ABOUT THE COLUMNIST
Gracie Bonds Staples is an award-winning journalist who has been writing for daily newspapers since 1979, when she graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi. She joined The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2000 after stints at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Sacramento Bee, Raleigh Times and two Mississippi dailies. Staples was recently promoted to Senior Features Enterprise Writer. Look for her columns Thursdays and Saturdays in Living and alternating Sundays in Metro.
We’ve been conditioned to believe that our lives revolve around great moments. Great moments, though, don’t come often.
When they do, they catch us unaware and wrapped in what too many of us consider coincidence.
I learned long ago that there are no coincidences. Heidi and Peter Jundt’s journey is a reminder of that, that often things happen so that we, as they put it, quoting 1Peter 2:9, “may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.”
When they decided to adopt a few years ago, the dream was to add a little girl. They got a boy instead, and he had his own dreams.
But let’s began today with the Jundts.
Soon after their marriage in 1988, the Lawrenceville couple’s firstborn died at birth and the second a year later. They had a third son named Isaac, who’s 20 now, and a fourth.
The last one was their “surprise” baby, a blond, blue-eyed boy named Jacob. It was Jacob, diagnosed with cancer at age 4, who suggested his parents adopt.
Should it be a boy or a girl? Heidi asked.
A boy, he told her.
In 2004, Jacob passed away. Six forever. The Jundts hesitated pursuing adoption at first. They didn’t want to even think that they might be trying to replace Jacob.
Two years later, they began the process, but instead of a boy as Jacob suggested, they wanted a little girl, preferably under age 2.
After 4 1/2 years of waiting, the couple switched to a special needs program. In fall 2010, social workers showed them a little boy named Lucas, born the same year Jacob died, and months later they were on a plane to China to pick him up.
Lucas had been abandoned at a gas station and then taken to an orphanage, the Chifeng Social Welfare Institute in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia. He was 7 years old. Perfect in every way except he was missing bones in his lower legs. His feet had only two toes each.
At home in the U.S., doctors amputated his feet, fitted him with prosthetics and “he’s been running ever since.”
Lucas, though, couldn’t forget his friends, Emma and Joshua. Both Emma, 11, and Joshua, 12, have spina bifida. Joshua also has a club foot. They were disabled like him. When all the other kids ran ahead, the three of them lagged behind.
They visited him in his dreams, but Lucas missed his friends terribly.
“We had a lot of fun together,” Lucas said. “I used to take care of Emma a lot.”
Every day he asked his mom about them, telling her he wanted two more children. Then one day he gave up and asked the one who makes all things possible. He asked God.
In 2012, Heidi began researching whether Lucas’ friends were even on the adoption list. They were.
The Jundts wondered if God might be speaking to them through Lucas, if they should adopt even though all the pieces weren't there, particularly the financial part. Where would they get the $50,000 they'd need for the adoptions? How could they afford the ongoing medical care the children would need?
They prayed God would either open a door to Emma and Joshua or close it.
Meanwhile, time was running out and Lucas knew it. At the age of 14, orphans are no longer adoptable in China.
Subtlety was not working anymore and so on May 25, 2014, God spoke to Peter, an insurance and human resources consultant by trade.
“I heard him say, ‘Do you believe or not?’” he recalled recently.
While Peter dressed for work, Lucas was down the hall telling Heidi about his dream.
“We’re going to adopt the kids,” he told her.
The Jundts understood the time for thinking about adoption, praying and resisting was over.
“We needed to start the process,” Peter Jundt said.
In early April this year, they completed the requisite paperwork and home visits. On May 19, the couple and their two sons Isaac and Lucas took an American Airlines flight to Beijing.
On May 23, they were greeted at the train station by an official from the orphanage and, yes, Emma and Joshua. It had been four years since the friends had seen one another.
“It was awkward,” Heidi said.
Lucas no longer spoke Chinese, and his friends didn’t speak a word of English. It didn’t matter. Some moments don’t need words.
Then, on May 25, one year to the day from when Peter heard God speaking to him, they officially became a family with the formal transfer of the children to the Jundts.
Emma had been found at a hospital, Joshua at a brick yard. Fate brought the three of them together then separated them. Now prayer had reunited them. No longer friends but family.
On June 5, they arrived back here in Lawrenceville, where the five of them shared their story.
“God has been preparing us for this, really, from the beginning of our marriage 27 years ago,” Peter Jundt said. “When you know what it’s like to face the imminent death of your child, the prospect of facing physical issues that are not life-threatening becomes less daunting.”
An hour later, I stepped from their home and the door shut behind me. It was the sound of another great moment beginning in the Jundt household.
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