Full House

How a church choir concert changed one family forever.

The Decision

Debbie Alexander was hurrying as she settled into a seat at her Weddington, North Carolina, church. The visiting boys choir from Liberia, which had toured the United States for a year, raising money for their orphanage, was about to sing. Debbie was vaguely aware of fighting and instability in their country, and wondered what teenagers from such a troubled land would be like.

Watching them come onstage dressed in African print shirts and black pants, Debbie wished that David, her husband, could be there, but he was working late.

After a few hymns, an announcer described the hardships these boys faced at home. Years of civil war had ravaged Liberia, and entire families had been slaughtered. Survivors lived with memories of hideous murders, rapes and kidnappings. Much of the country was without electricity or running water.

While the boys were on tour, their orphanage had twice come under attack. In June, rebels ransacked the building. One caregiver died in the skirmish; three others were wounded. A month later, militia loyal to warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor invaded the orphanage. More than 400 children had to run for their lives. Teenagers, carrying toddlers on their backs, escaped in the rain to Monrovia, about 25 miles away. They were all still there, living in a warehouse.

The announcer was blunt. The choirboys' visas were about to expire, and they would have to return to Liberia unless they were adopted.

Maybe it was the church, the music or the look on the boys' faces that gave rise to the words Debbie heard: This is what I have for you to do. But she believed it was God speaking to her.

Yet she resisted. No. I just raised my two. I've done my time. With her own sons grown and away at school, Debbie wanted to fulfill a dream of earning a college degree in counseling, and traveling with her husband of 28 years. Adopting a teenager from a foreign country was not even close to being on her to-do list.

After the service, however, she found herself at a reception to meet the boys. This is crazy, she thought. What am I doing?

It was heartbreaking to see the boys now, eyes cast down. They seemed to have lost hope that anyone would adopt them. Debbie spoke with them for a few moments. They were shy, and their accents were difficult to understand. It didn't matter. She told the choir leader that if there were boys who didn't find families, she might be interested.

Scarcely believing what she had done, she called David as she drove home -- almost hoping he would talk her out of this crazy idea. "What would you think," she asked, "about adopting two teenage boys from Liberia?"

There was silence on the other end. Finally, David replied, "Can we talk about this when you get home?"

What David hadn't told her was that for weeks, he had been praying for a way to make his life really count. He was tired of living a safe life. When Debbie had called about adopting the boys, David knew instantly this was it. He loved being a dad. But was Debbie really ready to be a mom again?

On October 30, 2003, the decision was made.

Undertow of Saddness

Later that afternoon Debbie met the choirboys for lunch. One 13-year-old, Seeboe, hovered next to her, laughing and chatting, very much at ease. Another 13-year-old, David, also caught her eye. Every time Debbie looked up, David would shyly smile. She left the lunch knowing there were two she wanted to adopt.

David met the boys two days later with several other families. The meeting took place in a park, and David noticed how the choirboys drifted away from their soccer game to push the little kids on the swings or spin them on a merry-go-round. What fine character they have, he thought.

But there were still two important people to tell: the Alexanders' biological children, Josh, 19, and Matt, 21, both away at college. David had called the boys earlier in the week about the possibility of adopting. Matt and Josh were worried about their decision. Through his volunteer work with high-school students, Matt saw how much American society was still divided by race. He was afraid his parents were about to get hurt. What would family and friends say about a white family adopting two black children?

The next morning, the choir official called to tell Debbie that the orphanage had approved the adoption. Overjoyed, she ran through the house to wake David and tell him the news. "Get up! We have two new boys!"

The next few weeks were a blur as David dealt with the legalities and Debbie reorganized their house to accommodate children again.

Then it was time to get all four boys together. Everyone was anxious. Matt later called it "surreal." Josh, who has the build of a linebacker at six-foot-four, 250 pounds, with a shaved head and a goatee, towered over the teenagers, who spoke slowly, mostly in yeses and nos. Gradually they warmed to each other. And the parents and four sons went out to an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet.

By the time Thanksgiving rolled around, David and Seeboe were part of the family. At Christmas, however, their father detected an undertow of sadness. Perhaps Christmas reminded them of their families, lost and left behind. When Seeboe was two, both of his parents had died of bullet wounds, and David's parents died when he was about seven. Surely, Christmas also reminded them of the family that remained. David had two sisters, Mercy, 15, and Teta, 11, and a brother James, 8. Seeboe had no biological siblings, but he did have Joe, 13, a "blood brother" given to him by caregivers at the orphanage.

An idea began to brew in David's mind. But Debbie threw up her hands. "Don't even talk to me about it!" she said when David suggested they adopt four more.

Over the next two months, however, David kept bringing it up. Brothers and sisters needed to be together, he insisted. Debbie, who would have the major share of their care, said no. The financial implications were tremendous -- college costs alone meant she and David would have to rethink their retirement plans. And at the moment, Debbie was overwhelmed with immediate practical and financial concerns: medical and dental visits with whopping bills, shopping trips for clothing, shoes and furniture, and chauffeuring the boys, who were several grades behind American children, to tutoring.

Adopting the World

Her new sons never pressured her, although calls to Liberia were clearly difficult for them. On one, Mercy asked to speak to Debbie.

"Oh, Mom," she said. "We are so happy David has a home! Thank you for taking care of him. We love you so much for adopting our brother."

Debbie was touched. The girl was so happy, without a trace of jealousy or guile. Debbie kept thinking about her during a Bible study class in early March. Two safe and well cared for, the others living in a land of horrors. Maybe raising six children wouldn't be as hard as she imagined.

David and Debbie Alexander decided to adopt Mercy, Joe, Teta, and James in mid-March.

Josh, their younger biological son, couldn't believe it. He was just starting to build a relationship with David and Seeboe, and now his parents were adopting more. Would they stop at six? Did they think they could adopt the world?

In April, David and Matt flew to Liberia. The country was more devastated than David had imagined. Buildings had been drilled with bullet holes. The road to Monrovia was dotted with United Nations checkpoints, where peacekeeping officers with submachine guns would examine drivers' credentials.

Yet the children were so loving. From the moment they met, the four clung to his or Matt's arms.

David assumed it was because they knew he had come to adopt them. Yet Mercy was surprised when he asked her, "Are you excited about being adopted?" Neither she nor the other children had been told why he had come to see them. That night Mercy broke down sobbing in her dorm. "What's wrong?" the girls who shared her bedroom asked. "Nothing," she said. "I have prayed every night for years for a family. Now I have one."

David called Debbie at home. "They are beautiful and sweet and wonderful. It will take you half a second to fall totally in love with these children."

Though Liberian officials had approved the adoptions by David's last day in Liberia, immigration details had not yet been completed in the United States. The children couldn't return with him.

Before leaving, he called them into a quiet room. He told them all, one by one, how loved and special they were. At the end, Teta and James curled up in his lap and cried themselves to sleep.

It took five months for U.S. officials to complete the adoption and immigration process. Debbie and David called their children every week, sometimes trying for four hours before a call went through Liberia's precarious phone system. The children would implore, "Dad, when are we coming?" Month after month, it was the same. June, July and August.

David assured the children he was doing everything he could to speed things along. In a way, Debbie was relieved they weren't coming right away. She recalled that when she was pregnant, she had nine months to prepare for a new child. Now, she had little time and four children expected at once. She often wondered if she had done the right thing.

The visas were finally approved in mid-September. David and Debbie flew to Washington, D.C., where the children would arrive. They waited for four hours, camera in hand, for the kids to pass through immigration and customs. One detail they didn't have to worry about was suitcases. The children arrived with nothing but the clothes they wore. Everything they had was left behind for other orphans.

Possibilities

Since her family grew to a boisterous ten in September 2004, Debbie Alexander has found the difficulties greater and the joys more powerful than she ever imagined. At first, the children ran around the house like toddlers, playing with the knobs on all the electronic devices they had never seen before. They were delighted with simple luxuries. A bathtub filled with hot water. A machine to wash their clothes. Their first elevator ride was a marvel.

Cultural differences have also made parenting a challenge. Having experienced warfare, the death of their parents and living in a home where there was but one caregiver for 40 or 50 children, the kids had learned to suppress their emotions. They all see a child psychologist who understands the problems of children adopted from other countries. David and Debbie encourage the kids to show their feelings. Each in their own time has opened up. One day, Mercy told her parents about the fear she felt when the orphanage was attacked. At age 15, she had prayed to God for strength if it was her time to die.

Sometimes the cultural differences are comical. The children have had to learn American customs, like not walking into a neighbor's house without knocking. Once, one of the girls clicked her teeth at her brother during a fight. He became enraged. David and Debbie couldn't figure out why. They asked Seeboe and David what clicking teeth meant. "Oh, Dad," young David explained. "It's very bad."

Another time when a fight broke out, Debbie lined up all six on a sofa and read them the riot act. In the middle of her lecture, a police officer came to the house. Debbie wondered if neighbors had called the cops. No, the officer explained, someone at her address had called 911 and hung up. He was just checking it out. Debbie also checked it out -- James, trying to call a friend, had mistakenly dialed 911. Needless to say the phone was off-limits until he learned how to use it.

The racial difference makes itself felt in subtle ways. Strangers do double takes when they see the family together. The first time Debbie and the boys went to a barbershop, all the barbers stopped talking. But they've only encountered one episode of ugly racism. While on a family vacation, a stranger yelled an epithet. Josh and Matt turned livid at the insult. Though the Liberian kids were hurt by the name-calling, they saw that their big brothers would stand by them.

Mercy, Teta, Joe, and James experienced their first real Christmas last year, amid a house full of Santas and greenery. At the orphanage, a Christmas gift was a tiny portion of meat. Now there were boxes of clothing, electronics, toys.

In the orphanage, the children had no choices. Here, there were almost too many. America could be tempting, confusing and frustrating. But in their new land, new home, new family, each child was now free to imagine a future of possibilities.