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Finally, the
adoption agency said they had been approved to adopt the twins.
The Mattheys spent a month packing, unpacking, repacking, trying
to figure out how best to get in everything they would need -
cold-weather gear for themselves and the twins that would be good
to at least 40 below, medical supplies to give to the orphanage,
gifts for the various functionaries involved in the adoption -
without exceeding the airlines' 44 pounds-per-person luggage
limit.
Brenda talked Bob out of wearing his leather coat, fearing he
would stick out as a rich American. He took his teal ski parka
instead, and stood out among a sea of Russian men in black leather
coats.
The Mattheys arrived in Moscow on a flight from JFK on Dec. 3,
1999, and checked into the Moscow Marriott Grand Hotel on Tverskaya
Street, which offered special rates and services for people coming
to adopt.
They wandered down to Red Square, took walks around the city in
the evening, bought souvenirs and traded tales with other adoptive
couples. "Some with good stories, some with horrible stories,"
Bob would say later.
Legally, there is a 10-day waiting period before the adoptive
parents can leave the country with their new children. The Mattheys
said they'd heard of older children getting adopted, then changing
their minds about leaving on the ninth day.
"We met a lot of heartbroken parents the week before Christmas,
going home without a kid," Bob said in an interview with
Brenda at his side.
On their third night in Moscow, a Sunday, they were at dinner
with two AMREX agents, Russians providing them with translation
and legal services, when they learned twins Vladimir and Yevgeniy
had three brothers and a sister. They were told the girl and two
of the boys were with a grandparent in another region. But the
third boy was in an orphanage near where they were going to adopt
the twins.
The idea that the twins had a brother available for adoption was
startling. There was no ready explanation for why no one had told
the Mattheys. Their adoption agency apparently hadn't known, although
the Russian government said it should have.
"Brenda and I were sitting across the table from each other,
and when we heard it we were just .?.?. It was upsetting,"
Bob recounted later. "We felt like he was lost."
Using a laptop borrowed from another American couple at the hotel,
Bob sent an e-mail back to the United States to tell his family
the news and seek advice from his minister.
To the Rev. K.M. Szierer, whose family had fled Russian occupation
in Hungary, the answer was easy. "Yeah, bring him over, give
him a chance for life," he said he told the Mattheys.
The news of an additional sibling was not a shock to the Mattheys'
oldest boy, Robert. He had told his parents before they left that
they would be returning home with three children, not two, because,
he said, he had prayed on it and God had told him so.
They would embark on the next part of their journey with even
more anticipation.
On Dec. 8, Bob and Brenda Matthey took off from Moscow in a KrasAir
TU-154 - a noisy old Russian jet they described as "a flying
hay cart" - for Blagoveshchensk, the city 4,800 miles east
of Moscow where the twins were living in an orphanage. The plane
stopped after four hours, roughly halfway there, to pick up and
drop off passengers and take on fuel before the final four-hour
leg.
Once in Blagoveshchensk, a city of about 250,000 on the Amur River
separating Russia from China, the Mattheys spent the next 10 days
in a 12th-floor furnished apartment for which they paid $20 a
day.
They settled in and went to see Yevgeniy and Vladimir.
"When we met the twins, they ran across the room and hugged
us and we almost lost our dinner, they smelled so bad," Bob
said.
They spent their days getting to know the boys, who were able
to stay with them in the apartment. The Mattheys and the twins
learned how to communicate with each other, went shopping and
cooked meals. All the while, say the Mattheys, they never forgot
about the other brother.
Soon they were able to make arrangements to meet Viktor.
On Saturday, Dec. 11, they got a car and driver to make the 90-mile
trip to Svobodniy, a former nuclear missile launch site whose
name means "freedom." They arrived at Viktor's orphanage
shortly before lunch.
They described their first meeting as a mixture of shock and jubilation.
"We went to the class, and I guess these orphans are taught
that someday momma and poppa - and that's the Russian words -
will come and get you," Bob said. "And it's their dream.
So we walk in and mom and pop are here for Viktor, and all the
kids, of course, want us to be mom and pop."
Bob and Brenda said they fell in love with Viktor the first time
they saw him. Bob had borrowed a digital camera with a preview
screen on the back, and he used it to make contact with Viktor.
"So I would take the kid's picture and turn it around and
show it to him, and it was such an icebreaker," he said.
"Then I'd take a picture of her (Brenda) and then I'd show
him the picture and say, 'Momma?' We were taught a few things.
We learned to say 'Poppa zees' and 'Momma zees.' It means 'Momma's
here.'"
They spent about an hour with Viktor before they had to leave
for the return trip to Blagoveshchensk.
"As we were saying goodbye to him, he was crying - he thought
we didn't like him, basically is what they were explaining to
us," Bob said. "He thought that we interviewed him and
we didn't like him. But we left him with some pictures of us and
convinced him that we would be back for him. Of course, we thought
we'd be back in several months."
New applications to the INS would have to be filed, their home
study would have to be updated, their agency would have to decide
whether they could handle an additional child. They might even
have to return to the United States without him and make a second
trip to Russia.
But the Mattheys and Viktor would be together again, and for some
reason - the Mattheys believe it was a miracle - it was a matter
of days, not months.
After that initial meeting, the Mattheys say they never spoke
to anyone about adopting Viktor. The boy was simply brought from
the orphanage in Svobodniy, unannounced, to the courtroom in Blagoveshchensk
where the Mattheys were to adopt the twins. When they walked in,
they found him sitting there, wearing a girl's winter coat.
"We were amazed because we had never signed a document,"
Bob said. "We said we'd take him when they asked us if we
wanted him, but we never signed anything, didn't pay anybody."
On Dec. 16, 1999, the adoption of all three boys was final. Members
of the court and the Ministry of Education signed documents swearing
never to discuss the adoption. To ensure privacy, children were
given new birth certificates with their new names and with their
place of birth listed as Blagoveshchensk, not Busse, where they
were actually born.
The Mattheys let the children keep their first names but changed
their middle names as well as their surnames: Vladimir Jeziah
Matthey, Yevgeniy James Matthey, Viktor Alexander Matthey.
Three days later, they flew back to Moscow, where they joined
scores of other adoptive families trying to get their immigration
paperwork completed so they could get out of Russia before the
arrival of Y2K and dreaded computer glitches.
"That was kind of a whirlwind deal," Bob Matthey said.
"We left Sunday morning, got there (to Moscow) Sunday night,
late. Been up 20 hours, 22 hours, the kids are miserable, cranky,
airsick, carsick."
The next day, when the Mattheys went to the American Embassy,
more than 80 families were there, trying to leave.
"There was a big rush to get out because the rumor was they
were shutting down for Y2K," Bob Matthey said. "This
was the last week, and there was some really good propaganda going
on there, that they're going to abandon the embassy for months.
So if we didn't get done and get back by the 23rd, we might have
had to wait until February to leave."
On Dec. 23, 1999, the Mattheys and their three adopted sons arrived
in the United States. Although their original immigration paperwork
was filled out for two children, it was changed to read "one
or more" at the American Embassy in Moscow. How did it happen?
"I can't answer that, except to say ...," Bob said,
and Brenda completed the thought for him: "We believe in
miracles."
They rolled through JFK Airport and headed for home, exhausted
and exhilarated, eager to see their other children, enjoy the
holidays and start their new lives together.
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