It was 1pm on Friday and Ryan had another meeting at 2pm. He decided that he couldn’t wait that long so he called Perry back. Perry answered the phone and Ryan said, “Hi, this is Ryan. This is kind of crazy.”
Perry said, “Hi Ryan, we know who you are and we have been praying for you, your whole life. My sister Sherrie is your birth mom. She would love to connect with you if you want.”
They talked for most of the next hour on Ryan’s way to his next meeting. Perry told him that he had gotten his Facebook Message and his email right away. He was pretty shocked but immediately contacted his wife. She is one of their family experts on family history so she started doing a little fact checking on Ryan to make sure he wasn’t a weirdo. She googled him, searched him on Linked In, and Facebook. They were able to find some pictures of him. They could see the family resemblance right away and Ryan’s birth date and place matched the information they knew about his sister giving up her baby. They showed a picture of Ryan to one of their sons and asked him who he looked like without any explanation. He looked at it for about two seconds and said, Austin. Austin was his cousin and Sherrie’s youngest son, which would make him Ryan’s half brother, if Sherrie was Ryan’s birth mom. She followed the family history Ryan and given them based on his DNA with their own family history and confirmed that they also thought they were related. His wife said she thought Ryan was a legit person and didn’t give off any big red crazy flags so with a cautious concern to Perry to remember we have a mother’s (Rhonda) feelings to protect and consider as they moved forward. They decided to proceed and contact Sherrie and let her know Ryan had contacted them and then contact Ryan back and tell him he had found his biological family.
Sherrie now lived in Arkansas about an hour away from Perry. She has a son at BYU, and a married daughter and son that lived in Utah with their families. She had gone out to see them for a little bit and was supposed to fly home that Friday. The airlines had contacted her and told her that her flight had been canceled so she ended up staying an extra day or two in Utah. Instead of being on an airplane when Perry called, she was helping her daughter pick up one of her kids from school. When she answered Perry’s call he told her he’d had an amazing experience that he wanted to share with her. He told her he wanted her to sit down. Perry told her that a young man had reached out to him and said he was looking to find his biological family. He told her they had confirmed it the best they could and were pretty positive that it was the baby she had given up for adoption in 1979.
Sherrie was beyond shocked. Of all the possible things that ran through her mind when Perry said he needed to tell her something, this had not been one of them. She was immediately overwhelmed. Perry told her all the information he had and asked her if she wanted him to contact Ryan back and if she wanted to talk to him. Sherrie said she definitely wanted to talk with him but needed a bit to process and get her emotions under control and tell her kids. Perry told her he would be in touch and hung up to call Ryan.
Here are some of the things Perry and Ryan talked about on their first phone call together.
Perry told Ryan he was really glad that he had reached out to him first so he could contact Sherrie first. Later on everyone in the family told Ryan he picked the perfect person to contact first in the family. That was a confirmation to Ryan that he had definitely been lead by The Spirit to contact Perry first instead of Bill Bertelson.
Perry told Ryan that his sister had gotten pregnant and he found out while he was on his mission so she had already had the baby and given him up for adoption and moved out to Utah before he came home from his mission. He said they didn’t talk about it a lot over the years but there were a few occasions they did. It wasn’t a secret but it was very painful for Sherrie to discuss and think about. They always hoped he was ok and happy and with a good family and prayed for him.
Sherrie was now married and had 5 more children after Ryan. David was married and lived with his wife and six children in Herriman Utah. Their next oldest Genevieve was married and lived with her husband and son in Arkansas about an hour from Sherrie. Their third child was a daughter that lived in Herriman Utah as well, and her and her husband had two boys. They had another son named Eric that got cancer when he was around 10 years old and passed away. Their youngest son was named Austin and he was finishing up his last semester at BYU.
Perry asked Ryan if he wanted him to have Sherrie contact him. Ryan was feeling pretty overwhelmed. At this point it had barely been twelve hours since Kenny had contacted him telling him he found his biological family. Now he had it confirmed and knew not only his biological mom which was mind blowing in itself but also aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, grandparents, and four living half siblings. He told Perry that he did want to talk with her and when she was ready he would like to talk on the phone. Perry gave him Sherrie’s phone number and passed Ryan’s on to her.
After Ryan’s call ended with Perry he took a few minutes to group call Sherri, Kenny and I and fill us in on as much of the conversation as he could in about 5 minutes before heading into his next meeting even though his mind was on nothing but the conversation he had just had with his new found Uncle. After his last meeting of the day he was finally able to come home and sit down and try to digest everything he had discovered in the last few hours.
The rest of Sherrie’s day after her phone call from Perry.
Sherrie had a lot of difficult emotions she had wrapped up in a tight little box over the years around discovering she was pregnant and going through the process of giving Ryan up for adoption. Some of the bigger players being guilt and regret. When her two oldest children David and Genevieve were growing up there were a few times they asked about their older brother. Sherrie didn’t know if someone else had told them, or she said something about it she didn’t remember but to her knowledge she had never told them about their older brother. Each time they asked she tried to change the subject or disregard the question. When Genevieve was about 13 years old she came to her mom and told her that she had always felt like she had an older brother besides David and she needed to know why. Sherri decided to tell her at that time she did have a son before David that she had given up for adoption. She didn’t know anything else about him and most likely they would never meet him in this life. Later on when David was in the MTC for his mission, he sent his mom a letter describing the same thoughts Genevieve had years earlier and wanted to know not if, but who his older brother was. Sherri wrote him back and told him her story. Ending with the same thing she told Genevieve, she didn’t think it was possible they would ever know who he was or meet him in this life.
Sherrie never told her Giselle or Austin about Ryan. When Sherrie got off the phone with Perry, her daughter saw her face and was concerned. She could tell something big had happened. She started asking her mom questions and trying to figure out what happened. Sherrie told her she needed all three of her kids that were in Utah to get together because she had something to tell them, but she only wanted to say it once.
It took a few hours for Austin to come to Giselle’s house. Sherri stuck to her guns and wouldn’t say anything until he got there. She called David and told him she would be coming over to his house after she talked to them and he was done at work to tell him something important. When Austin got to Giselle’s they sat down and Sherri told them about giving Ryan up for adoption and that he had reached out to Perry and wanted to talk with her. They learned they had a half brother. Obviously they were shocked. They spent some time talking about it and then went over to David’s and told him the brother he thought he would never meet had reached out to Sherrie.
Later that evening Sherrie texted Ryan for the first time. She said she was very nervous and would probably be weird and awkward but when he was ready she would like to call him. Ryan texted her back and said he was going to be weird and awkward too but her was ready to talk when she was. Sherrie called him back almost immediately. I listened long enough for them to get through their hellos and hear Sherrie’s sweet Arkansas accent then left the room. They talked for about an hour and started to get to know each other. They talked about their day and the emotions they had experienced and started to share the stories of their lives. At the end of their conversation they decided they would try a zoom call the next evening. The next night they saw each other through their computers and talked for several more hours.