STANLEY - Armed with an adoption agency's letter and a folder stuffed with 300 white fliers headlined "Searching," Andrew and Elizabeth Nelson left their West Fargo apartment and pointed their white Hyundai 300 miles to the northwest.

There, among the rocky, rolling plains beyond Minot, Andrew hoped to find the clues to his very existence: Who were his birth parents? What had become of them? Had they ever wondered about him? Would they want to meet him?

Within two days, through sheer luck and the generosity of folks in Stanley and nearby Powers Lake, a quest the young Army sergeant believed would take weeks or longer was fulfilled and Andrew and his wife had talked to both birth parents. One lives in Fargo and the other in Bismarck. Both wish to remain anonymous.

"They both were hoping I would try to find them," Andrew said Friday. Both had worried he might resent having been given up for adoption and had wondered if he was alive and well.

Now Andrew hopes his success will encourage other adoptees who are considering a similar expedition.

Staff Sgt. Andrew Nelson grew up in the North Dakota cities of Hillsboro, Fort Yates and Crary, the son of educators. His dad, Dennis Nelson, also coached. His parents still live in Crary.

The younger Nelson, 35, has been in the Army for 12 years. In 2003, he took a three-year assignment to be a recruiter in Fargo and moved his young family back to his home state.

He always wondered about his origins, but wasn't curious enough to pursue the question until recently. After all, he had grown up in a loving family with whom he was still close. All five of his siblings - four sisters and a brother - were also adopted by the Nelsons and the family had been the subject of newspaper features because of that.

It was when people began telling Andrew how much his own 7-year-old son, Dennis, looked like him that he began wondering more about his birth parents. Did he look like them?

His curiosity was mild at first.

"The only thing I did before this year was go on the Internet," he said.

Andrew's wife, Elizabeth, and his adoptive mom, whose name is also Elizabeth Nelson, encouraged him to search, especially since he was again living in North Dakota.

He was adopted through Children's Village in Fargo, now known as the Village Family Service Center, and Andrew's mom suggested he start there. So he paid a $350 fee for the Village to examine his file and release information.

In February, Village social worker Julie Kloster gave him some good news and some not-so-good news. She was able to release three pages of information she had compiled about both his birth parents and the adoption process, but was barred from releasing their names or where they came from.

Kloster said she could likely find Andrew's birth mother and find out if she wanted to meet him. But, she wrote, "Both birth parents will need to consent to communication for contact to occur."

His birth father's name was so common that Kloster said she didn't know where to begin looking for him, so the search came to a standstill.

Andrew's mom encouraged the couple to take up the search themselves and said they should start in Stanley, the western North Dakota city listed on his birth certificate gleaned through the Village.

So the quest was on.

Andrew took a week of leave, the couple put their two children in the care of a close friend and they hit the road for the Mountrail County seat, population 1,300, intending to go door to door with their fliers.

Before heading to Stanley last week, Andrew knew this much from the Village's letter: He was born Nov. 26, 1969, in Stanley to a 20-year-old college student whose family was Baptist. She named him Michael. Two weeks later, she relinquished her parental rights and he was placed in foster care.

His birth father was 19 years old and in the military. He had acknowledged paternity.

The Nelsons first saw "Michael" on Christmas Eve 1969, and a placement ceremony was held. His new parents named him Andrew Joe and took him home to Hillsboro, where Dennis Nelson was a high school coach.

Later, they moved to Fort Yates for a few years and then to Crary when Andrew was 12. He finished high school there.

The Village gave him details about his birth mother's hobbies and high school accomplishments, his birth mother and father's parents' ages and occupations at the time he was adopted, and the sex and ages of his birth parents' siblings. Andrew and his wife condensed the information and put it on their 300 fliers.

Andrew and Elizabeth began posting fliers in the grocery stores and other businesses after arriving in Stanley on Tuesday afternoon, and were pleasantly surprised at the reception they received from complete strangers. Word spread quickly about their visit and their mission.

People were so helpful the couple never resorted to their planned house-to-house trek.

Typical was the response from Lisa Lapica, assistant veterans service officer for Mountrail County. She said she too was adopted.

"I've been in the situation you're in and, if I can help you, I will," she said.

She began studying documents in her office that lists every person who has entered the military service in North Dakota - including, possibly, Andrew's father. But plowing through that without knowing a name seemed to the couple like an impossible task.

As word spread, Stanley residents began approaching them and making suggestions. The couple also stopped at the Stanley hospital, where sympathetic workers told them they surely had the information that would answer his questions, but couldn't release it without a court order.

They looked through old yearbooks at Stanley High School. The staff there was helpful and interested, but the books yielded no clues. The director of the county social services office sent word that the couple should stop in and he'd try to help. But, as with the others, his willingness to assist didn't yield any quick answers.

At the far end of Main Street, folks at the Two Way Inn on Tuesday night were eager to help. One woman was very interested, asking numerous questions and taking notes. Seeing that Andrew's birth mother was Baptist, she suggested they extend their search to Powers Lake, about 30 miles northwest of Stanley - the next town with a Baptist church.

The next morning, the couple headed for Powers Lake. First stop: flipping through a set of tattered 1960s high school yearbooks in the Powers Lake High School office. Bingo!

Suddenly, they were face to face with clues so tantalizing that Elizabeth said her hands were turning ice cold - her body's usual way of displaying extreme excitement, she explained later.

Here was a record of a student cheerleader who sang in the choir, was on the school paper and yearbook staffs, and who graduated second in her class - a nearly exact match to the background furnished by the Village.

Other yearbooks yielded information on the graduate's brother and sister; the same combination of age and gender described in the Village's letter.

Soon Andrew and his wife were in the Rev. Gary Cole's office at Powers Lake's Bethel Baptist Church. He, too, believed they were probably on the right track with the mother's name that had been found in the school yearbook. He said he could make some discreet inquiries in the community over the next day or so.

The Nelsons drove back to Stanley, exhausted and wondering if they were getting close. They took a nap at their motel and then headed out for supper.

Elizabeth, who had packed only shorts for the trip, was chilled, so they stopped in the Stanley Prairie Outfitters before it closed. As they told owners Ruth and Hod Hysjulien's what had brought them to Stanley, Hod said the couple's description of Andrew's birth father was strikingly familiar.

He went to the back of his store, emerged with a high school yearbook and pointed to a classmate of his. This, he believed, was Andrew's father.

Within a couple of hours, with Hod Hysjulien as intermediary, Andrew was talking on the phone with his birth father. Yes, he had long wanted to be found and had even some years ago sent a letter to the Village saying so. Andrew doesn't know why it did not turn up when he asked the Village for information.

And yes, his birth father said, the Powers Lake girl was indeed his mother. Though not close, the two had even talked a couple of times over the years about their willingness to meet their son if the opportunity arose.

Andrew and his father met for two hours Thursday night at his father's home. The elder had long ago told his wife and children about his first son.

Andrew and his wife and his father's family are planning more meetings soon. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the searching couple, by Tuesday night Andrew's birth mother had heard from someone in Stanley that her son was in town asking questions. She called the cell phone number from the flier, but there was no answer. So when Andrew left her a message at home, it was no shock to her.

They finally connected late Thursday by phone and are arranging a meeting.

Andrew's mother told him she'd long hoped to find him, but was reticent to search herself.

"She didn't think she had the right," he said. But she still had his hospital bracelet and had written him in her Bible as her son.

"She said she always thought about me, every day," he said.