Half-Brothers Found Each Other with MyHeritage DNA Test. Then, They Discovered They Had Sisters

In the summer of 2021, a MyHeritage DNA test brought together half-brothers Fernando Hermansson Carabali and Ivan Andreas, who had been searching for their biological families for years. They were thrilled at the discovery and thought their happiness couldn’t be more complete… and then, they discovered they had more siblings.

Watch the video of their amazing reunion below:

The brothers find each other

Fernando, 37, began his life in Colombia, where he was left at a monastery as an infant. The nuns took him in and cared for him for a little while, and then they placed him for adoption with a family in Sweden. He grew up there and had a happy childhood with his adoptive family.

Fernando as a child

As an adult, he began to wonder about his biological family: who they were, what they were doing, what they looked like. This curiosity led him to start searching for them. He traveled to Colombia hoping to find some clues or threads to follow, hoping against hope to find at least one family member — but found nothing. He returned home disappointed and discouraged.

Then, in the summer of 2021, Fernando received a MyHeritage DNA kit as a gift from a good friend. It stayed in the drawer for a few months until Fernando worked up the courage to take it and send his sample to the lab.

Four weeks later, he received the results, and right there at the top of his DNA Match list was a man called Ivan. The estimated relationship was listed as “half-brother.”

Ivan, 35, had grown up in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He was also born in Colombia and placed for adoption at age 3. He also had a happy childhood, and also started to develop a curiosity about his origins. He, too, traveled to Colombia to search for clues about his biological family, and he even appeared in the Dutch television program Spoorloos, which features stories of people searching for lost family members. But he, too, found nothing.

Ivan as a child

Then, he heard about the MyHeritage DNA test and understood that this might help him find biological relatives. So he ordered the kit and took the test… and there it was, a half-brother match from Sweden.

“It came as a bit of a shock,” says Fernando. “I contacted Ivan and I got a quick response. It was fantastic. Ivan is 35, so I have a little brother. It feels unbelievable.”

They decided to meet, and had an emotional reunion, which you can watch in the video below:

“We have many similarities; we are both creative, we are both actors and we have many common interests,” says Fernando.

The plot thickens

The brothers continued researching their origins and soon made additional discoveries. In December of 2021, they found two more half-siblings: a pair of sisters, Angela (40) and Sandra (43), both born in Colombia and currently living in Spain.

All the siblings share the same father. The sisters knew who their father was, but were not in touch with him, and he died 16 years ago. They also knew each other, but were not in touch until they were adults. They had no idea they had any other siblings, and it came as a huge and wonderful surprise.

Ivan hardly speaks Spanish, and Sandra and Angela barely speak English, but the strength of their emotion and joy at finding each other spoke for themselves. Fernando decided to fly to Spain to meet them as soon as possible, and the four siblings were soon reunited in person. They are now an inseparable part of each other’s lives.

Sandra says she can’t live without her siblings now, and advises anyone looking for biological family members: “Don’t give up, search for your family. Anything is possible!”