This is a very condensed version of my experience.
In 1952, my husband and I married and started our life together. I was 18 and he was 21. He was one of 10 children. After 18 months, our first son was born. In the next five years and 11 months we had two more boys and one girl.
Fast forward to 1963. My husband's sister was 2 years younger than he. She had mental problems and was in and out of a mental hospital for a year or two where she met an alcoholic man 35-36 years older than she. He was also in the hospital for treatment. They married and had twin boys on September 3,1965.
Within a year and a half, the parents got to the point they were unable to care for the twins and a foster parent couple who had been trying to help "mom and dad", called my husband and explained someone had to intervene. Guess who?
For nine months we were legal guardians of the boys and had intended to raise them.
With our four, who had just begun private schooling in 1966 and the addition of the twins, we were looking at a long time of raising and educating 6 children. That educating included at least a bachelors degree. We had always talked 16 years of schooling to our four.
We were farmers and the farm economy was not at it's best.
In conversation with an older half-sister (twins Dad's 1st marriage) who contacted us and explained she could understand the abandonment of the boys by daddy, and wanted to help us out by adopting the twins, to add to her two sons. We agreed.
The sister, who was fromoTexas, took the boys and raised them. We next heard from them when Hal graduated from high school in 1984. Contact was never made after that invitation was sent.
Until... I was going through old papers and guess what? I found the old invitation and began a search on "Beenverified." In less than 8 hours I was in conversation with Hal. Beenverified had found him, an address, a phone number, a career, a family, etc.
For the next hour I talked with Hal when I could stop crying. I had searched for these boys for all this time. How grateful I found them.
The family is planing a family reunion this summer and my prayer is that the boys will come and we can become reacquainted.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PART IN THIS REUNION. GOD DOES ANSWER PRAYER, HE SURELY ANSWERED THE ONE I HAVE PRAYED ALL THESE YEARS.