 Hey, guess who's here? It's Emma. Emma has brought with us this time the Adoption Angels project and before we get started I just want to say that I know this is a very sensitive subject for a few of us out there and you might have current adoptions, you might have close adoptions distance-wise from your ancestors and you might have some that are further back but it's still as Emma and I were talking just before we started it's an emotional topic so I know that we have a lot of fun with bingo and I hope that we still do but I want to make sure that everybody understands we're gonna handle the adoption angels bingo a little sensitive here and informative and I thank you Emma for coming on board because it's pretty amazing that wiki tree is free for everybody and guess what else is free? Oh there we go! Honest official Molly. We gotta give Molly like Molly the elf too. But I'm saying that it was great that wiki tree is free but also Emma's project and it was because you both are captains and I love that I got both of you here for this is that your services are free. That's almost unheard of in this world. You dig into a lot of research to find unknown parentage and it's free. And we help build the trees once we find the biological family we help build the trees as well. And I just wanted to tell everybody if you have any questions at all about the adoption angels as we go through because I have a lot of questions as well as we go through we're gonna kind of put this in two parts we're gonna explain the adoption angels at the very beginning we're gonna do a bingo card and then when we come back Emma's gonna kind of walk us through a little bit of what profiles look like for those that have been adopted so if you have any questions just let us know and let's get started with your project page. So here's the adoption angels page and keep in mind that this page is for people like myself who want to help but it's also for people who need help as well right. Yeah and also the one thing I try to keep reminding people of we're called adoption angels but we don't just help adoptees we help anyone who's looking for biological family up to the great grand up to the grandparent generation. Oh I'm glad you mentioned that because I was gonna be one of my questions does it only for somebody living right now so if my grandfather I don't know who his parentage is and he has been documented as adopted or back then it was kind of more casual it wasn't as formal as it was now you will take that on if you have if you've taken a DNA test yes we will take it up to the grandparent and before we go any further since you mentioned it I did tease this a little bit in the bingo post can you tell us what it MP is non paternal event basically that means an unexpected parent in the tree. So this happens sometimes people will take a DNA test and they'll suddenly realize they're not matching one of their own parents or maybe their parents that that branch just isn't showing up in the DNA and they realize there's an unexpected parent situation happening. If I think for this reason to that's why we're going to move a little sensitive through this but when we talk about adoption angels MP ease are kind of all in caps in that phrase of adoption angels right basically any unknown parent any unknown parentage situation because there can be and we deal with donor children we deal with families there's lots of different ways you can have an unknown parent we help everybody and I'm glad you mentioned that too because that was my other question is there this we already know you'll go up to grandparent is there a category that you won't be able to help I know probably donor children is the most challenging because of legal reasons but you still have the DNA right as long as they're over 18 years old because we don't work with anybody who's under the age of 18 because then that goes into legal issues so as long as they're over 18 years of age I we haven't had a situation yet where we haven't been able to work with them in how many when did the project start about when 2015 I know I was talking to Ewan about this recently she said really that long ago I think it was about December 2015 when we started getting off the ground but it wasn't till 2017 that Ewan and I kind of went in and got a system going to make sure we were systematically processing and helping every single applicant that came in go through the process you're moving can't hear you Ewan no get here her here we go I'm not gonna put you on the spot but how many would you think have you successfully solved I actually have that statistic we didn't start tracking until about 2018 but we currently have about 260 cases that we've solved since then and that's and that's cases so some of these cases we've solved two three four different unknown parentage situations in the same tree so we it's it's not an accurate number of how many situations we've actually solved but we've solved about 260 since 2018 it again this is I talk about the power of wiki tree but this one's going to be different how I talk about the power of wiki tree usually I talk about it how we coordinate with so many other different projects and I'm sure you do but the power wiki tree for adoption angels is it is free is free research and I can't tell you how powerful that that really is when somebody might not have the money to go higher in adoption specialists or attorney or professional genealogists out there and they can join wiki tree and come in I imagine when you work with the profiles and you start working on it you start building their family tree as well so you're giving them information but also a tree because in order to find the birth parents we have to do a lot of tree building so it's kind of built into the work anyway so by the time we figured out the birth parents we've built the tree and we can just hand that to them and I can tell you I'm not gonna put a dollar tag on it because it's different regions of different things but I can tell you as a professional genealogist who has worked with many MPEs more than adoption but if them both out there in the real world outside wiki tree if this is not an inexpensive endeavor so the fact that you guys are doing this and providing a tree is really really awesome so a couple things we're gonna talk about how to become an adoption angel those are the researchers too as just moment but what I want to do is go through this checklist so if there's anybody out there who is watching now or in the future and sees this particular YouTube video and says I really want to know how wiki tree can help me because I have unknown parents in my my life in my tree so I love us because you've given them a complete step-by-step idea so it will take it from the very scratch so you know Sally Joe comes to you and says Emma I don't know who my parents are I'm adopted what should I do first thing I we try to stress is set your goals what do you want out of the search do you just want names are you looking for health information do you want to try to connect with family having those goals ahead of time will help you help direct the search and where it's going to go and then second gather your information for some people there will be family stories there will maybe be some paperwork for other people they have nothing they can't find anything it's okay if you can't find anything if you do the third thing which is absolutely a must and that's take the DNA test and we now require all our applicants to take a DNA test because we've discovered it's the only way to be accurate because paperwork lies all the time they really do especially adoption paperwork it's amazing yeah I would go through stories that I've had but you as Emma said take the DNA test take the DNA test because people will purposely put inaccurate information work to try to direct you in a different direction now to get more bang for your buck we recommend you take ancestry DNA first because we can accomplish in two hours of ancestry what might take us weeks or months at the other companies because their database is just so huge so spread the word about that and then you can upload for free to some of the other companies and then seek help from people with experience finding birth family that's us so application form and because you've taken the DNA test and you've tried to gather what you can you're ready to go and where we can help you and then again we once the search is complete try to connect with others who can help you with the emotional closure aspect because there's going to be a lot as you brought up at the beginning there's so much emotion in these searches and people really need to stop and take time to process the emotions and honor their emotions and honor the situation that I can't I can't even begin to tell you how much there is that needs to be processed so I recommend that people specifically take time and find ways of how that they they can work through that and I felt that a lot of times when when the information is found out and first given to a person there's like a weird excitement and relief at the same time and that's great when when you're talking to them and then you show them the train it's a lot of information take in they look at oh the locations or oh so my great-great-grandfather was you know worked on the railroads or whatever it might be and like Emma said once that little bit of a high of finding out truth reaches you then then definitely seek out somebody that you trust to talk to because it will hit you it were human beings here and it will definitely hit you you'll have all normal questions to I want everybody to know that whatever questions you have at that point you're normal the wise the wins the howl all those are normal normal questions so don't don't feel like it's not wiki tree can give you all this information but we're not counselors that's the one part where we can't help with and I do like to what once you start digging into this page it'll like I said just go through the steps that these ladies have created for you on this page with the DNA and finding search help as Emma said you probably will not have all the information and a lot of them from paperwork because that's why you're coming to wiki tree in first place okay let's talk a little bit about the adoption checklist but and then we'll play one of the bingo games but the reason why I want to bring this up as well Janine has a question how do you fill out the form of the adoption angels if it's a deceased grandparent and not sure who their father is so let me bring you to the form real quick and the checklist is here well excuse me this is a checklist let me bring you to a form because we're kind of talked about the checklist there we are so here's the form so how would I fill it out if I'm looking for a grandparent so the name of the adoptee wouldn't actually be you in this case you would you would erase that and put the name of the grandparent and then it says if you are not the adoptee right below your wiki ID then that's where you're gonna put your name and say this is my grandparent okay did that help Janine and I've noticed that we have quite a few interesting comments in here already are you ever are you two ladies ever amazed at how many people are adopted no and I'm never amazed that we that when you go in and start working on a tree you find like three other unexpected parent situations like it's just now so common people don't realize how common it is I think definitely when you start talking to about MPEs I think that you'll find more MPEs we're hiding Emma just a bit my grandmother's older brother was adopted even though it was 1890s their adoption papers do I first enter in his adoption name which is the only name I know so Betty Lou hold that question because after the first bingo card we're going to answer this really tricky question because when you're setting up profiles for adoptions and adoptees it gets interesting and there I think there's a couple ways you can you can do it this is a nice one my nephew was an open adoption that makes it so much easier and at that point for an open adoption they pretty much know and if they took a DNA test they could see if there were any breaks in the line any MPEs in the line or if they can just keep going all the way back and the reason why I want to bring that up is keep that in mind too because Carol after the first bingo card we're going to talk about having profiles set up again and how it affects your ccc's right or cc7 as well I wonder if anyone's having some of the storms too if anybody's having the storms um hang in there and um here's another one my mom was adopted so unknown paternal grandfather I have some basics but can't find his parents or records of him before his marriage perfect case of what we've talked about so on the form she would list her paternal mom right here in this first line and then if you're not the adopted you'd list your name yeah and then what happens after that once they give you the form and it's submitted yeah the form will come to a group that we have set up and basically they come to me and then I process those forms once a week I'll read through them see if we have enough information to start with um certain situations we can't help so I'll send them those messages and then I will send that list off to my project coordinator uh Pamela Anderson who um is our mentor and she sends messages to all the people make sure they've done the checklist and then it goes on our waiting list for the family finders and those are the people who do the work alongside alongside you with the dna and I know this is um penny silk and her closest match they are not that aren't close family don't have public trees it's always tricky but there are ways and and what does it mean by close family because we can use matches that are like a hundred cent of morgans and and find birth parents with those so we don't have good we don't have to have first cousin or half sibling or parent to figure out the birth parents we can use second third fourth cousins often and that's a really really good point don't assume that you have to have a brother or a sibling or a parent or an uncle or an aunt you can go a little further out and you're still going to give the adoption angels a lot of information to work on yeah there's a process a dna process we use of how to piece those together kind of like a logic puzzle to get to the birth parent there's my project coordinator she just showed up in the chat hi fam she's amazing keep your project going this is a good question from andrew i am adopted and so is my birth mother so it's been a crazy ride working through all of it with adoption angels so yeah andrew that's i applaud you for bringing out the truth here on on a youtube chat with us with adoption angels and wiki tree and thank you for doing so because it sounds like that crazy ride has been successful as he's going through it it's it can be so complicated when you're adopted and then you find out a parent your birth parent was also adopted so then we have to go and solve their birth parent situation in order to get you further in the tree dna dna dna god bless us for dna oh there's patty hi patty there we go that's awesome fam this is such a worthy project well all of wiki trees projects are worthy but this one again if you're into howl to dig in the research and find these mysteries this is a great project but also if you just want to know that you are helping someone receive answers that they've always wanted and it can wiki tree adoption angels is free this it's it's heartwarming it definitely is so we've got a lot of um a lot of fun going on does everybody have their bingo card okay let's go ahead and talk about bingo then i'm going to remove this for a second as i bring up the bingo card and to let everybody know how bingo is you brought your card up so to somebody else wanted the rules as well so if you're new or if you play before if you play before good news rules have not changed if you're new here are the rules so to do bingo you're going to dab it with your mouse when i call out a word you can do horizontal vertically diagonally i if there is a free space make sure that you dab that automatically some parts have free spaces some don't so it's kind of in between there and here's how you went to win a prize the first person who wins bingo and types it in the chat is the person who's won this round of bingo i want to also mention that the past might say three or four bingos we have had people actually win bingo but have decided to decline the prize and keep playing so do not close down your bingo cards even though somebody said bingo keep your bingo card up just in case they decide to pass the prize or keep playing i should say not pass the prize okay so again horizontal vertically diagonal in the first person who types bingo in the chat is the person who wins five of you might win at the same time but only the first person who types it so let's go ahead and start and as we go through the bingo words we'll go through them fairly quick Emma's going to explain them to us because the adoption angels group supplied the bingo words they did so shared matches those are our dna matches and how they share dna with each other tells us a lot and we're looking for our ancestry and this one's kind of it could be double too using the ancestry and it could be double as well but either way looking for these ancestry answers yeah work with a lot of adoptees but you don't have to be an adoptee to fill out an application and that's a good point and keep in mind too that if you have an mpe you're not considered an adoptee but in the realm of this type of topic it's kind of the same thing it's the same work regardless of a paperwork and legal yeah public records yep we use a lot of public records to figure out recent day relationships i and this is putting me on the spot and i feel bad about this you may know the answer in the united states let's just let's make it a little easier in the united states is there any state that is absolutely closed to all public records that will not help you at all well yes to adoption papers or birth pair birth certificates yes there are lots of states still completely closed but by public records we're looking like at phone books and city directories and and then let me ask you this is we're talking about public records is there a location that you won't accept applications from a location yeah yeah there are some well we'll we'll accept the application but we can't help them like for instance south africa we get a lot of applications from there but we have no experienced researchers that can help with that so we give them advice and then um try to direct them somewhere else so if anybody is watching this and you have some knowledge of researching and can help then this would be a good project for you to join with wiki tree donor child and this is very interesting that you guys do i never even thought about this yep we do it's very rare but we do work with them on a case by case basis so definitely if if you have donor child somewhere in your line or yourself fill out the application i think what n was trying to say to me when i keep asking all these questions is send application in send it in because we can't help you we'll let you know yeah and you definitely have to have a DNA test though because we no longer take that take applications unless you've taken the DNA test and that makes sense it's so much quicker and easier and accurate yes and we only require and we only work well we mostly work with autosomal dna we do work with why dna sometimes but autosomal is a million times faster even if we're looking for paternal line that's good to know too because this particular dna test is the least expensive overall it's expensive and if you get it on sale at ancestry $59 an ancestry seems like they have it on sale before every holiday father's day same badger's day every holiday date of birth yeah sometimes we can use that date of birth to give us clues and obc is original birth certificate and this is one of those papers that's available in some states to people in more states are starting to open up but lots of states you can't even get your own birth certificate and i will tell you that i live in the state of georgia and that is correct a friend of mine adopted a child pretty much at birth and the court clerk said get whatever how many other copies you want now because you will never be able to come back in the it was funny because she kind of laughed the mom kind of the adopted mom kind of left this what happens if there's a fire in my house or something like that because you're out of luck so yeah the original birth certificates i think that we're going to see this topic a lot is coming in the future i'd say in the next 10 years 20 years where more and more released the records are going to come through fighting for the legislation to get access to their own paperwork just for those of you that are watching because you're supporting the bingo and you're interested in the adoption angels project as well but you might not know a lot about the particular topic another reason why i'm going to mention the original birth certificate a lot of times when a person is adopted what in essence this isn't quite what they do but in essence they take the original birth certificate erase the birth parents names and put in the adopted parents names and they erase your original name as well yeah and that becomes your birth certificate so i want to caution some people when you're doing research especially if you know that there's an adopted or an mpe this happens with mpes too um a lot of people think that birth certificate is golden source but for dopies and npes it's most of the time not correct because it's it's really tricky yeah and now you can understand too why certain times adoptees get really upset because they cannot find their identity because their source document for the birth of their life is is inaccurate not biologically correct so we rely on marriage records especially when we have two dna groups so we're trying to figure out how they connect it's usually through a marriage so we're looking for those golden marriage records and non-identifying information is another one of those records that some adoptees can get and some can't and it's basically a redacted form of their adoption paperwork and so it'll have some information about their birth parents like how old they were where they're from how many siblings they have but it won't have names or anything that will help you identify them directly but it's so valuable it gives you locations it can sometimes it varies but if you can get a hold of your non-identifying information it can help us so much and of course good match is a great place to put your dna uploaded so that you have more dna matches to work with and for those that maybe have not done judge match no matter where you get your dna tests from like if you only have ancestry and people do not pay that company you can take your dna test uploaded into jed match where every company dna company so you can meet new cousins and new friends and that's just in general too not just for the adoption or mp's paternal i think we talked about this a lot i can't believe nobody's one bingo yet and birth mother so those two make a lot of sense back to back and a picture where it's named lots of kids in them to help us with more current day relationships so those are a great resource for us it's really funny how tricky this can be in a good way because people will sometimes forget what they're supposed to have bingo already oh where did we have a bingo andrew harris i think he's the first one hang on i'm pretty sure there we go oh that's so cool because andrew you've been working with the adoption angel so that's so cool yep oh one of our angels just dropped in hi eric okay what a andrew what i want you to do is let me bring it up you're going to email a win and let her know that you won the bingo the in the adoption angels what she will do is she will email you back with information on where to go shopping and how much you get i believe it's up to 30 dollars and it will be a wiki tree branded shop so there's shirts there's bags and you know as i point out the wiki tree mug which i want that mug i know it's so cool anyone said that this is the most popular item in the store so wait we can buy it yeah you can buy it i want that mug it's so much it's so cool it's so congratulations andrew i'll that it's fabulous that you want because you also shared your story okay let me come back if we're gonna talk now a little bit about how to work the profiles in wiki tree but let me go back and pick up some questions that we had along the way there was a good question that steven asked he says oftentimes you'll see a census record will say one of the kids is adopted what does that mean and it means the head of household has adopted that child what is really interesting i've seen in different i've seen it in europe and i've seen it in the us that they will mention that in the census records but there will not be any formal documents i'm talking much older but that is a mine so that's so david said my sister's adopted she had the names of two young cousins about 10 years ago we went on facebook and found them had them on the phone in less than an hour isn't that great amazing sometimes people have names of people who were adopted away from the family and we have a help page for that as well to help them okay so here's where we said we found a census of one of them just not sure by who i assume the record was related to the head and as emma said the head of the household took in the child and let's see maybe adopted this kind also talks a little bit about um mpe's a little bit steven maybe he adopted child from a wife of both were adopted but you will find a lot of times instead of um calling in the census a step child sometimes you will see them listed as adopted it's it's from the wife it's rare though usually if the both the the male in the female have adopted on a census record it will show as adopted yeah because like you said it's usually step child if it's the wife's from from a former marriage and where are these kids coming from sometimes it's other you know from other families sometimes it's neighbor kids it i mean it's sometimes hard to know where these kids are coming from just from the census record no we had a couple being goes right in a row i know kathy kathy's here and kathy has shared her story at the wiki tree day symposium when you had an adoption angels and kathy shared her story about being adopted as well and i i applaud kathy and andrew for sharing the story because even though somebody might be watching or listening and they might not be chatting they will still find your stories inspiring and here's another that pat each ed match also upload um to f t d name my heritage those are all free free yep and get more dna matches that way because the more matches the better oh i we agree with you carol well i know carol's a recent winner of it too okay so let's see um a cousin found me on ancestry he was 67 years old and never knew his father was not his biological father so what i want to point out here i'm so glad you made that it's too late to seek out the adoption angels because just imagine if he had never known so it's 67 years old he probably did and this is going to be an mpe right here so at 67 years old he decided to watch that commercial that they have and say do i you know do i eat pizza or do i wear later holding you know it's let me take a dna test for fun and then long and behold there's um something quite unexpected shows up so carol glad you mentioned that because it's never too late and that's pretty much where a lot of mpes are coming out right now is these unexpected tests that they found um it's good for people to know that if they take a dna test there is a risk that information will come to light but at the same time i feel like it's good that these things are coming to light so that we know the truth the truth the two stories it just i will i will just want to point this out again the sensitive part while carefully if you find that it's within one generation of your yourself that if an mpe adoptees will almost always know not always though but if it's one generation when you approach the next generation or station below you or above you just walk carefully with your words because you might uh scare them off a little bit especially with mpe so let's say so eric said he recently found the father of my wife's half brother that's tricky too this is just in the last couple of weeks so this goes back to what you were saying early on they do not have to be extremely close with the dna centimorians they don't have to have a lot of the dna to match yours you can go from a little further back in generations this is a half brother so we're already working at half dna to find that person so there's a lot of tricks that the adoption angels has that can help you work through this it's amazing sometimes how we can work with very little to get to the answers dna wise i agree i agree and i think it's fabulous that that's where you're headed with this is take a dna test because do the dna test because and here's i'll tell you why i'm adamant about that i worked with the lady who her birth mother told her who the birth father was she met him they had a relationship a close relationship she took a dna test he wasn't her birth father so her world came crashing down because she spent all this emotional energy getting to know this man and he wasn't even her birth father so she had to start all over again with the whole process and we want to know how does she trust you know from there and how does she start a relationship with the dna match of it that's it's a lot of emotion it's it's a that's heartbreaking emma let's write the first time so you don't have to go through it again go through the process again and this is a better way to say it than i did carol that some since the families are very sensitive now i will tell you that in some of the cases that have worked in this been a while now uh with pro as a progen they don't want those secrets out so you know i always took the the stance of if skeletons in a closet open up the door let it come out and dance enjoy the party enjoy the truth but um it's very important that you go slow and i want to point out what pam said too that wiki tree adoption angels you know don't help you contact and there you guys are not calling you know joe from california and john from mariland and saying hey we think you you've got somebody adopted i work for wiki tree and i do this you guys don't do any of that we give advice on how to contact the family once we've identified who the birth family is but we're not going to do the reaching it's really inappropriate for us to do that it is because it's your journey it's your emotional journey you need the closure so oh well steven oh gosh yeah oh my yeah i keep yeah a lot of stories like that have been coming out lately actually so that's why it's good for you to have a dna test to know the truth honestly that's that's that's but uh you know yeah okay moving on so we found a first cousin when and when another of my first cousin explained that one sharing oh when another my first cousin took a dna test so my first cousin's mother was oh not happy about the fine so again go slow walk softly because as carol pointed out we get both sides of the coin we get people who are very happy about the new family members and then we get point people who are very upset because it upsets the apple car it upsets the world that they thought they were living and they don't want that so and i can tell you that uh just real quick somebody that we know had believed that the father that raised him was the father and my mom was talking to him in trying to convince this person that tna is false it's only on csi it's only this so i had to pull her kind of aside and say that's not helpful whether and she goes she really did believe it but it's still not helpful so you really definitely want to be careful okay so let's talk about let's switch gears a little bit and let's talk about how we set up profiles and wiki tree and i guess let's start with this page i'm on so this is for an adoptee and i know that kathy and andrew have shared their story so this would be in their case to set up their profile yeah and this is for people who are members of wiki tree themselves and it doesn't it can be adopted or um usually it's adoptees who're using this page though and there are a couple different ways that you can set up your profile depend and and we have some exceptions only for adoptees to set up your profiles in these unusual ways so just when you get to this page look at the options and and follow the one that you want to use pat i'm glad patty's in the chat she's one who has two different accounts yeah um and one is her adoptee adoptive account and one is her biological account and it helps her keep the dna separate on one tree it helps her keep her trees completely separate um but you don't have to do it that way you can you're going to show in a little bit how you can use the template yeah another option of how to combine trees um and privacy it just it's a little bit of a review on privacy some people want to be very private that they're adopted and some people want to be very public and you get to choose how private you want to be we only ask that if you do set up the account differently make sure people know this is my biological biological tree or this is my adoptive tree so that you know they're not misunderstanding so in the biography right under or somewhere make it clear which yeah so let's say you choose to only build your adoptive tree totally okay but make sure in the biography you say that so when people come they see that information and they're not going to expect you to match my dna through those families I guess would this be a good time in this skin putting you on the spot a little bit would would if you have two trees you know your biological tree and your adopted tree that will keep your cc seven separate so obviously you would probably ignore the dna matches that you have on your adopted tree and look more towards your biological tree for your cc seven well so the way versus uh the way patty has it set up with two separate trees is actually like a very clean way to do it because you do get two separate cc sevens that way one is biological one is adopted and you only put the dna on your biological okay so really if you are choosing to only build out your adoptive family tree and you're not going to build a biological family tree you really shouldn't be hiding your dna information because it's it's confusing like it doesn't match your tree and it's wrong it's it's not wrong to you know we're not saying it's wrongful thing i'm saying it's wrong to do scientifically it's inaccurate yeah yeah because it's good the way wiki tree works is it's going to filter that dna information through like six generations of your tree and it's not going to match any of those people in that tree and again this kind of discuss a in the page is set up wonderfully if you have any questions at all this page will probably answer it if not definitely reach out to emma and her team afterwards but definitely this really is awesome for how to set up the tree because i i know um we had questions from patty lou asking about this so go to this page and i guess well i guess let me ask you if it's my grandfather i think that was her case if it's my grandfather it's still up to me how i decide to create that profile if he's not living now only this this this page is only set up for living people who are members okay that would be into the historical then so yeah go over the historical so once you get past your own situation we want it to be biologically correct okay so we want the biological parents added if you know them okay and if you don't then you would use unknown as the last name and then come to your group your project well if you don't know their um birth name you would just use the name that we know of so let's say they were born smith but you don't know that yet you only know their last name is jones then jones would be their last name okay can always be updated later if you do discover that okay and then let's talk about that template we have one here that is a really great template so this particular profile this is a extremely old profile this is not a living person um this is per true and she has listed on the left her adopted parents and then on the right her biological parents um and i i know like so for patty and kathy that both have these templates on both profiles that's a great way to document it in the biography so it like comes out at you instead of just text line right up at the top so you'll be able to click right off to the biological family tree or the adoptive family tree depending on where you're starting from and i want to point out something that patty had mentioned that's great so on your adopted profile when you do list the parents you want to choose non-biological for the parents and that will kind of turn off a lot of the connections for any type of um work all the way through the line but again you're not going to add your dna to your adopted profile yeah and that's that's if you're choosing to build your adoptive tree instead of biological um and i do have the link let me get the link real quick for you here is the link and to the help page somewhere and then let me also get you the second bingo card so while we continue to work through these profiles go ahead and get your second bingo card ready so this particular the where i found the link as well for the template and that is on for the living but it's also on the historical i believe too yeah it's on the historical page as well so this is a lot of information to take in so let's just recap for wiki tree when you're setting up a profile and you are a living adoptee you know or mpe the choice is going to be ours which last name we use choice is yours which last name is your you want to use the choice is yours which tree you want to build and if i want to build two trees do i do i have to have two separate emails or does wiki tree set that up so you can build two separate trees either using the template and just with one account or you can build two use two accounts and yes you have to have two separate emails to do that okay and then for historical what we want to do for the last name if if you do not have the biological name of the grandparent let's say then you're going to use the name that you know him by currently and then turn this information over to the adoption angels and they will investigate it and if they find that full name which was most chances completely different at least the last name then will you help them merge it or work it out so that you've got it historically accurate i guess update it yeah yeah so i think we answered a lot of the major questions about how to set up the profile for historical but also if you currently are living with an mpe if you are ground zero for an mpe or or a parent was a great um an had an mpe in their life which i guess some of us have i have seen some of us already list that and i agree with david that i love that wakey tree allows us to show the the both lines so you do have that option to have both of them showing and people can click on the template let me bring kurchard up and decide which line you want to follow if you're researching or if you're curious and you just keep clicking through i feel like this template could be on a lot more profiles than it is and i'm talking more historically than current because then i guess the next thing to kind of quickly talk about before we we do bingo is joining the project so we talked about what it's like for those that have mpes or adoptees and how to get so to join the project you go to the adoption angels homepage and just like every wiki tree project page there's this wonderful box in the middle that tells you how to join to get the badge now this is a very special group you guys give out very special badge as well yeah group so when you join you're on a team and you pick a team to join well most of the people joining are going to be family finders pam pretty much is our mentor thank you thank you thank you pam family finders are the ones who have the dna experience and are going to be able to go in use the dna and find the birth parents and so we are now asking if you join adoption angels unless you have some sort of special skill to work with certain areas that if you um you're going to need some dna experience yeah especially since that's the requirement now so if i come in and come in through the adoption angels ggg and become a family finder what happens next it was like first day on the ground after you badge meet what happens next as a member of your project so you'll have access to our spreadsheet that we use to track the applications and the people who are waiting and pretty much all the people who join have been down this road before so they know how to reach out to the people what to ask them how to get started um and so basically we're just teaching them the process of how we're documenting the work and keeping the notes updated and such and then when they get their first we call it a solve and they solve their first search they get a spiffy badge badge called the um earned wings badge that everybody who's we only get it once unfortunately because teddy just joined us and you know he has like 30 40 solves under his belt but he likes feeling some badge so that's that's big but it is a very special badge it's a very pretty badge too but it's a very special badge in just to see that there are wings when you see that around wiki tree so you know now that that someone was an adoption angel that solved a very big mystery for somebody who really needed it and gained the power wiki tree for free and since we started requiring dna our i've given out a lot of earned wings badges because we're solving cases faster if you guys know this is another kind of recruiting if you guys know anybody that has a need and wants to learn and explore their ancestor in their family tree but might have adoption or np in their family this is a good recruiting tool to bring them into wiki tree and let us help i'm not sure do we mention i know we're talking about those vina scenes so how many do you think you've solved again i know you said they're cases they're not individuals yeah since 2018 since we started tracking we have two about 260 logged but again some of those are two three four mysteries we solved all at once so like we had an example earlier that one adoptee and the parent was adopted so we consider that one case but those were two mysteries actually three mysteries solved if we get both parents for the birth mother that's a good point and that's very common for us to run into situations like that so it hopefully we have excited a few of you to kind of look at this and see what's out there if you do have dna experience then definitely reach out to the adoption angels and talk to them about being part of their group let's go ahead and bring up the next bingo card i've added in the chat for a while so let's go ahead and start this so we can learn more about this project and maternal i think we've had that and i just want to in case anybody joined us new again vertically horizontally or diagonally for bingo if there is a free space in the middle sometimes there are sometimes there's not go ahead and click that now dab it with your mouse the first person who gets the horizontal vertical diagonal wins bingo but the first person who gets that and yells bingo types it in the chat is the true winner so five of you might win at same time but whoever types it in chat first is the winner and i think kathy this is like the fourth bingo in a row kathy has literally missed out by a hair okay so maternal and then paternal those are your first two words we kind of talked about that a little bit before shared cm tool if this is on dna painter and it's an auto chart where we can go in and put the amount of shared dna and it'll give us options it's a very nice visual tool and we work with lots and lots of descendants and i might point out too that your work that you you and your team do there will be many descendants past this that will not have to have this work done for them yeah we solved the mystery and and in the work we usually build the tree out and then we have to come back down the tree down the descendants this is a good one a lot of people don't understand this word yep we use this when we're working with white dna which as i said we usually are using autosomal but if we get stuck we'll pull in the white dna and we'll look at those haplogroups which is complicated so not something quick to explain i agree and there's your white dna a lot of people are like take a white dna test white dna test if you're looking for your birth father and i'm like no don't take a white dna test take a ancestry dna test we can find your birth father in two hours the white dna test we're gonna have to send a lot of messages to a lot of people and you may only have one or two matches at ancestry.com you're going to have thousands of matches you are it's just because they right now in the market of the quantity of dna tests they've received yeah yeah white dna will become more valuable as it expands and i was going to ask you about this my general dna now this we we rarely rarely rarely use because it only goes up the female line mother so it can kind of confirm a place sort of but it it doesn't give us what we need so just to point out dna dna dna get it autosomal get it from ancestry.com and as Emma pointed out you know they're on sale all the time look for that sale and when i say all the time i mean like there's nothing once a month every other month it used to be once a year but now they're on the sale all the time so definitely do the dna go the less expensive route with autosomal through ancestry and don't worry about the mt and the y if you decide to do that after they have given you the answers to your mystery that's great and we work with class dna clusters that's kind of where we start we cluster them together and then we see how the pieces fit together and we're looking for the biological connection and dna painter um is starting to build some amazing tools we use the wato tool all the time from dna painter um highly recommend if you're into dna to check out dna painter i agree it gary brought up too that yes mother's day is coming up telling you every holiday it may even be an easter sale i mean they did a safer say sale i know so there there will be a sale and then teddy that works with the group says a lot of one and that must have been a tough one to resolve in the fine it was a little bit farther back too so that was a case where why dna can be very helpful and we're we look at dna segments all the time shared segments so i can't believe we're see we're so good today and especially i am so happy that you won this on this particular bingo because you've been so gracious with sharing your story throughout wiki tree she anybody that has any questions about you know the experience she's always open kathy's always been open to talk to people and everything else so congratulations kathy that just really really makes me happy i'm gonna get the word in there three times i know i kind of told her if you really want me to see it go bingo bingo bingo but um kathy so i know you know this but i'm gonna tell you anyway go ahead and email anyone and let her know that you won the adoption angels the second bingo i am very thrilled that that you won that that is perfect this has been this has been one of those days that turns out really good like that so it makes me really happy okay so then what do we need to know that we didn't ask you about the adoption angels from the adoptee point or the mpe and by the way if anybody has any questions now is the time we've got emma so make sure to ask your questions away but what do we need to know that we didn't cover with you one thing that just came to me is when you fill out the application it helps us if you fill it in as completely as is what you know obviously you may not know everything for that needs to be on there but if you could fill it out as fully as possible that's going to help us get you on the waiting list faster because then pam doesn't have to reach out and ask you more questions we'll have it already um and again you don't have to have any information about your birth parents if all you have is that dna test that's okay that's where we'll start and we can still solve the mystery though that's great and also remember on the home page if you want to help or if you want to find up to your grandparents the adoption angels will help you just go to their home page and all this information we've talked about the forms and the links the checklist are all there as well as well as the template for living and historical and this is interesting so chris you said that you found both ancestry in 23 and me both useful i will say that with the a lot of people ask why should i use this versus that we've already discussed why use ancestry the other ones are really good too the other testing companies go to and they they use you know they really have their niche but i will find that for some of them you will just not find hardly any matches at all and it's it's just one of those things the best case scenario if you can afford two tasks start with ancestry upload for free to my heritage and ft dna and then by the second test of 23 and me and then you're at all the places and you'll pick up all the matches and it'll help things go even faster but if you can only afford one test start with ancestry and see how it goes i guess you would tell them we can't find anything do you keep that this kind of goes around with the tricky situation but if if you say well i can't confirm for sure you don't have enough dna matches out there will you keep their case one file and do you look at it or do you ask them to come back to you it depends on the situation like i'm still working with some people i've started with a couple years ago because i'm just so invested in their search i'm not going to stop and so i've recommended okay test of 23 and me okay let's find some additional testers to take dna tests from these families things like that sometimes we'll say you don't have enough dna matches like not even close so we there's nothing we can do with this right now so yes please come back when you get additional matches and it's easy for them to do i imagine they just keep track of their ancestry dna they keep looking and then when they see something pop up they can say oh let me contact you carol said have you ever had a difficult tricky situation in which a family member was not thrilled with being recognized i don't think that you guys get to that point as much do you so we do do you my question is how much feedback do you get back from the ones that you've helped do they share their stories a month it's a bit of a mix so some people it's like we give them the name tell them how to confirm it who to reach out to and then we never hear from them again other people come back and tell us we we met the family i'm working with a lovely lady whose husband i count the birth parents for and the mom had died and they were so thrilled to meet him because the mother had died oh and i get to hear stories and see pictures and so there's a mix of that and then we have situations where they try to reach out to the family and the birth family like slams the door in their face and it's like okay what do we do next so we give them recommendations on how to maybe work around that but again we can only tell them so much because we can only do so much so and when the door is shut literally and figuratively yeah about as far as any not just wiki treat optionaries but anybody that you might have reached out to can help and definitely i want to mention something that emma said at the very beginning seek out somebody you trust that you can talk to because that's a very devastating situation as well yeah and we're not trained counselors and adoption angels and most of us are very much just dna you know we're looking at the dna so um if you can find someone that can really help you work through the emotional side of things and definitely do don't don't avoid it you know don't hide from that and just one other last thing to point out is jetmatch is a great tool i want to bring this up to you because i i have had some in the past and this was probably about four years ago hesitant to do jetmatch because as we all know that law enforcement did use jetmatch to find some criminals you can opt in or out of law enforcement with jetmatch as well so it i understand that point and it was unknown because i think it was a distant cousin that helped them find it but jetmatch really helps out adoption angels too yeah and this is a good question for you too um you know there's not you know how do you manage yourself care and all the adoption angels you you you guys get invested in it so you guys do need to have self-care too we talk about wiki tree how fun it is and how we do thons and projects and stuff but we tend to forget about the work that you do and how it can affect you personally one thing that helps is we have our private project group where we can talk to each other people come in and say this is what i'm dealing with and it's it's a trickier situation than usual and and we help support each other um one thing i think that helps too is like i said we very much look at the dna and so some of us kind of put a wall up yeah we just look at the data we don't look at the emotional side of things and so that's why we keep recommending you need to manage your own self-care because we're not here to do that for you um sometimes we need to take breaks yeah as it just gets too much and you know with any kind of emotional work yeah teddy says he puts up a wall too he and i are both that way yeah when we get to the emotional stuff that's where we back away and go okay you need to you need to manage this part of the the search and i think that's what's really fabulous about your project you guys are helping others but you're there for each other yeah as well it's an amazing group and i call it's it's great because i'll write messages and i'll say hello angels like i'm you know that's so great the tv show charlie's angels so i'm like everybody's charlie oh next wiki tree day i already see you dressed up i see it coming this is a lot 9 000 matches on an autosomal that's a really that's pretty amazing to have that many matches on ft dna i it's what i thought to do now if you would have said an ancestry i would have said okay so that's kind of interesting too and and this is this kind of true too david that my my sister's work one had little interest in developing you know and when you mentioned probably due to mental health reasons i want to let everybody know that just because a person is adopted it's not always that they didn't want the child sometimes they weren't able to take care of the child and they did the best thing that they thought was for the child so keep that in mind if you find an mpe or adopted in your near family or even distant historical family that you know there's we never know the stories we never know the full story and they're all different they're all very very different so it's really good not to make an assumption about your story until you get the facts and i think that's that's probably the best way to leave this particular bingo for adoption agencies i hope that everybody has a couple different things here a renewed interest in how to create the profiles for particular historical i'm not really going to talk about the living but historical profiles if you find adoption but also renewed interest in research and reaching out to adoption angels if you do have that dna experience and can help out i would say especially if you're in different countries than the us and probably do you have coverage in europe we have some european coverage we have australia canada uk um some of the western european countries but outside of that we really really could use people with dna experience okay so there's there's a call to action for everybody and well thanks so much for joining us again you for joining us on the most interesting and sensitive project so i appreciate you joining us and if anybody has any questions please visit the adoption angels page on wiki tree and reach out to emma and i guess i will tell everybody good night don't forget that next week we are not here because it's friday date night so make sure that you watch friday date night attend dates and profiles thanks guys