Mc Richard Paglicawan
The couple recounted their journey towards adoption during the launching of Adoption Consciousness Week and opening of the photo exhibit held last February 2014 at SM Manila. Since legally adopting Anna, the couple became advocates of legal adoption.
“She was gorgeous,” This was Janet Villa’s first reaction when she saw Anna, their adopted daughter.
From the first moment they laid eyes on the chinky-eyed baby, they knew she was the child God had intended for them.
Looking back, the Villa couple recalled that “God is in the details” of their journey into adoption, the road that finally led them to Anna.
This is their story:
In 2007, after 13 years of fertility workups, a doctor informed Janet and Jojo that they would never have children. “A myoma the size of a five-month-old fetus had taken over my uterus. The doctor recommended hysterectomy,” Janet tearfully narrated.
When all hospital work was done, Jo brought Janet with him to his basketball practice at St. Stephen where he was the coach.
Janet remembered that day vividly as if it was just yesterday, “I was supposed to attend bible study, but he knew I was grieving far too much. Jo was blinking back tears when he told the boys he was coaching that I needed an operation, and he couldn’t leave me alone while I struggled with the news.
“Boys, I want you to meet the most beautiful woman in the world. This is my wife, the love of my life putting his arm around me and introducing the kids one by one. This is my baby girl,” Janet recalled her husband as saying back then.
Answered prayers
Janet was positive that God was with them all throughout their ordeal – from finding the right doctor and raising money for Janet’s surgery to finally fetching Anna.
Three years after Janet’s surgery that successfully rehabilitated her uterus, the couple had somewhat given up on having children. “But God had been working on our baby project all along. In 2010, Working Mom editor Leah Nemil-San Jose asked me to edit an adoption special. I had to research on adoption, interview adoptive families and children, and talk to a therapist,” Janet recalled how she finally understood that God was leading them towards adoption.
“When Jo and I opened our hearts to adoption, our daughter was already living, breathing, somewhere. We prayed for her, and asked God to choose her for us,” she continued.
Three months after they had filed the adoption papers, the couple was notified that the DSWD social worker had matched them to a baby. Anna was ten months old when they fetched her at Ministries Without Borders, a home for abandoned babies and toddlers in Cavite run by Norwegian missionaries.
Janet recalled, “She looked so much like Jo that the caregivers teased him for merely reclaiming her. God had taken note of our checklist; Anna was healthy, lived with Christian caregivers and was entrusted to a Christian woman when she was only a week old. When we picked her up, her caregivers cried, she had been carved in their hearts, and they wrote her letters for her to read when she grew up. The name our daughter had been given at the orphanage was Grace. The name Anna is the Hebrew word for grace. Our daughter’s name had been preordained.”
“In the first few months that Anna came home to us, two birds visited our tenth-floor home every day. They’d stay for hours, flying by, perching on our windowsill, singing. Today those birds—symbols of hope and God’s faithfulness—built a nest outside our living-room window, choosing to stay with us for the long haul. Truly, God is in the details,” the couple exulted.
Anna’s legal adoption was made possible through the assistance of Kaisahang Buhay Foundation (KBF), an accredited child-caring agency which is a partner of the Department of Social Welfare and Development in continuously advocating legal adoption to ensure the child’s best interest. (CA. Javier/DSWD-Social Marketing Service) September 1, 2014
