A letter from Captain Schiller

CRAN, let me begin this message by saying thank you. I was born in December 1980 in Bogota, Colombia. I was fortunate enough to be placed in the care of your organization and adopted by my family in the United States in February 1981. I don't know much about my biological family, only the name I was given at birth, Leonardo.

I have had a blessed life in the United States, with a family that loves me and gave me the opportunities I needed to excel and achieve my goals and dreams. I am currently a captain in the United States Air Force and flying the F-15C Eagle.

Becoming the man I am today would not have been possible without the care your organization provided me in my first few weeks of life and without the family you found for me that has done so much to make my life better. I am eternally grateful to all your staff, past and present, for the work they do.

Today I am 30 years old and have a lovely wife, but we are missing having a child. Unfortunately we can't have them naturally, but I take this as a sign that maybe I should go back to where I came from and adopt a child from Colombia and give them a loving home filled with the same opportunities that I fortunately had in my life.

Thank you for your time and consideration and again thank you from the bottom of my heart for all you have done for me and my life.

Very respectfully yours,

The best 6 years of our life

July 16, it’ already been six years of this journey that we started together. Thank you for being you, Dani, thank you for your immense love, for everything you teach me every day and for the privilege of loving you. The best decision of my life has been to be your mom from the heart, proudly so, Dani's mom from the heart. That first day and for many days you asked "do you love me?" and the answer at that moment and until the last day of my life will be "no I love you, I love you, I adore you, you are the most important thing". I congratulate myself for having you as my son. Thank you CRAN Foundation for this wonderful gift, for the adventure of being Dani's mom, for your smiles, for the smiles you bring out in me, for the mutual love, for the tears of love and even for the ones that are not and even for the challenges. We are very happy.

The best six years of our lives!!!!!

Pancha and Clara

Pancha meets after 20 years with Clara, the surrogate mom who took care of her at CRAN Foundation when she was a baby.

Here you can see how the exciting meeting went:

Colombia: the CRAN story

As many of you know, part of this trip included my Colombian roots and somehow reconnecting with them. Many friends and family members asked me a lot of questions about my biological heritage and asked me if somehow the reason for my trip was to find my biological parents. You know, I honestly wasn't sure what was going to happen, or if that was what I really wanted at that point in my life. I couldn't answer that question until I arrived in Colombia and let the universe guide me towards closing this chapter of my life.

CRAN is the place where I spent the first 4 months of my life before I was adopted. I had found some information about the Foundation in various documents in North Carolina. When I arrived in Bogota, our airbnb hostess (who is now a good friend) contacted CRAN on my behalf to see if we could come visit them and make a donation to the Foundation. To my surprise, I was told that the founder wanted to meet with me personally.

We traveled across town to a small neighborhood in the north of Bogota. When we arrived I began to experience the sense of peace, calm and spirituality that accompanied me throughout the visit. We were greeted by the security guard and escorted to meet one of the coordinators. She led us into a small room with the walls covered with pictures of children who had been adopted and offered us coffee while we waited for the founder.

After a few minutes a white-haired lady came in and sat down with us. She asked me many questions about my life. There was a look of satisfaction in her eyes, perhaps, the feeling of being in front of one of the children she had helped, and now a man, reminding her of what she is doing. She has been with CRAN for 38 years and there was something about her like Mother Teresa, it was incredible! I felt a deep respect for her tireless work to improve the lives of Colombian children.

As we talked I began to feel the sense of closure I had been seeking for 32 years. I began to feel complete. It's hard to explain, but at that moment I realized that I didn't go back to Colombia to find my biological relatives. I went to meet the people who took care of me when I was like the children I saw there. I went back to show these children that they can become amazing people, that they can do wonderful things, and that there are no limits to what they can accomplish. If it happened to me, it can happen to them.

After our talk, his assistant took us on a tour of the place which is located in those beautiful hills in the north of Bogota. We saw all the different areas and met many of the children.

Our champion swimmer

We want to share with you a great adoption story. Geneviève and Jonatan registered at Soleil des Nations and in 2010, it was a great pleasure to offer them CRAN's offer of a beautiful 4 year old girl.

Tatiana was the first SDN child to be classified as "special needs". Without going into too much detail of her story, she had spastic hemiparesis on the right side of her body.

We could write entire pages to tell you how excited the couple was about this news and how much they needed to fight with the authorities here to adopt Tatiana. They thought they were too young to adopt a child with such needs, but they were not right. Geneviève and Jonathan have been foster parents to several children over the past ten years. They also have legal custody of two other children, a boy and a girl, here in Quebec.

During their trip, they wrote to us every day with a thousand pictures of their daughter. We had never seen such a happy family.

When they arrived from Colombia, they enrolled Tatiana in a swimming class to help her strengthen her leg and arm.

She loved those classes and 10 years later she is our champion swimmer!

Last year, she competed in two major swimming events in Manitoba and Texas. She won two gold medals and also finished second behind a 27-year-old woman with 23 Olympic medals.She is now in Toronto for OLYMPICS "trials." In April, she will attend her first World Series in Indianapolis with 1,300 other swimmers from 84 different countries. She is also participating in the Next Generation program to prepare for the Paris Olympics in 2024. She does all of this while working hard in school and keeping her beautiful smile on her face.

She is now in Toronto for OLYMPICS "trials." In April, she will attend her first World Series in Indianapolis with 1,300 other swimmers from 84 different countries. She is also participating in the Next Generation program to prepare for the Paris Olympics in 2024. She does all of this while working hard in school and keeping her beautiful smile on her face.

She is simply AMAZING!

We are so proud of Tatiana and her family. So often we hear that love can't do everything, which is true, but it can do many great things.

We are all behind her and follow all these events but no matter the outcome, she will always be our champion.

Congratulations to Tatiana and her family!!!!!