St. Cloud Times: Sartell family honored in Washington for perseverance through lengthy adoption process

By Donovan Slack

His picture sustained them. Through more than four years of bureaucratic obstacles, international red tape and, emotional highs and lows, the Schneider family of Sartell refused to give up their attempt to adopt little “Baby Z” from Kyrgyzstan.

And they were honored in the nation’s capital Tuesday for their perseverance and dedication to providing a forever home to Z, now named Micah.

“They held on because sometimes that’s the unfortunate reality of adoption is they take a long time, they can fall through, it’s very difficult,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., who selected the Schneiders to be recognized as “Angels in Adoption.”

Bachmann presented the family with pins and certificates during a ceremony by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute.

“The concept is it’s about the child, it’s not about us, the parent,” Bachmann said. “That’s what the Schneider family showed me — that they have broken hearts for these children and they want to do everything they can to extend themselves and their love.”

Lisa and Tony Schneider were one of the “Kyrgyz 65,” a group of American families whose adoptions of 65 children from Kyrgyzstan were halted when the Central Asian republic suspended foreign adoptions in 2009 amid allegations of corruption and fraud.

They had already been matched with and received a picture of Baby Z — a 4-month-old in an orphanage — in September 2008 and had fallen in love with him.

“We knew the moment we looked at him that with everything we had, we had to try to bring him home to be our son,” Lisa Schneider recalled Tuesday. “We just knew in our hearts that we were to keep pushing.”

While they waited they decided to adopt another boy from Ukraine, whom they brought home in May 2010 and named Ian. He joined son Caleb, who was born in 2006. A few months after Ian came home, they learned they were expecting again — a baby girl they named Anaya.

Still, they didn’t give up on Baby Z.

The following year, the Schneiders tried again after Kyrgyzstan instituted new adoption rules. They rushed in their paperwork, worried that the window of opportunity might slam shut once again. They were lucky, one of only nine of the Kyrgyz 65 who made it through the process at the time.

“We knew — ah, I’m going to lose it,” Tony Schneider says, his voice cracking with emotion. “We knew no matter what we would fight.”

Lisa Schneider finally traveled to Kyrgyzstan to meet Baby Z in March 2012 but had to return home empty-handed when a court date couldn’t be secured to get the formal adoption decree. Tony Schneider returned three months later and was finally able to bring him home to Minnesota.

“In Humphrey Terminal in Minneapolis, when I got off that plane with Micah and saw my family and saw Lisa and my boys and Anaya, and then just the members of my church with open arms, that was huge,” Tony Schneider said. “Just to be on U.S. soil with him finally after over four years of fighting for him, it was a big deal.”

Tony Schneider, a medical equipment salesman, and Lisa Schneider, a stay-at-home mother who home-schools the children, said the family has enjoyed a lot of support from fellow members of the congregation at Calvary Chapel in St. Cloud. And now they want to help other families who may be thinking about or struggling with international adoption.

Lisa Schneider says she hasn’t quite worked out a plan for how to do that, but in the meantime, she is trying to help more of the Kyrgyz 65 get their children. After the Angels in Adoption ceremony Tuesday, the family was scheduled to take Micah to the Kyrgyz embassy.

“We’re going to introduce the ambassador to Micah, just as a ‘Thanks’ and a ‘Here’s how well he’s doing,’ ” she said.

The family just got more news recently — Lisa is expecting child number five. Tony Schneider says they’ll have as many children as the Lord allows.

“When the Lord gives you a heart for children — biological or adoption — you fight for His creation, for His children,” he said. “I’m content with five, but we can’t be selfish, we can’t be selfish.”

Originally published in the St. Cloud Times on October 9, 2013