For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down,

that it will sprout again,

and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.

Though the root thereof wax old in the earth,

and the stock thereof die in the ground;

Yet through the scent of water it will bud,

and bring forth boughs like a new plant.

~ Job 14:7-9 ~

We were not seeking to adopt any more children. We had five children at home, we felt immensely blessed by God in this, and we needed no other fulfillment. However, we believe now that God had other plans.

On September 24, 2004, I received e-mail from one of my co-workers about four Brazilian siblings in need of a family. The Brazilian authorities wanted to keep the four siblings together, but they were worried that they would not be able to find a family willing to take all four children, especially since they were older children ranging in age from 5 years to 9 years old, at the time.  

The children had been placed in an orphanage in Curitiba, a city of just over a million inhabitants in the southern Brazilian state of Paraná.

Attached was a photo of the four children. I cannot adequately characterize the emotion that photo evoked in me. In the “Subject” line of the e-mail, my co-worker had written the following words:

FW: Adoption opportunity - Tony you are the first person I thought of

I was tempted to write a clever response such as, "You must have been thinking of someone else," and delete the e-mail, but I could not. While I did not respond to that e-mail, I did not delete it either.

The children’s names, starting with the oldest, are as follows, with the accent on the capitalized syllable. The “J” sound in Portuguese is pronounced like the French “J”, softer than in English.

Jaqueline	- pronounced ja-keh-LEE-nee
Jussara	- pronounced ju-SAH-rah
Janaína	- pronounced jah-nah-EE-nah
Francisco	- pronounced fran-SEE-scoo,  or Chico (SHEE-coo)

The next day, while working from home, I came across that e-mail and the photo again. I called my wife Lois into the room and asked her what she thought about it. When I told her the children were in Brazil, she said, "Oh, that's crazy! It's so far!" Then I said, "So I can delete it, right?" She replied, "No, we have to pray about it."

The more we prayed about them, the more we felt a burden for them. I can remember crying out to God in the night on more than one occasion, "Lord, why are you burdening our hearts with these children? Lord, this is crazy! What about my children here? What about being away for many weeks in Brazil? How can we do this?"

Somehow, my conscience would not rest. I was struggling with what to do. I thought that perhaps God wanted me to shop the photo around to some other Christians, to see if anybody else was interested. Strangely, I half-hoped that nobody would be interested. Nobody was.

There was an Anabaptist meeting every other week just three miles from us in Swanzey, which we attended regularly until the meeting moved to Vermont. We still attend from time-to-time, even though it is a long drive.

The Brazilian Brethren

Some weeks before receiving the email about the four children, a Brazilian couple came to the church meeting in Swanzey. They spoke fluent English, so we were able to converse easily. We learned that they had meetings every Monday evening in Nashua, just minutes from my office at work, and they invited us to come and attend one of their meetings.

At the time, I did not think I would ever have a real reason to attend any of their meetings, but now I thought it might be a good idea to go to one of their meetings, to show them the photo and see if any of them were interested. The meeting was wonderful, with a lot of sincere Christian love and warmth.

When I brought my prayer request about the four orphans before the brethren there assembled, the leader of the group put his arm around me, looked me in the eyes, and said, "We will pray for you brother." We all got on our knees and prayed fervently that God's Holy Spirit would guide me to make the decision that God wanted.

This was not exactly what I expected, but it was what God gave me, so I went home with that. Lois and I continued to pray for God's guidance, and we shared our burden for these children with other Christian brethren and family. All said that they would stand behind us, wherever God would lead us.

Lois was always peaceful and resolved. She was convinced that the Lord wanted us to move to adopt these children. When I finally decided to proceed with the necessary inquiries, I found peace. I still had times of struggling with God through some nights, but God was preparing me for a greater struggle to come.

The Children's Profiles

Before we gave the adoption agency, Limiar, a commitment, the director of the agency, Nancy Cameron, sent us the psychological profiles of the children detailing their psychological and emotional problems, and their developmental delays. Nancy called us a week or two after we had received the reports and asked if we had read them and whether we were still interested in adopting these children.

I told her that we had read the reports carefully and understood the panoply of challenges these children present and the troubled background from which they came. She asked, in light of all that, if we would press ahead with the adoption. I responded by asking if she was a Christian, and she answered in the affirmative. Then I said to her that she would understand why our response only could be, "Yes."

Meanwhile, I started to attend the Brazilian prayer meetings somewhat regularly. It was close to my work, so it was not difficult to attend, and I sometimes brought the whole family. Being with the Brazilian Christians was not only a spiritual blessing, but also it provided an opportunity for us to learn Portuguese. Before long, everybody in the family was picking up a little Portuguese, and we even started learning hymns in Portuguese.

 The week before Thanksgiving, 2004, a social worker from a local adoption agency, Adoptive Families for Children, came to perform a “home study”. This is an examination of our living conditions, our relationship as a married couple, our relationships with our children, and our finances.

Among her questions, she asked whether we would be sensitive to the children’s Brazilian heritage. We replied that we had spent time with Russian Christians and had learned some Russian hymns to teach our Russian-born children. She asked if we could sing one, so we sang "Nebesa Ozhudayet Minya" ("Heaven Is Waiting for Me"), a very beautiful song in a minor key. The social worker was moved and said that the Brazilian children would be fortunate to become our own dear children.

Approval from Child Protection Services

Because we were adopting four children all at once, and increasing the number of children that would live here to more than seven, a threshold had been crossed, whereby the New Hampshire Department of Children Youth and Families (NH-DCYF) would have to review our case and give their approval. Adoptive Families for Children submitted our case to them early in December.

On New Years eve, 2004, we received the response of the DCYF. It was a letter asking a number of pointed questions and for more additional information. Since the family had only one breadwinner, the DCYF wanted to know what plans and contingencies we had if I were to lose my job, or become incapacitated, or die. They also wanted to know what accommodations we could make for the children’s emotional difficulties and educational delays. They wanted to know how well-integrated we were with our community and expressed concern about the “isolation of a large, self-sufficient family.”

We were very disappointed that we were not given our approval, but we were not denied, either. We had been challenged to give an answer for the hope God had provided us for these children. Rather than discourage us, this challenge greatly strengthened our resolve to adopt these children.  We prepared and researched our best responses, with much prayer and many tears.

Among our neighbors is a dear octogenarian lady for whom our children had done chores from time to time, stacking wood and raking leaves. My dear wife, Lois, would also visit her from time to time to share tea. In the letter she submitted to the DCYF, our dear neighbor revealed that she was a retired psychologist who had a practice in Vermont for 40 years. She specialized in family problems and saw many neglected and abused children. She also had worked closely with the family courts.

She gave us a very high recommendation and finished her letter by saying that it was not long ago that this entire region was filled with large, self-sufficient families whose members were among the greatest contributors to its social and economic development.

Early in January 2005, we submitted our responses to the questions posed by DCYF, along with the letters of recommendation they had requested from our neighbors, the churches, our family, and our friends.  

Almost two more months passed, and at the end of February 2005, the DCYF finally gave their approval. Foremost among the reasons they cited for their approval was their agreement with the Brazilian authorities that the siblings should not be separated.

Our Psychological Profiles

In order to complete our requirements for the Brazilian court, Lois and I had to submit to a psychological examination by a psychologist licensed in our state, so that he could submit our psychological profile to the Brazilian court. At the end of February 2005, on a cold Saturday morning at 7:00, we met with a psychologist in Peterborough, NH. We were wondering whether he would doubt our sanity for seeking to adopt four more children while we already had five at home.

Early in the interview, he asked what we considered the “sentinel moments” in our lives. Well, to a Christian, THE sentinel moment is the moment of conversion from darkness unto light. We gave him our conversion testimonies, and, as he was writing all of this down, I began to think that the best recommendation we could get from him would be something such as, “Delusional, but harmless.” We were very pleasantly surprised when we got a glowing recommendation from the psychologist.

US Immigration Approval

Meanwhile, with the approval of the DCYF, the local adoption agency submitted all our paperwork to the U.S. Immigration office in Boston. We had started the US Immigration process in December 2004, submitting ourselves to an FBI investigation of our past and having our fingerprints taken. We received the approval of the US immigration authorities at the end of March 2005.

Caretakers for our Children at Home

Slowly, things began to come together, as God was weaving the fabric necessary to support our children here in the States and us while we were in Brazil, so that we could go and bring our children home.

To watch our children here at home while we were in Brazil, the Lagoy family in Milo, Maine and the Matras family in Pittsfield, New Hampshire, offered their daughters, Samantha Lagoy and Bonnie Matras to take care of our children in our absence. These young women, besides being accomplished in matters of keeping the home, have kind hearts for children and a close and good relationship with God. They were going to have to remain with our children for at least five weeks, and were willing and happy to do so.

The House of the King

The Brazilian adoption policy requires that parents must stay in Brazil with the children for a 30-day “habitation period”. During this time, the children and parents would have the opportunity to bond in an atmosphere that was still somewhat familiar to the children, and the court psychologist and social workers would be able to help the newly formed family to adjust to one another.

For such a long stay with children, a hotel would be impractical. Many adopting families stay at a Christian retreat center at the outskirts of the city, but for us the cost to stay there was too high. We began to look on the internet for houses to rent in Curitiba, but even though I was getting familiar with the language, making all the arrangements to rent a house from this distance was beyond my abilities. I asked the Brazilian brethren here in the States if they could help, and they contacted the brothers in Brazil.

The Church in Curitiba had three meetinghouses that they call Casa Um, Casa Dois, and Casa Trés (House One, House Two, and House Three). Casa Dois and Casa Trés were the meetinghouses where the brethren living in the nearby neighborhoods could have a house where they could meet during the week. Casa Um was the largest house where the Church in Curitiba could meet every Sunday.

The Church in Curitiba offered to rent Casa Dois to us, if we didn’t mind them having prayer meetings and Bible studies there a few nights a week.

Casa Dois was a large house with a very large dining-living room, three bedrooms, a kitchen, a laundry, and four bathrooms, two with showers.

We were glad to be in a place that was God's house, so we accepted their generous offer.

Our Rebekah, seven years old at the time, said that, for our adopted children, it would be like the second verse in the Bill Gaither song, "The Family of God", which verse says, in part, "From the doors of an orphanage to the house of the King."

The Gift of the Holy Spirit

Over the months that we waited, God had done such a work in our hearts. We would often cry out to Him, "Oh, Lord, let us bring our children home!" We had such a love for them. It was as if they were always ours, and that we had been separated by some accident of circumstance. Our hearts just ached for them.

By August of 2005, after almost a year into the process and after 5 months of waiting for a response from the Brazilian court, I began to feel somewhat discouraged. At one of the Brazilian meetings, one of the topics discussed was, "Knowing for certain that what you are doing is God's will for your life." I began to feel some strong doubt, and as we sat down to the meal after the meeting, I asked the teaching brother how I could know for certain that what I was doing was God's will for my life.

He asked, "Do you mean about the adoption?"

I replied, "Yes."

Then he looked at me with a warm smile and said, "Brother, don't you remember? I was there. We all got down on our knees, and you asked that God would guide you with His Holy Spirit in this matter. If a man asks his earthly father for bread, will he give him a stone? How much more, then, will your Heavenly Father give you of the Holy Spirit when you ask?" That was the end of all doubt.

A few short weeks later, we were notified that the Brazilian authorities had approved our adoption petition and that we could come to Brazil to complete the process. We planned our flights to leave from New Jersey at 10:00 PM on Tuesday, October 18, 2005 and to land at our destination, Curitiba, Brazil, on the afternoon of October 19, 2005.  

Preparing to Leave

The Brazilian brothers here in the States wanted to take me out to lunch before Lois and I left for Brazil, so I met them at Panera’s in Nashua the Friday before we were scheduled to leave. There were five of us altogether, and we shared a meal and made a cell phone call to the elder brother in Brazil who had arranged for us to stay at the church meetinghouse at Casa Dois. It was a blessed and sweet time of fellowship. We shared the Lord’s Table and sang 1^st Corinthians 11:23-26 in Portuguese. With tears in our eyes, we bade our farewells.

We had been having much rain here in New England during September and October of 2005, and that Friday night, the rains came in earnest. It was raining more than an inch per hour. That night, much of Keene was flooded when a dam broke and the Ashuelot River overran its banks. Upriver, in Marlow and Alstead, houses and cars were swept away in the flood. Whole roads and bridges were destroyed and lives were lost.

By Saturday afternoon Oct 15, 2005, the pond at the end of our road was overflowing and washing over the road. I was concerned that the part of the road that serves as a dam for the pond would be washed away. I called the Fire Department hoping that they could sandbag the road.

I went down to the pond to meet the fire company when they arrived, but they told me that the flooding was too severe, and that sandbagging would not stop it. I told the firefighter in charge that we had to leave for Brazil the next Tuesday, and he replied, “If I was you, and I had to be somewhere next week, I’d leave right now.”

The O’Connells, one of the church families that had escaped the flooding, offered to let us stay there. Lois and I could leave from there to catch our flight from New Jersey, and the O’Connells would bring our children back here to Richmond when it was safe to do so, whereupon Samantha and Bonnie could take over watching our children. That Saturday afternoon, we hurriedly packed for our trip and brought our little family to the O’Connell’s.

After church on Sunday, we called one of our neighbors back home in Richmond, and she told us the flooding had stopped and the road was still there. With this news, we were able to return to our original plan. We thank God for the O’Connell family, who opened their home to us in our distress.

Our flight was scheduled to leave from New Jersey on Tuesday, Oct 18, 2005, at 10:00 PM, so we planned to leave Monday night the 17^th and spend some time with Lois’ sister Kathy and her husband Benny, who would then drive us to the airport. Before we left, my oldest son Jon came to bid us farewell, as did Tim and Laurel Ojala. Bonnie Matras was there with her father, Gene. It was another time of sweet fellowship.

The Church in Curitiba

We landed at the municipal airport in San José dos Pinhais, Paraná, Brazil, as scheduled on the afternoon of the 19^th. There we were met by Laércio Dias and his wife Marilene, Carmem Slomp, and Lino da Souza. Laércio is the eldest brother at the Casa Dois meetinghouse in Curitiba, where we would be staying. Carmem is one of the ladies in the church, and her husband Edguardo is one of the teaching brothers. Lino was our guide and facilitator who works for Limiar. When we got to the house, we met sister Eneida, whom the church had provided to help with the children day-to-day and to cook and clean for us.

On the morning of October 20, 2005, we finally got to meet our children. We stayed at the orphanage for lunch, and then went to the court to obtain our custody papers. When we returned from the Court, we took our children out of the orphanage to start our lives together.

Shortly after we arrived at home, we had an opportunity to learn about our new children’s attitudes towards tidiness and orderliness. One of the girls took a banana, peeled it, and handed me the peel. I asked her, “What am I supposed to do with this?” She responded, “Throw it in the trash.” I told her, “It’s your trash. You throw it in the trash,” and I gave the banana peel back to her. She dropped it on the floor.

The dinner table was a free-for-all, with hands reaching across the table, food scraped from one plate into another, and utensils used as play objects. The noise was astonishing.

I began to read the Bible in Portuguese at the table when we sat down to eat, in the midst of all the chaos. Because God’s word never returns void, the children began to grow calmer at the table, and Chico began to fetch my Portuguese Bible for me every time we sat down to eat.

We began to conduct family devotions, as well as participating in prayer meetings and Bible studies with the church in Curitiba that met at our house, Casa Dois. We enjoyed many outings, and shared many challenges with the dear brethren in Curitiba.

On one particularly difficult day, after the children had made quite a mess and done some damage to the house, I said to brother Laércio that if he said the word, we would find other arrangements. He looked at me and said, “We are the Church. When you rejoice, we rejoice. When you suffer, we suffer. And we learn more from the suffering than from the rejoicing.”

The court psychologist and social workers visited with us on several occasions and provided much comfort to us, working with us and with the children, helping us to adjust, and advising the children that they had a wonderful opportunity set before them.

On November 21, 2005, we went once again to the family court in Curitiba, where our adoption became final. November 22 was Thanksgiving here in the States, but in Brazil, we had much paperwork to complete and spent the day driving to various state administrative offices to initiate the final paperwork. We had flights scheduled for November 30, 2005, to leave Curitiba and go to Rio de Janeiro to obtain the children’s entry visas from the U.S. Consular office in that city.

Saying Goodbye to the Saints in Curitiba

After forty days in Curitiba, and many trials, perhaps the greatest struggle of our lives, all the paperwork had been completed, the children had their passports, and it was time to leave Curitiba. During this time, the children had begun to come around and we were knitting together as a family. We had outings to the ocean and parks. We enjoyed churrasco (barbecue). There were the times lingering over cafezinho (afternoon coffee) with Eneida and the visitors who often came to see us while we were there.

We found it very, very, very hard to part with these precious brethren who catered to our every need and blessed us with a love found only in the New Testament at the feet of Jesus. We wept, we laughed, we remembered.

After many tearful farewells at Casa-2 with Sister Eneida, Lois and I and the four children, together with our much baggage, piled into cars driven by Laércio and Marilene, sister Carmem, and Lino, and drove to the airport at the outskirts of Curitiba.

At the airport, we watched our beloved brother and sister, Laércio and Marilene, walking away. We waved with tears in our eyes, and they were gone.

Sister Carmem remained with us at the airport to keep the children from becoming too jittery waiting for the plane. But when it was time to board, our hearts ached once again, as we left our dear sister Carmem.

The brethren in Curitiba had arranged for the saints of the church in Rio to meet us at the airport and drive us to our hotel. They are precious brethren, but our stay in Rio was so short, and we had so much to do, that we really did not have an opportunity to get to know the church in Rio.

On Friday evening, December 2, after an evening and two hectic days in Rio preparing paperwork for our children’s entry visas, we boarded a plane for the long flight home.

Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift. - 2nd Corinthians 9:15

We thank our Father in Heaven for the unconditional love and Christian example of our Christian brethren in Brazil. They housed us, fed us, and cleaned for us. They taught our new children to pray. They provided us with indispensable help in the nurturing and admonishment of our new children. Most of all, they were an example of living Christianity.

We thank God our Father for the Christian love, care, and nurture provided to our children here in Richmond by the Lagoy and Matras families while we were away. Samantha Lagoy and Bonnie Matras cooked, cleaned, taught school, and led family devotions. Our children will never forget the love and care with which they were blessed by Samantha and Bonnie.

We thank God for the logistic support Bonnie and Samantha got from other Christians who came to finish the bunk beds and do necessary repairs on the home.

The Church at Casa Dois in Curitiba has moved from the house we rented to a different location. Sister Eneida, who did all our cleaning and cooking and taught our children how to work and to pray, had to live for a while in a different state in Brazil to work there, but has since returned to Curitiba. 

And, most sadly for those left behind, Nancy Cameron, the director of the Limiar, passed away in her sleep on May 18, 2006.

The intricate fabric that was woven by our Lord for the adoption of our children, and to care for us while we were in Brazil has been re-woven according to His purposes.

In God's perfect timing, all of these people and places and things that we needed so much, came together for that brief window in time, those 40 days in Curitiba.

We have seen the hand of God in every step of this process, and continue to see His hand in our lives as we begin our work with our children here at home.

Going through the photos evoked many memories, not only of hard and hectic times, but also of tender and sweet times with the Lord, with His people, and with our new children

While our time in Brazil with our new children was sometimes very difficult, we would not have changed a thing; not the time of year we went, or the length of time we stayed, or the trials we endured.

While we have had to meet many challenges here since our return home, we would not have changed a thing. For through it all was the love and timing and perfect plan of God our Father.