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 If a husband wife are truly blessed, together they will foster dreams during their marriage which will spark their collective imagination, inspiring creative solutions to difficult situations and bringing love to places once filled by sadness. Since the day we were married over ten years ago, we knew our dream together included children. However, until this year, children remained just that - a dream. Our solution for turning that dream into reality came in the form of an angel, Olga Byrnes, and her agency, Alaska International Adoption Agency, Ltd. Together Olga and AIA helped us find our precious child. Little did we know that we had been looking for him in the wrong places. Ziven had been tucked safely away in a small hospital in the eastern part of Siberia.
Having the comfort of working with a reputable agency which is accredited by Russia, we began the adoption process in January. As the result of AIA's patient help with the countless forms and often unmanageable paperwork, we quickly received a referral for Ziven and, soon thereafter, received word that we had a court date. Our adventure to Russia to fulfill our dream of having a child went as smoothly as our paperwork. AIA's incredible staff in Khabarovsk and Moscow held our hands through every step of the process, sharing the joy, laughter, and then tears of sincere appreciation and love. Only five months after being introduced to AIA, we had our son William Ziven Fowler.
Our dream of having a child has now grown - we want to fill our house with children who have similar dreams of having a family. Only now, because of AIA, we know where to look. We can now spend our time and imagination dreaming of the near future when we return to Khabarovsk to adopt more children and visit our close friends with AIA. Rob and Anna Fowler Proud parents of William "Ziven" Fowler |
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Alaska International Adoption agency and my Khabarovsk Program Director Olga Byrnes who is now the Russian Programs Director for the agency did a fantastic job with the adoption of my little boy in 2000. The communication was excellent. Everything was clear. Deadlines were conservative and always kept. Things that might have become issues (during the changeover period to the new adoption laws in Russia) were presented with clear solutions already in progress. Everything was always moving forward.
Olga was excellent! She communicated with me in every possible way. My e-mails and phone calls were answered immediately. She was honest and clear in her direction on dossier preparation.The communication was excellent. E-mails were answered immediately or certainly within a few hours. All questions were addressed without hesitation. Answers were direct and honest and conservative. No promises were made "out of the blue". Olga was factual and supportive. By the way, every deadline she gave me to me was met and every promise kept-even though my adoption got caught in the middle of that re-hauling last year. Communication through-out the entire process was excellent and consistent. Olga still answers my e-mails promptly even though I have been "done" with my adoption since last November.
I was treated very well in Russia by agency's in-country national staff. They were professional, supportive, kind, caring, funny, safety conscious, detail minded, service minded-I could not even make copies for myself because they insisted this was their job to take care of me-after having done adoptions where I had to do alot of running myself while on other adoption trips, this was heaven! By the way-bottom line is that they are effective. They got everything done as planned and on the day promised. I felt very safe. The end result is that my visa interview at the US Embassy in Moscow took 5 minutes because the paperwork was in the proper order. This is so very, very important!!
I would recommend AIA agency to EVERYONE. Olga Byrnes is as trustworthy as anyone I have every dealt with. She is totally professional and yet so caring and kind. If I were to adopt from Russia, I would not even have to think twice. I would be contacting Alaska International Adoption agency! |
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In May of 2006, our family made the decision to adopt. We have two wonderful biological girls who were 5 yrs old and 2 months old at the time. We discussed adopting a baby because we thought we'd be waiting 18 months or so to bring the child home. But we finally settled on adopting a 2-4 year old boy. We spent a lot of time on the internet and on the phone speaking to many different agencies about Russian and other Eastern Block adoption programs. We finally settled on one of the largest agencies that work's in Russia. That was a mistake!
During the short time we dealt with them we had trouble getting our calls returned and later found out that the counselors are part time. So back to work we went. We looked at every web site on the subject of Russian adoptions and found just one agency with not a single negative comment. That is what led us to Ms. Olga Byrnes and the Alaska International Adoption Agency. We conducted a phone interview with Olga and felt very good about our choice to switch agencies. She is the director of Russian programs for the agency and the only person we ever spoke to from the agency in the U.S.. She returned our calls and emails very quickly. A completely different experience then what we had with our first agency.
It took us about 6 weeks to complete the 1st Dossier with apostils off to Olga. And by October we were off to Russia and we thought on our way to the Stravopol Region. We thought we were going to meet our son. But while we were in the air on the way to Stravopol Olga was informed that the boy's mother had come back into his life. So when we landed in Moscow we were met by Larisa (coordinator) and Tatiana (translator) who work with Olga in Moscow. They sat us down and explained the situation and while we were happy for the child, we were very worried about what that meant for us. They assured us that they had received another referral there in Moscow and we would meet him in a couple days. Needless to say, we were very apprehensive about this but they assured us everything would be okay. It turned out fantastic!
During our week in Moscow, Olga called us each night to make sure we were okay. We met our son and could not have been happier. He is a wonderful child and looks a lot like his sisters (as you can see in the photo). We had to wait until early February for the court date due to Federal Data Bank requirements and the Christmas holiday's and judges vacations but in the end we brought our son home almost 9 months to the day from when we started the process, just like the other two! I can't say enough about how wonderful Olga, Tatiana, Larisa, and Anatoly (driver) were through out this whole process. They even took us sight seeing when our son was napped at the Orphanage.
If we or anyone we know wants to adopt from Russia I would tell them that there is ONLY one choice and that is Alaska International and Olga Byrnes. She is honest hardworking and always has your best interests at heart. A fantastic experience made so by the wonderful people at AIA in the U.S. and in Moscow. |
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