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When I first had the idea for this podcast, about two years ago, the world looked pretty different. Syrian refugees, the national anthem protest, rigged elections, these things were barely even topics of conversation.

What a difference a couple years makes.

Everyone looks for answers in different places. Bitter debates break out online. And yet, in the midst of all our fighting and seething, we all know that this isn’t how we move forward, how things get better.

The solution is a lot simpler.

It starts with you and me, listening. It’s taking the time to find the humanity at the heart of the matter, no matter how complicated.

That’s what this podcast is about.

My name is Ngofeen Mputubwele, and this is The Power is Out. A podcast where I share stories of people in their 20s and 30s working to engage the world around them, because in their stories we get the courage to do the same ourselves.

You might be thinking. What does that mean? Well, there’s a lot of you out there who are where you are in life because you decided to pursue something good. Maybe you became a teacher, maybe you decided tobe a stay-at-home parent, maybe you started a nonprofit. And now, a few years into the process, it’s hard. It’s sucks. At times, you want to quit.

This podcast is for you. It’s remind to you that there are other people out there going through the same things and that what you are doing is worth it.

In a few episodes, I look forward to sharing with you my story. But for now, suffice it to say that the name of this podcast, The Power is Out, comes from my time in the Congo, where despite the brokenness, there is beauty. Whenever the power would go out, people would come together, connect, tell stories.

That’s what I hope to do. Share stories of hardship, of hope. Stories of art, faith, justice, of comedy.

Because that’s what you do when the power is out.

NM: Yo! DS: What up, dude?

NM: Nothing. How are you?

DS: Dude, do we have the same headphones in right now?

NM: It looks like it.

DS: Yes. Dude, no way. That is hilarious.

For our first episode, I am following the story of my college friend Drew and Melissa and their attempt to adopt two children from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Now, in recent years, I’ve heard a lot of stories about overseas adoption. You may have heard about how it’s a hard, long and confusing process. But if you’ve ever wondered, what exactly is so hard about it, Drew’s story is a good place to start. Like most overseas adoption stories, it’s a journey of unknowns—full of twists and turns, that in Drew’s case include corrupt government officials, a secret service agent, getting stranded in the Congo, and dealing with, as Drew put it, “kindergarten teachers in working for the mafia.”

I caught up with Drew who is 32 and is a pastor in Iowa to hear the full story.

DS: For me, it was when I was a freshman at Ball State. I was in a Bible study with my friend Jon Hainstock, who was adopted from South Korea, and we were studying a passage in the Bible from Ephesians 1 that talks about how God has adopted us into his family. And Jon chimed in and said the passage really made sense to him because he had been adopted as a baby and grew up in rural Wisconsin and didn't even realize he was Asian until he was a lot older because his parents just treated him like their son.

NM: This is where our story starts. A conversation between freshman in Muncie, Indiana. Drew didn't realize the power that Jon's story would have on his life, but he knew there was something powerful about that idea of adoption.

DS: I think my mind was just opened to the idea that there were two ways to have children. You could have children biologically, but you could also legitimately have children through adoption. That wasn’t like a second class way to have kids.

So, fast forward a few years. Drew meets his wife Melissa, they get married, move to Iowa, and start thinking about starting their own family. So, in 2010, Drew and Melissa went to a meeting at their church for people who might be interested in adoption. Keep in mind here that adoption is super expensive, but at the meeting, Drew and Melissa learned two big things that stuck with them. One, there were a range of private and public funds available to parents to help make adoption more affordable, and two, they learned of the large number of orphans in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In a country of about 80 million people, 5 million are orphans. Drew found those numbers staggering, and from talking to Drew it seems like he felt a responsibility to do something. And the fact that it was significantly cheaper per child to adopt two children meant they could do something. So, Drew was in. But what about Melissa? One the car ride home, they talked.

DS: I led out and said, “That was really compelling. 80 million people in a country, 5 million orphans.” And so I just said, “I’m feeling like we should just got for this and adopt two kids.” And it was hilarious because she’s just like “That’s crazy. That is exactly what I was thinking. I didn’t think you would be on board for two!” I think it was two days later we were calling our families and figuring out what adoption agency we were going to go with. We hit the ground running from there.

So, Drew and Melissa take the plunge and decide adopt two kids. But, as I learned from Drew, the process of adoption can be pretty long. First, you have to choose an adoption agency that guides you through the entire process and matches you with kids, then there’s an endless stack of paperwork, and of course, fees. And maybe more than anything else, there’s a whole lot of waiting.

Unfortunately, Drew and Melissa would have to keep waiting, for a while. Waiting and waiting and waiting. After a year and half, Drew and Melissa were finally matched with the two young kids that they would be adopting: Luke and Emma. After another year of waiting, that’s 2 and a half years since that adoption meeting, the adoption agency told Drew and Melissa that it was almost time to pick up Luke and Emma. Soon afterwards, Drew and Melissa got another child-related pieces of news: Melissa was pregnant.

DS: It was super exciting. We go in, and we find out we’re pregnant. We were overjoyed. We never had put aside the dream of having kids biologically, so we were super excited. What was really a punch in the stomach was when we went in ultrasound and found it was twins. It was like, “Oh, my goodness This. is. insane.”

So let’s recap. In a matter of months, Drew and Melissa are about go from having no kids to four kids. Now, I didn’t fully understand—and probably still don’t—how crazy that is until I talked to my friends who are young parents about Drew’s story and saw the sheer terror in their eyes at the thought. 0 to 4 kids, it seems, is a pretty big jump. But, hey, Drew figures, at least we’ll go get Luke and Emma, and have some time to acclimate, and before the twins arrive. But, just one problem. Turns out, the immediate trip to Congo was actually a false alarm, and it would be several months before Drew and Melissa could travel to get the kids. And as it worked out, the new departure date for getting the kids was just weeks after the birth of the twins. In other words, these four kids were basically coming at once.

The next several MONTHS leading up to the departure for Congo were pretty crazy for Drew and Melissa. Drew’s dad had a stroke, putting him out of work, and requiring the attention of the whole family. Melissa gave birth to the twins, but had to have a C-section. And Drew spent the next two weeks in the hospital taking care of the twins, who were in and out of the hospital due to health complications. The day after the children were finally home, Drew and his mom stepped on a plane to head to Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Population, about 10 million.

Coming up, Drew and his mom have an unexpected surprise at the hotel, and things quickly start to go downhill.

So when we left off, Drew and his mom had just gotten on a plane to head to the Congo. I asked Drew about his first impressions when he landed in the country.

DS: I had heard so many stories about it that I was preparing myself for the absolute worst. So I think I thought, “This airport sort of feels like the airport in Jamaica when we on our honeymoon. And oh, this isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. And people were overstating it.

Well then, you get in the van, and you get outside the gates of the airport, and I was not prepared for that. Massive potholes in the road, and millions of people everywhere walking. I had just never seen such poverty before. And so I was very struck by the lack of infrastructure and the living conditions of people. A sea of just incredibly impoverished people.

And honestly, for me, it was an experience in feeling alone racially. I’d been to China before and had a similar feeling where it’s like, “Man! There are a lot of Chinese people in the world.” And I think going to Africa as a white guy who is used to being the majority race, just feeling my whiteness. This is not what I am used to at all.

Drew and his mom eventually make it to the hotel and get settled. The next morning Drew meets some of the other guests at the hotel and has an unexpected surprise:

DS: We had a met couple who was also there with our adoption agency who had just finished the adoption process, and they were getting ready to go home. So we were talking to them and hanging out with them that day. And that they were actually getting ready to get picked up from the airport and so they asked me help them carry some of their suitcases downstairs because they had a bunch of luggage. So I carried their suitcases downstairs, and my mom was still up in her hotel room. And we come downstairs, and somebody else from our adoption agency was picking them up, and they’re like, “Oh, by the way. Those are your kids.” And Luke and Emma are sitting on the couch in the lobby of the hotel. And I’m just like, “Oh! This is so unexpected.” I expected to have some lead time to know that they were coming, and they were just sitting there on the couch. It was so anti-climactic. Three years of waiting and they’re just sitting on this couch. I’m just like, “Ok.”

After three of years of waiting, Drew and his kids were finally together. So now, all that was left was to fill out some paperwork, and go home. But, there was a problem, a set of problems actually, that would plunge Drew’s adoption process into the depths of corruption, confusion, and heartache.

DS: Well, immediately, what we realized was there are massive issues with our adoption agency. Just to give you one story, the woman in the Congo was running the orphanage starting embezzling money from our adoption agency, funds, and so she was driving a Mercedes in the Congo, to get a Mercedes would cost you at least $100,000. So she’s driving around in a Mercedes in the poorest country in the world on our dime. We were paying$600 for our kids to live in the orphanage. So I’m told just after I get there that just to get the paperwork stack that I need to get out of the country, the lawyer that works for our adoption agency wants $1200 from me, just to get that paperwork. So our adoption agency flew in another guy, who talked to him, and they basically worked something out where he, for some reason unbeknownst to me, because he held all the cards, gave me the paperwork for me. So, initially, I think there was just a feeling of, “I.. This is really shady. I don’t know what’s about to go down, but this is crazy.”

So Drew’s adoption agency hires Drew a new lawyer named Dadi.

DS: So we meet up for this initial meeting, and he’s like, “Hey, basically, Claude screwed up all your paperwork, so I’m going to have to go back through it and do a bunch of work to it, and I haven’t been paid anything, so you need to pay me $400, and I will fix up your paper work, and that’ll be all the money you ever have to pay me.” And I was like, “Well, that makes sense.” He’s taking over our case; we would have to pay him a little bit money. So I gave him $400 cash, and okay, we’re back on track.

Drew and his new lawyer go to the immigration agency, the DGM, to begin the process to get an exit visa. However, a few days later, Drew gets more bad news:

DS: I went down to breakfast, and one of the other guys who was there with a different agency, doing the same thing we were doing, tells me that the Congolese government had suspended the issuance of exit permits. So, this is a big picture Congo thing. We’re not going to let you leave the country, basically was the announcement.

Although technically the exit visa ban only banned the children from leaving, practically speaking, it meant that Drew and his mom were stranded. It’s not like they were going to leave the country without the kids. So, now Drew is stuck in the Congo with only a shady adoption agency to help him,

DS: And by the way, we’re watching my kids who are absolutely crazy. Emma had malaria. Emma had tuberculosis. My son Luke had parasites. Just to give you one example of something we were dealing with, he was filling a diaper with diarrhea 10 times a day.

NM: Wow.

DS: And so it was just crazy town. And then Emma was just mad that she had authority figures in her life, so she’s just going nuts. So she’s taking her clothes off in public, and I’m grabbing her and trying to make it not look like I’m beating a child in public. Trying to restrain her basically, from running away from me or doing whatever she’s trying to do.

So, as you can tell by now, Drew’s got his hands full. As Drew kept trying find a way to get home, he began to face more corruption with the adoption agency. There was no progress at the DGM, the immigration agency, and Drew's new lawyer starts asking Drew for more and more money. After a while, it became apparent what was going on: see, the Congolese employees of the US adoption agency had not been paid by their agency in a while:

DS: Basically, all of the people in the Congo were paid by our adoption agency, but they had basically gone rogue. So, they basically figured out, if we’re not going to get our money from the adoption agency that we think we deserve, then we’re going to get it from the people that come over here. And we have the best bartering chip available to us, which is these people’s kids. Come to find out later that they had basically sized me up and figured that they could get bout $2500 out of me.

And, Dadi had made agreements with the folks at the DGM to split the profits of extorting Drew with them. Eventually, Drew meets someone who might be to help.

DS: Well, I met a Canadian guy in the hotel, and he was working for the U.N. So I meet him and tell him about my case, and he’s like, “Hey! I actually know a guy who probably could help you.”

This guy’s name was Steven Zita, the dean of a university in Kinshasa. He had studied in the U.S., and Drew’s story stuck out Steven, so he agreed to help Drew. Coming up, Drew’s situation begins to change, but not until he receives the worst piece of news he’s gotten yet.

So we pick up our story with Drew having found someone who will help him find a way home, a college dean named Steven Zita. And just as it looks like things are about to get better, Steven finds a terrible piece of information that stems from Drew’s lawyer.

DS: He comes to find out that Dadi had gone back and written on my file that I shouldn’t be able to adopt because I was a pedophile.

NM: Oh my gosh.

DS: So he explains to me that once something is in writing in the Congo, everyone believes it’s true, whether it’s true or not. So you can see, we’ve got the picture Congo stuff going on, I don’t know if I’m going to get out of the country because of the shutdown, but I’ve got even more problems going on with the adoption agency. So then, I call our adoption agency, and I’m explaining this whole situation to them, and it was almost like the mafia was working with kindergarten teachers, and they’re just like, “You just need to explain to Dadi that you don’t like that he’s treating you this way.” And it’s like, ok, they are not going to be able to help me at all, so I just hung up the phone, and was thoroughly disgusted and frustrated, but thankful that I had Zita working on my side.

Drew explained to me how Steven worked around the clock to help him.

DS: And then he actually hooks with me up with a substitute lawyer. So this guy actually wasn’t a lawyer, but he was just an advocate for me with the DGM. And this guy was a secret service agent, so literally, this guy, one night is guarding the President of the Congo, and the next day he’s sitting in the DGM here advocating for me. It makes no sense how I know any of these people.

Thankfully, Zita keeps working hard to help Drew and after weeks and weeks, he finally manages to get the exit visa for the children:

DS: Yeah, so this was hilarious. It’s a phone call out of the blue from Zita. He’s like, “Hey, we have your exit paperwork.” So I go over to the DGM to pick this thing up. So, it was hilarious because to sign off to get the exit letter it was on top of a piece of scrap paper with a red pen. So, I’m like “Okay..?” And I don’t even know if I’m getting the right piece of paperwork, or what’s going on, or whatever. And they hand me the stack of paperwork. I’m hoping it’s all that I needed to get out of the airport. I have no idea. So it’s an incredibly vulnerable situation.

So I sign off on the piece of paperwork. We have a travel agent who’s on standby for us. I’ve called them every day to set up flights in advance, and then they can just cancel those flights and set up another for the next day. So we all already have a flight up. So literally the day off, we take the first flight to get the heck out of there because you never know what’s going to happen.

So the irony of ironies. We get to the airport. We’ve been waiting how long to get this exit paperwork so we can get through, literally, one security guard to get into the terminal of this airport. We’ve been waiting 40 days. And we’re sitting there in the lobby area, and my daughter Emma has to go pee. And my mom walks up to the security guard and says, “Hey! She’s gotta go pee. Where’s the bathroom?” And he lets them walk by with no paperwork into the airport terminal and use the bathroom. And I’m just like, why didn’t we just try that?? “Hey! Our kids have to pee.” And then just get got on the plane. I don’t think they would have done anything. I don’t think they would have cared.

I asked Drew what it was like to experience the extent of corruption that he did in the Congo.

DS: That was maybe the hardest thing, just the injustice of the entire situation and that these people wanted to keep me from bringing my kids home. And what became apparent is that to them it really wasn’t about the money. It was about jealousy, I think. Because you come over there as a rich Westerner, and they just want to own you. They want you to make you squirm. They want to make you feel probably what they feel on a daily basis, so I think even my so-called enemies over there who were corrupt and all that. You leave the situation and feel compassion for them because they’re just in a life situation that is impossible for me to understand as a rich Westerner.

NM: Yeah.

After 40 days of away from their family, Drew and his mom finally make it home, and the family is united for the veryfirst time. But the whirlwind of being a family of six set in pretty quickly:

I would like say, that sense of, "We’re all together as one big happy family. This is so sweet!" lasted for less than 24 hours. Because then we're just like "Oh, crap." I mean the next 8 months of life are just a whirlwind after that.

I think there’s an instant bond and an instant connection and instance sense like, "I'm their father." And for Melissa, "I'm their mom." But then, there's also a process to that. It's different than having biological kids because I think with biological kids you have a time of attachment where the kids aren't disobeying you. And so we didn't have that time of just bonding with them. It was basically like these kids have lived in an orphanage for over two years of their life, and so they were just wild. And so it was like, we're just trying to get them to listen to us, to eat the food we put in front of them, and to not destroy our house. And so I would say it was an instant connection, but once the reality of them being in our house set in, it's a process of really cementing in our hearts, these are our children. It's a different process, but a really cool process too.

NM: At the end of my conversation with Drew, I asked Drew to look back on his experience in the Congo.

If the you of today could go back to 2013 September, getting on the plane, would you tell Drew in 2013, what's about to happen?

DS: That's a great question. You know ... no. The opportunity to learn to trust God has been invaluable to my entire life. And I think this process, it makes me want to do it again, which might sound totally crazy. But, you want your life to be an epic story. You don't want your life to be that movie that you turn off because the characters are so static. That's what I compel college students with. And Melissa and I are like, "We couldn't have written a better story for our lives." This is incredible to be actually living a story worth telling. And so I think that's what I'd tell myself on the plane. I'd say, "Hey Drew, the story of your life is about to get awesome. Buckle your seatbelt because it's going to be harder than you would've imagined. But it's going to be awesome."

NM: So, to wrap this episode up, here’s some final food for thought from Drew:

DS: I would say that question marks provide opportunities to trust God. And so, any question you have about what could happen if you take this certain or do this certain thing is an opportunity to deepen your relationship with God, which is what life is all about. So I'd say, don't ask yourself "Should I adopt kids?" or "Should I give a bunch of money recklessly to my church?" or "Should I share the gospel with my co-worker?" I think you should ask yourself the question, "Why wouldn't I do that?" Because a life of trusting God is so much more rewarding than a life of playing it safe.

Quick update on Drew since we did that interview--he had a son, so the family, now 5 kids.