Bozeman family honored at adoption ceremony

By BETH SLOVIC, Chronicle Staff Writer

John and Reycarlo's adoptions will be finalized in Helena on Tuesday, but only in legal terms.

Emotionally, the process was completed eight months ago, when the two boys arrived from the Philippines.

They were welcomed into the Bozeman home of Kim and Tim Mason and the couple's three other children, Olivia, 6, Ruthie, 6, and Dauren, 7.

Adoption is nothing new to the Masons, who've lived in Bozeman off and on for years. All of their children were adopted, and so was their yellow Lab, Flash.

Olivia was adopted at birth from Texas, and Ruthie and Dauren were adopted in 2001 from Kazakhstan.

"We've always known children were very important to us," Tim Mason explained Friday, as the five kids swirled quietly around the living room. "The means were unconventional, but they're our children."

At a ceremony in the state Capitol rotunda Tuesday, the Masons and four other families will be honored for choosing to adopt. District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock will officiate and Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger and Joan Miles, director of the state Department of Public Health and Human Services, will be on hand to witness the event.

The Masons met John and Reycarlo in July 2004 through the Summer Miracles program of the Bozeman-based Sacred Portion Children's Outreach.

The brothers had been living in an American-run orphanage on the Philippine island of Cebu when they came to Bozeman for four weeks last year. Neither John nor Reycarlo was told that the couple had hopes of adopting them, because Summer Miracles is billed to the children as a camp.

However, many families do end up adopting the children they host. Doing so requires going through a licensed adoption agency and many months of paperwork.

"We started the process the day we put them on the plane to go back," Kim Mason said.

Social workers visited the Masons' home and the couple had to submit to background checks. In the end, eight months passed before the children could return to the United States.

But the end results made it all worth it. And the Masons' excitement is visible to their friends.

"They're just wonderful parents," Wendy Sonnenberg, a family friend, said Monday. "They've always wanted to share their lives; the more the merrier."

This summer, families with the Summer Miracles program were blocked from hosting children from Russia and the Philippines, because the state health department decided Sacred Portion was acting as an adoption agency, which requires special licensure from the state.

But the group didn't learn about the state's decision until it was too late to secure a license.

Also, Summer Miracle's directors, Jan and Craig Druckenmiller, disputed the state's characterization of the organization. They maintain that they do not need a special license, because the summer program is not an adoption program, they have said.

"It would make our summer program unworkable," Jan Druckenmiller said.

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