Here’s a story of a mother and son who were forcedly separated at birth and miraculously had a reunion 48 years later.
A mother’s love is the most amazing thing a child can ever experience. It is the kind of love that can conquer anything.
Thuy-Nga Thi Nibblett became pregnant at the tender age of 17.
However, her father disagreed with her having a relationship with an American soldier, who was the father of her son.
“When you have a kid half-American, half-Vietnamese, people look down on you, especially your family,” Nibblett explained.
When Nibblett gave birth to her son, her father took the child and put him in an orphanage. Her father did not tell her where he took her son, and she never saw him again.
Two years later, Nibblett’s son was adopted from a Vietnamese orphanage. He was named Kirk Kellerhals.
Kirk grew up believing that his parents died during the Vietnam war.
He did not know that his mother, Nibblett, had been praying to see him and reunite with him since he was taken away from her.
Meanwhile, Kirk, who has dark hair and tanned skin, claims he was bullied as a child because he was mistaken for people of different races.
While he knew his Vietnamese ancestry, he did not know much about his family history. Kirk, who resides in Virginia Beach, South Carolina, has always been curious about his biological family but has yet to do any family tree research.
He decided to learn more about his heritage by taking a Family Tree DNA test in 2017 at the urging of his wife.
He had no idea, though, how his life would soon change. “I decided, what the heck, let’s just put the controversy to rest, and we’ll figure out where I’m from. So, I went ahead and submitted the DNA test,” he recalls.
When he submitted his DNA, he was hoping that there was a chance he might find a zip code or maybe a cousin, but he was not expecting to find anything.
Meanwhile, Nibblett, who moved to the U.S. to find her son submitted her DNA to Family Tree DNA test two years earlier, praying for their reunion.
Around four weeks after Kirk submitted his DNA, he received an email from an unfamiliar person.
“The named seemed African, and I’d figured it was just a scam, so I didn’t even bother opening it,” says Kirk. He opened the email when he received an email from Family Tree DNA a few minutes later.
“I got the email from Family Tree DNA that the results were back, and they had a match … It said parent-child match. I just kind of shook my head and said, ‘That’s a mistake. That’s impossible,'” Kirk said.
So, Kirk opened the first email and found a phone number. For his entire life, Kirk thought his parents were gone. But at that moment, he was talking to his mother, hearing her voice telling him she believed he was her child.
“It’s one of those things, it’s one of the few times in my life where I actually had to sit down, and catch my breath, and try to realize that I wasn’t dreaming.”
Nibblett told Kirk what happened, and he learned that his mother moved to the U.S. in 1971 and looked for him for almost five decades.
Meanwhile, another surprise was waiting for Kirk.
Sheldon “Skip” Soule, his biological father, was alive and living in New York, PEOPLE noted.
“It definitely turned my world upside down because you grow up your whole life, for almost 50 years, thinking your parents are deceased,” Kirk said.
A few weeks after their phone conversation, the mother and son are set to have a wonderful reunion. Nibblett and her husband drove from Texas to South Carolina to finally meet her son.
Kirk waited outside for his mother to arrive, never wanting to miss a moment.
As Kirk opened the door of his mother’s truck, they hugged and cried together. Kirk never, in his life, thought that he would meet his biological mother.
Meanwhile, Nibblett did not give up her hopes of meeting him one day. Their reunion is an excellent example of how the power of love and faith works.
“Thank you, God, for bringing my son to me,” Nibblett said while crying into her son’s arms. “Thank you for finding me,” Kirk replied.
Kirk also met Skip and got to know his siblings from both his parents sides.
“I’m not going to pretend like it was all puppies and rainbows — it was stressful trying to process everything,” he says. “The end result is it’s definitely a blessing. It was a blessing for everyone.”
While it had been half a century since mother and son had been together, Kirk said that meeting Nibblett again felt like they had never been separated.
“When we talked, the parental bond felt so natural,” he recalls. “You can’t put it in words. From the very first conversation we had, it ended with, ‘I love you.’ ”
Watch their heartwarming reunion below: