Teena Myers

By Teena Myers

Jeff and Jennifer’s family had grown both in size and number since the last time I saw them. Their three daughters had sprouted like towering sunflowers. A beautiful Haitian toddler, who bore a striking resemblance to the late actor Gary Coleman, rested on Jennifer’s hip. My husband collected an assortment of toys from his study to entertain the children while Jeff and Jennifer shared their adoption adventure with me.

Jeff was pursuing his dream of being a Navy pilot when a friend invited him to church. During the service, Jeff witnessed a tumor the size of a grapefruit disappear from the side of an elderly woman’s face. “She didn’t even flinch,” said Jeff. “I don’t know if she even noticed the tumor was gone. When I saw it disappear, I became keenly aware God is real, God was present, and I was not right with God.” As Jeff wept tears of repentance, he knew he would leave the Navy and enter the ministry.

The Navy stationed Jeff in Florida shortly before the Pensacola Outpouring started at Brownsville Assembly of God on Father’s Day 1995. Jennifer’s parents had been members of Brownsville Assembly of God from its founding. They were present on the day the five-year revival started.

Jennifer could not deny the presence of God when she attended the revival. “I wasn’t ready to yield my life to God and never went to the altar,” said Jennifer. “My life changed after I met Jeff.”

Jeff had seen Jennifer at church and prayed nine months before he spoke to her for the first time. “Jeff said things only God knew about me. I felt as though God were speaking to me through him. Then he asked me to make a commitment to attend every service for two weeks. That was an enormous commitment. During the revival, the church held four services a week. I kept my commitment, and God changed me. Five months later, Jeff asked me to marry him.”

Before they married, Jennifer shared how the desire to adopt had been planted in her heart when she was eight years old. Her best friend had been abused by her family. The authorities placed her in foster care and then made her eligible for adoption. Jennifer saw the difference being adopted into a loving home had made. She dreamed of doing the same for a child in need.

Tragedy struck when their first child was stillborn. The birth of three daughters replaced the grief of losing their firstborn. Jennifer suffered complications during her pregnancies, increasing her risk of heart attack or stroke. After the birth of their third child, the doctor recommended that Jennifer have her tubes tied. They agreed to the procedure.

“Unable to bear any more children, the only option to increase our family was adoption,” said Jennifer. “Even though we had three girls, I didn’t have a preference for sex, age, or race. I searched for years but didn’t pursue adoption, because we didn’t have the money. I was ready to give up when I received a phone call that changed my mind.”

Melissa, a friend of Jennifer’s, was in the process of adopting two children from a Christian orphanage in Haiti when the need for $5,000 stalled the process. While Melissa and her husband were visiting a church, a woman gave them a check for the exact amount they needed. Melissa called Jennifer to share the exciting news.

“God had supplied Melissa’s need, and that gave me faith God would supply what I needed,” said Jennifer. “I didn’t know it at the time, but I received Melissa’s call the same month Judah was born.”

Jennifer had been in contact with an agency in Texas about adoption. They regularly sent her photos of available children. She kept the photos in a folder, waiting for God to quicken her heart toward the child he wanted her to adopt. One day, she opened an email from the agency with a photo of three siblings from India.

“When I saw those children, I felt pregnant. They consumed my thoughts, but I was reluctant to tell Jeff I wanted to double our family. One day, my girls saw me looking at their picture and asked a lot of questions. My girls said we needed to adopt them, and that gave me the strength to present it to Jeff.”

“I wondered how I would feed six children. We took a step of faith and trusted God to guide us,” said Jeff.

They had two weeks to raise the funds to start the adoption process. The money they collected fell short of the $2,500 needed to put a hold on the children. Then another couple applied to adopt them. While they grieved the lost opportunity, Jennifer received a photo from an adoption home in Haiti of eight-month-old Judah.

Jeff, now a senior pastor, had already scheduled Keith and Cindy, founders of the adoption home in Haiti, as guest speakers. Their presentation deeply moved a woman in the congregation, who requested permission to assemble a team for a mission trip to Haiti. Jeff and Jennifer traveled to Hati to plan for the trip. “That’s when Jeff and I met Judah. We belonged together. Leaving Haiti without him was difficult,” said Jennifer.

“We returned with the mission team in March wondering if Judah would remember us,” said Jeff. “We didn’t have to worry. The minute we arrived, Cindy came out to meet us, holding Judah. He recognized me and lunged for Jennifer. We had another great week with Judah and returned to visit him again in June.”

They planned to visit Judah once every three months, but circumstances prevented the September trip. The cancellation of their December trip brought more disappointment. The separation from a child they had embraced as a son weighed heavily on their hearts as they celebrated the Christmas holidays.

Jennifer smiled. “From the very beginning, I prayed all the paperwork necessary for the adoption would be in the right hands at the right time. But raising the money was a struggle, and the delays compounded my frustration. We finally gained enough money for Judah’s dossier to be filed with the Haitian government. Keith planned to bring the papers to Port-au-Prince on January 17, but he never made it.”

On January 12, a catastrophic earthquake rocked the nation of Haiti, killing 200,000, injuring 300,000, and leaving 1,000,000 homeless. The government of Haiti lay in shambles, with the Presidential Palace and National Assembly buildings destroyed. The following week, the Homeland Security Secretary announced a humanitarian parole policy allowing Haitian children in the process of being adopted by American citizens to enter the United States.

Jeff continued the story. “If Keith had filed Judah’s dossier with the Haitian government, the earthquake would have buried it under the rubble. We would have had no proof Judah was eligible for adoption.”

Shortly after the government announced the humanitarian policy, Keith and Cindy planned to evacuate the children who were in the process of being adopted. Keith asked Jeff to go to Fort Lauderdale, where a cargo plane would transport him and several other parents to Port-de-Paix to assist in the evacuation. When Jeff arrived at the airport, the adoptive parents were sent to Santiago in the Dominican Republic. The earliest flight left the following morning. They spent a miserable night sleeping on the floor in the baggage claim area.

When they reached Santiago, a relief mission transported them to Port-de-Paix’s small dirt landing strip in a five-seat airplane. A United Nations security force escorted the convoy to the mission. “I had not seen Judah since last June. I called his name, wondering if he would remember me. He came running so fast that he ran past me and then stopped. He ran back and threw his arms around my leg. It was a moment I’ll never forget,” said Jeff.

The missionaries chartered a school bus to bring them to Port-au-Prince to obtain permission to take the children out of the country. Jeff sat on a worn, ripped vinyl seat with Judah on one knee and Donaldson, whom a woman in his congregation was adopting, on his other knee.

“The road was so bad I had to wrap my ankles around the braces of the seat in front of me and push my knees into the seat to remain seated. Somehow, we made the twelve-hour drive in six. I exited the bus with blisters on both of my knees. I had not had a good night’s sleep or bath since I left America three days earlier. We were American citizens with forty-one children and four days of supplies in a city destroyed by an earthquake. The United States Embassy refused to give us refuge.”

After many phone calls, they found a government official with the authority to rescind the order forbidding their entry. They were escorted to a waiting room and supplied with a mattress to sleep on the floor. They had access to one bathroom with no shower.

The man assigned to handle their case left for vacation shortly after they arrived. The flood of misinformation that followed sent their emotions on an unending roller-coaster ride. They were asked to charter a plane and then forbidden to charter a plane. They were told they would leave that day. An hour later, they had to stay another day. They called home with news they would arrive at Fort Lauderdale, then had to call back to report the location changed to Miami, and then called again with the announcement of a new location in Alabama. They ran out of supplies and were eating MREs (meals ready to eat) supplied by the military when a security force arrived to bring them to a C-17 cargo plane destined for Miami.

“It had taken a week, but it seemed like years. When I saw Jeff, he looked as if he had just suffered a week of labor pains. I was ready to do it again, but he wanted a break to recuperate,” Jennifer laughed. “Now he knows what I went through when I gave birth to our daughters.”

I reached to turn off my recorder. Jeff stopped me. He wanted to share his thoughts on adoption. “Adoption is very special to me. I’m the last of six boys. My dad had three boys, and my mother had two when they married. I’m the only child of their union. Jennifer and I had girls. The only way for my line to continue was adoption. Now my namesake will continue through my son. That means a lot to me because God has adopted us.”

As I helped them collect the zoo of balloon animals, my husband had created to entertain the children. Jennifer commented that her family looked odd—three white girls following their white mother holding a Haitian toddler. Jeff securely strapped the children into car seats and found nooks and crannies for the balloons. As they pulled out of the driveway, I pondered a scripture from Revelation: “[Jesus] purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9). Their family doesn’t look odd. They look like God’s family.