Grandparents adopted 10 in act of Christian love
Religion Today, September 28, 1999
Shirley and Van Hughes are 52 years old and have two grown sons and four grandchildren. But they’re thinking more about putting little children to bed and counseling teen-agers than making plans for retirement.
This summer they adopted 10 brothers and sisters, ages 4 to 17, in an act of Christian love that experts say is the largest group adoption of siblings in the United States.
The Hugheses’ heroic story begins a few years ago when Shirley heard a news report about police finding the 10 children abandoned, hungry, and covered with lice in a dilapidated downtown Phoenix, Ariz., house. They had been eating food out of garbage cans, and Doni, the baby, was asleep on the floor, dehydrated and feverish, with only a bottle of spoiled milk.
Children of four fathers
The children, who have four fathers, had moved from house to house for years, and their birth mother, an alcoholic, sometimes disappeared for days. Welfare officials rescued the children, placing them in various foster homes, shelters, and group homes apart from each other.
The Hugheses, who are Baptists, had started to take in foster children in their Mesa, Ariz., home. They got Stephanie, a 3-year-old, who was quiet and scared. Then came two of her brothers, Jose and Juan. Shirley and Van began working with foster families who had the other children – Frank, Steven, Asucena, Veronica, Agustino, Teresa, and Doni. They gathered all the children together once a month for birthday parties and picnics, and sometimes they would take all 10 home with them on weekends.
Caseworkers asked the working-class couple if they would adopt all 10 children. Fifty years old at the time, they said no. But when caseworkers said they had families in two states willing to split up and adopt the children, “my mothering instincts kicked in,” Shirley told Religion Today.
“We wondered about many things, including concerns about our health and finances,” she said. “We prayed long and hard and our fears subsided. We said, ‘God, if this is what You really want, we are going to put it in Your hands.'”
Children asked to vote
The Hugheses invited all 10 children to a pizza party and asked them to vote on whether they wanted to be adopted. All the children were excited and happy except Juan, Shirley said. When he realized what adoption was, and that he would never go back to his birth mother, he left the table in tears. Shirley found him sobbing in a hallway.
“I told him that Jesus knew his heart and knew what he wanted,” Shirley said. “I told him that Jesus would help his mother and that if she ever got well, she could come and stay with us. I explained how it would be unsafe for him to stay with her now.”
Six of the children have become Christians, Shirley said. Her biggest goal now is for her oldest boy, Frank, who has been rebellious and gotten in trouble with the law, to give his life to God. “Mothers are impatient. I hope and pray for him because I know the older he gets the harder it will be to come to faith. “I want all my children to be productive citizens. I don’t want them to repeat their family’s past. I want them to share Jesus Christ with others and to have Christian families of their own. I want them to be able to see where they came from and know the part that Jesus played.”
The Hugheses help the children with their daily challenges, said Shirley, who stays home while Van works. “We bring up Scripture and ask, ‘What would Jesus do?’ Sometimes they make good decisions, and at other times they fall back. My faith leads me and strengthens me 90 percent of the time. The other 10 percent is when I try to depend on ‘the flesh.’ I am not perfect.”
The Hugheses find strength at Calvary Southern Baptist Church, where the family attends – and fills two rows. Shirley calls it “a praying church” whose members helped them through every step of the decision to adopt, and still are supportive. “They will call and say, ‘You and Van need to get out. We are going to give you a break,’ ” Shirley said. “It is hard for me to accept their kindness. I am a giver and not a taker. But now, if I am having a hard day, I will call and ask one of them to come over and pray with me.”
Shirley’s parents, Larry and Vera Russo, also help a lot. The state of Arizona has continued to pay the family a monthly amount to help with the costs of raising the children.