F THERE IS SOMETHING great to be done,” the proverb urges, “give it to a quiet soul.”

Donny and Karey Taylor would surely blush to be called quiet souls, for little about their lives or home in the past three years has seemed serene. Adding six Russian siblings to their family of seven in November 1998 has left few moments peaceful or pristine: they laughingly refer to “the tornado” or “the storm” that accompanied their decision to adopt an entire family of orphans into their rural Georgia home.

But it is the gentleness of their spirits that lingers after the tape recorder has been shut off and [large] family photographs have been sorted. Even with the duty charts and elaborate schedules necessary to bring order and education to 11 children, there is a settledness in both of them that most couples would find unthinkable in their circumstances. Some would call it “fortitude”: Donny and Karey talk quite easily of “faith.”

“The first months were desperately trying for Karey and me,” Donny says softly as he remembers adjusting to six new children, ages 5 to 15, who collectively spoke not a word of English. “I remember waking up in the middle of one night, not even being able to sleep because of worry. What have we done? I asked myself again and again. I hadn’t read my [Sabbath school] quarterly or my Bible that day; everything had just been too hectic. So I finally got up and went into the living room and turned on the light.

“Something seemed to say, Just pick up your quarterly and read it. I opened it and saw the instruction to read Jeremiah 29:11. When I turned to the Bible text, I saw the words that spoke to our situation right there in front of me: ‘“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”’ [NIV]. And I just closed my Bible and went back to bed—and I slept peacefully. I knew that God would solve our problems.”

Donny Taylor and Karey Leach met when both were students at Pioneer Valley Academy in the late 1970s and began dating during a summer they worked at the conference youth camp in Massachusetts. When they enrolled at nearby Atlantic Union College, they continued building their relationship as Karey finished a two-year associate’s degree in nursing and Donny completed requirements for medical school. They married in 1983, one year before Donny graduated from college and enrolled at Loma Linda University.

During the eight years they spent in California, Donny completed the medical course and a four-year OB-GYN residency. Karey gave birth to two daughters and a son in Loma Linda—Audrey (1985), Shannon (1987), and Michael (1990).

“I had grown up as a missionary’s kid in South America, and Karey had served with Maranatha Volunteers International in Panama while she was in college,” Donny says, “so we naturally thought about the possibilities of mission service. That was always in the back of our minds. But as we were going through medical school and our children were being born, we started thinking about the logistics of moving to another country, educating our children—and the whole six-year medschool repayment thing.”

The Taylors decided instead to settle near Calhoun, Georgia, where Donny joined a local medical practice; Karey devoted herself to raising first three, then four, children. A third daughter, Elise, was born in 1993.

“Karey had always talked about wanting to adopt,” Donny remembers with a grin. “In fact, her mother says she always joked about wanting 25 kids!”

A Brother for Michael
“By the time Michael was 7, he was really determined that he needed a brother to play with,” Karey remembers. “We began to think more seriously about adoption. In just a few weeks we were contacted by a doctor who asked if we knew anyone interested in adopting the child of a young mother whom he had talked out of an abortion. We thought and prayed about it carefully, and finally decided that this was something God wanted us to do.

“Everything was going wonderfully right up through the end of the young woman’s pregnancy, and when the baby was born, we held him and fed him and had a wonderful time with him. But just a few hours later we got word that the birth mother had changed her mind and decided to keep her son.”

The Taylors’ disappointment in not being able to adopt a child for whom they had waited nearly four months was tempered by the news that the birth mother was marrying the child’s father and trying to make their relationship stable. It also sharpened their determination to pursue adoption with another child. After months of paperwork, home visits, and complex international negotiating to find a Russian child, they finally succeeded, in January 1998, in adopting an infant Vietnamese boy whom they named Isaac.

“A few months later Michael told me in all earnestness, ‘Well, I love Isaac, Mom, but I still can’t play with him,’” Karey says with a laugh. “And just then the agency with whom we had been working for a Russian adoption called back to ask if we would consider a little Russian boy, which they knew had been our first goal. We weren’t ready to make any commitment just then, but we told the agency they could send us pictures and information that we’d consider.”

After weeks of discussions with the Taylors, the adoption agency ultimately recommended a boy named Sergey, but added a cryptic phone message:  “There’s a catch: he’s got siblings.”

“I don’t even think I thought to ask how many brothers and sisters he had at first,” Karey says. “I was assuming maybe two. But when she told me that Sergey had five brothers and sisters, I asked her, ‘Are you crazy?  There’s no way we could do that!’”

“The longer we looked at the pictures of the children, the more challenges we saw,” Donny says. “The two oldest—Nick and Alex—were teenagers, older than our eldest child, and the six of them ranged from 5 to 15 in two-year intervals—5, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 15. All we knew about their family background was that the Russian government had taken parental rights away from their mother, and that several fathers were ‘in the picture.’ All but one of the kids had been living together in a government orphanage about 12 hours east of Moscow.”

The Taylors mulled over the momentous idea of the wholesale adoption of the six Russian children for several months, hardly letting themselves seriously consider a decision freighted with so many financial, medical, and logistical problems.

“I found myself talking with our biological children almost every day, and posing to them the kind of problems that such a big change would bring to our home,” Karey says. “I needed to be convinced that this idea wasn’t completely crazy. I’d say, ‘What will we do about this? Where will everybody sleep?’—and they had answers!”

“We were thinking impossibility, and they were thinking possibility,” adds Donny. “I prayed about the idea a lot—mainly expressing my difficulties with the whole situation. The thought of the physical challenges to provide materially for so many children was almost overwhelming—and it was our children who kept pushing us forward, helping us to see the situation positively. Finally Karey and I decided that if God wanted this whole-family adoption to happen, it would have to be an all-or-none proposition. We weren’t going to split up the children.”

The Taylors agreed to start completing the paperwork, still almost certain that some medical or legal obstacle would stall the process for at least one of the children. Preliminary estimates brought the financial challenge clearly into view: it would take nearly $45,000 to successfully adopt the six children through the agency, pay the necessary government fees, and bring them to the United States.

“I told Karey that God was going to have to drop at least $25,000 into my lap before I would be convinced that He really wanted us to do this,” Donny says. “About a week later my accountant called up with some shocking news: ‘You’re getting money back from your taxes this year—to the tune of $14,800!’  When I called Karey with the news, I was quick to add, ‘Now, that’s not $25,000!’”

Two days later the adoption agency called with equally dramatic news. At a board meeting directors had agreed to drop fees for all but one child if the Taylors would consider adopting all six. The change would lower their costs by an additional $10,000.

“Now it was really getting scary,” Karey says quietly. “The home study was done, the consult with the social worker was completed, and the paperwork was moving forward rapidly.”

Pushing Out the Walls
Believing that God had answered their prayers to remove seemingly insurmountable obstacles, the Taylors informed the adoption agency in September 1998 that they would agree to take all six children. They also quickly called some carpenters who had been working on a planned addition to their house and asked for their help in reconfiguring the space to accommodate the adoptive children. A large bathroom on the second floor was divided in two, another bedroom and a laundry room were added, and the garage was ultimately transformed into a family room.

“We had been led to believe that we wouldn’t be able to travel to Russia to pick up the children for five or six months—in February or March,” Karey remembers. “But in October we got a call from the agency, asking us if we could travel in two weeks! We ordered furniture, and we arranged for family and friends to move in with our five kids while we traveled to Russia.”

Still lacking $10,000 from their promised federal tax return, which they planned to use as travel money to go to Russia, Donny and Karey wondered if the money would arrive in time for them to make the trip. Amazingly, the long-delayed tax check arrived in their mailbox just days before they were to leave, with a Post-it note from the mail deliverer.

“Found this in the road,” she had scribbled. “Thought you might need it.” The envelope had been opened at some point and the contents spilled out—for the check was actually crisscrossed with tire treadmarks!

Gathering up clothes by age and estimated size for Victoria (5), Anya (7), Sergey (9), Svetlana (11), Alex (13), and Nickolay (15), Donny and Karey left for Moscow in early November. A relatively smooth process at the government orphanage and the court in Kazan allowed them to collect all six children and return to Moscow one week before Thanks-giving. Sympathetic administrators at the Moscow ADRA office gave them use of an apartment there for a weekend before the flight home, and the six children had their first experience of a Sabbath worship service at the Moscow Adventist church.

After a medical clearance by an embassy-approved doctor, the visas were cleared and stamped at the U.S. embassy in Moscow. The long flight back to America was relieved by the Russian-language version of The Bible Story on cassette tapes given by the other Taylor children to their new brothers and sisters.

“At the immigration office in New York City we found ourselves in line with two or three other couples who had also returned from Russia with a child each. We were all waiting our turn. The agent was trying to make everyone feel better, and he asked us, ‘So, which one are you adopting?’ When I told him, ‘All six of them,’ he burst out, ‘Nooooo! I can’t believe that!’ Fortu-nately, he really helped speed up our process, or we would have missed our connecting flight to Atlanta.”

Surprised at the Atlanta airport at 5:00 a.m. by friends and four of their five children, the Taylors and their newest children arrived in Calhoun just two days before Thanksgiving. A tumultuous holiday season held surprises for everyone involved.

“It was the most bizarre Christmas we’d ever had,” Karey says solemnly. “I think we were crushed. We thought this would be the most exciting Christmas our new kids had ever had. But they were thinking, They’re trying to buy our love. They didn’t seem to have a hint of pleasure or excitement or happiness on any of their faces, even with the brand-new bicycles for each of them and the many gifts from us and our families.”

“Looking back, it was just too much, too much,” Donny agrees. “It was sensory overload for them, I’d guess. They were used to having so little in the orphanage that they felt overwhelmed by all the things available in an American home. We learned that offering so much stuff can be very confusing, and that it’s better to introduce new things one at a time, so that they can learn to value and appreciate things.”

Adapting to Change
The Taylors’ biological children also quickly learned that having six new brothers and sisters meant dramatic changes in their daily routines and available space. Favorite toys and games were taken or broken while the Russian children slowly learned to respect others’ property. Sharing bedrooms with new siblings who spoke little or no English and who didn’t always meet expectations for orderliness also proved a strain for the older Taylor children. Relationships gradually emerged between the children as language skills improved and the family focused on spending considerable time together.

“We were all on a fast learning curve,” says Donny as he reflects on the difficult first months after the adoption. “We discovered that we had to become more intentional about the basics of our daily routine.”

“I didn’t have time to do anything but the most vital things,” Karey adds. “I was cooking three hot meals a day for 13 people, and my older daughters sometimes helped. But we still couldn’t keep up with a family this big.”

All the children were soon recruited to help by means of The Chart, a large daily schedule on which each family member’s duties and responsibilities from 5:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. were carefully laid out. “With The Chart, the kids knew where they were supposed to be and what they were supposed to be doing–no getting into each other’s hair!” Karey says.

Building faith in children who had little or no exposure to Christianity has proved challenging as well during the past three years. Regular family worship and attendance at church each week gave the children exposure to basic Bible stories. As home-schooling lessons were gradually added to the daily routine, spiritual truths became a part of the emerging conversation in English.

“We felt a real burden to win the older children to the Lord right away, because we felt their time with us was so limited,” Karey says. “But we’ve since decided that our only job is to offer it to them. It’s their option to choose it. We have them attend church with us, and we make it clear that we expect that to be the case as long as they live at home. But we’re not going to force-feed faith to them. We pray with them, but we can’t make faith happen in them by our own efforts.”

Donny and Karey credit their biological children with considerable maturity in the adjustment process, even as they note the difficulties encountered.  “Without a doubt it’s been good for them,” Karey says, “even though they might have said otherwise at first. All of them say the first couple of months were a blur—that they don’t really remember much. That, without a doubt, is the grace of God!”

“Our birth children have learned a lot about how to deal with a group and how to work through problems,” Donny adds. “They have learned some really important life lessons about managing time, pitching in to help make a home operate, and a lot of practical skills.  It’s helped make them more compassionate and sensitive to others to have a mission field right under their own roofs.”

“We know we don’t have a perfect home, and probably won’t have one anytime soon,” Karey concludes. “But we believe that we’ve been blessed to help provide a safe, secure place for children who haven’t seen much blessing in their lives.  God has put us together so that all of us—parents and kids, Americans, Russians, and Vietnamese—can grow more into the likeness of Christ.”

If you would like to communicate with the Taylors about multiple adoption, or adopting international children, you may contact them at their e-mail address: dktaylor@gccinternet.net.

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Bill Knott is an associate editor of the Adventist Review.