance in our lives! This was a promise that God gave us the day He healed our son M of moderate hearing loss, the same day in which He spoke our oldest daughterâs name to me in an audible voice (with three further confirmations within 24 hours – that’s another miracle story!).
March 2001 — REALLY pining away . . . I continued to work on our new family website . . .
April 2001 — Paul, our daughter C, and I traveled to Romania to bring our new daughters / sisters home. We were slightly nervous about carrying the very large amounts of cash required by the Romanian adoption agency to complete our process. The cash literally bulged out of our chests, even though âhiddenâ beneath our clothing, because we were required to bring such large amounts in small denominations. God graciously provided us with a bodyguard of sorts, in that a close friend of ours “happened” to be on the same flight to Europe. God was reassuring us every step of the way that He was with us and that He would protect and shield us and our children. April 1st marks the day that we welcomed K & E into our arms and lives forever. K & E remembered me from January, and K started calling me “mama” right away. Sweet! We loved and bonded for two days, all five of us sleeping in the same bed, a beautiful pile of little girls and hair in our faces. Paul & I got very little sleep but we spent a lot of time just staring at our three beauties, in awe of Godâs goodness to us all. On our last day we had to get visas and other paperwork. When we checked in at the airport at 5am the day we departed, we nearly didnât get approval to leave because their visas were missing an official stamp (corruption abounded even up to the last minute before leaving the country). I couldnât help the tears stream down my face, standing there at 5am with three girls under the age of four, feeling helpless and clueless as to what to do about that. The official waved us through (and we praised God for His sovereignty).
We then traveled with our three young girls (two of whom were in diapers!) on two plane trips in *three* (not five) seats, one of which was not on a bulkhead (next to a guy with a tempting laptop to grab), for a total of 16 or so hours and nobody slept more than 15 minutes. An entourage of loving grandmothers returning from a mission trip to a Romanian orphanage mercifully helped us throughout our journey. Because neither K nor E had been able to swallow anything but milk prior to that flight, we brought only a few jars of baby food. While en route, K started being able to swallow that, so we ran out of baby food a few hours before we landed . . . but we made it!!!! We were joyfully welcomed at the gate (this was pre-9/11) by our three wonderful sons of course, and a faithful group of friends who all rejoiced with relief that we finally had the girls home! What a great and wonderful God we serve! Sadly, within weeks, all adoptions in Romania were suspended, and later it became completely illegal to adopt internationally from Romania (unless one was Romanian). God allowed us to rescue our daughters in the nick of time. A few months later, we met several devastated families at an adoption picnic whose children were stuck in the system and they were unable to bring them home đ
During our final trip to Romania, our suspicions about being given falsified information were confirmed many times. The main government official who prepared the documentation was the mother of one of our Romanian adoption agency workers. There were bribes given at every turn. The background story we were told by the adoption agency did not correlate with what was on the girls’ adoption decree, implying that that information was fabricated in order to satisfy legal requirements (with no verification). Paul, an Australian by birth, was listed as having been born in the U.S. We left with zero confidence that ANY of the documents we had received were true or accurate. We will likely never know the whole story, but we have good reason to doubt the truthfulness of what we were told. We encountered other families at post-adoption gatherings who adopted from the same closed-down orphanage, who told us that they were not even provided with a name or birth date for their children. There is a high likelihood that all of the information was falsified, in order to earn a lot of money for the Romanian adoption agency. Sad but true. We understand that it is a natural desire for most adopted children to find biological relatives when they reach adolescence or adulthood. We reconciled ourselves at that point with the sad reality that we would not be able to provide any information to help them do so. Unfortunately, there are many unscrupulous people out there who jump on the chance to pretend to be the person someone is desperately looking for (as in the well-known story of “Annie”) in order to profit financially or take advantage of someone. Because we have loved ones all over the world, we have always intentionally made our Sculley family very easy to find in the now-outdated white pages and later online (since Paul & I are geeks and have been using the Internet since the early 80’s). No one has ever made an attempt to contact us from Romania.
The Romanian adoption agency director made no attempt to hide the fact that he was doing what he did in order to buy an expensive home & piece of land in another country. It was a business, plain and simple, and the goal was prosperity at any cost. If we had still thought any of the information provided to us was accurate, that was completely obliterated in 2005, when we got a knock on the door one day by two agents from the Department of Homeland Security (with guns visibly strapped to their ankles). They were investigating our Romanian adoption agency on charges of money laundering (this was later confirmed after an international sting operation). We spent the entire day together investigating every detail of what we knew, communications weâd had, who we knew, etc. We provided as much assistance as we could in identifying individuals in photo line-ups and turning over all of our email communications. Thankfully, the first thing the agents told us was that we were in no danger at all of losing our children, as the adoptions had been finalized overseas and they had no jurisdiction over those. As a result of this investigation, the Romanian adoption agency was closed down permanently and likely certain individuals ended up in prison. But after this visit from Homeland Security, we realized that we would never risk taking our girls into Romania until they reached adulthood, because we couldn’t be sure they would be allowed to leave again. We promised both K and E that when they reached legal adulthood, I would take them on a trip to Romania to help them to get in touch with their heritage. Sadly, neither girl has yet been ready to face that part of their lives, so our offers of an extended all-expenses-paid trip were rejected. We have long believed that it will be an important part of their healing journey, and our hope is that they will one day be courageous enough to face the truth, as difficult as it is, in order to walk in greater wholeness and healing. Our experiences living in Eastern Europe (in Russia) have taught us much about how to travel without putting oneself and others at unnecessary risk. Sad to say, there are still many unscrupulous people out to make a profit at someone else’s expense. We continue to encourage our daughters as they learn to live as adults to move away from the fantasies of childhood and towards the realities of their lives, even when the truth is hard to accept, even when past or present circumstances are devastating or disappointing. It is the truth that sets each one of us free!
