HEBRON — Louise Johnson and her husband, Brian, had three young boys when they started seriously considering adoption.
The couple looked into foster care, but that didn’t feel like their path. There were so many other adoption options — domestic, foreign, baby, older child.
God, Louise prayed, if adoption is what you want us to do, make the situation fall in our laps because I don’t want to doubt this for a minute.
A few months later, it did.
An acquaintance from Auburn posted on Facebook about a little boy her family was adopting from Haiti. We just found out he has two brothers, she wrote. We don’t want to separate all of them, so let me know if anyone out there is considering adoption.
“It was like lightning,” Johnson said. “That was our falling-into-lap moment. I knew.”
The Johnsons would meet Wisler (pronounced Whis-lay) in a Christian orphanage in Haiti mere months after the 2010 earthquake that devastated the country and just one month shy of the boy’s sixth birthday.
It would take four years to bring him home.
“If we didn’t have our faith in God, we wouldn’t have made it — there’s no way,” Johnson said. “I remember just crying out to God and being like, ‘Why is this taking so long?’ And just getting the gentle answer that it was going to be his perfect timing.”
It’s unclear exactly why Wisler’s adoption took twice as long as the average, but Johnson believes it had a lot to do with Haiti’s struggles to rebuild and recover from the earthquake. And, she believes, it was God’s plan.
“Maybe it was just all about us learning to trust Him,” she said. “That’s what I kind of lean on, is that this was Him showing us He’s got it all. He’s got it and He’s going to make it all work out.”
Over four years, she and her husband visited Wisler six times — the first while she was four months pregnant with their fourth son — and the family tried to keep up regular correspondence through care packages and Skype. Wisler grew from a solemn 6-year-old to a happy 10-year-old.
The adoption was finally finalized in November 2014 and Wisler flew home to meet his four new brothers — who decided to introduce themselves by jumping out of hiding and shouting, “Welcome home!”
Wisler laughed, delighted, and all the boys dog-piled.
“He immediately got that,” Johnson said. “It was boy language.”
The family quickly fell into place.
“Like pieces to a puzzle,” Johnson said. “They didn’t bat an eyelash.”
Today, the five boys range in age from 6 to 13. Wisler is the second oldest, a content, healthy 12-year-old.
“I’m not going to say it’s been a party the entire time,” Johnson said. “There’s been a lot of adjustment. Children from third-world countries have experienced a tremendous amount of trauma, so we have had to get through that. It’s been, again, our faith in God and in His promise to take care of His children. He is the bringer of miracles.”
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