As we look back, our story is an amazing testimony of how chain reactions work. It was an ordinary Sunday morning in the month of October 2008. In our church handout there was some information about a winter hosting program, where you could host an older orphan for the Christmas holidays. For some unknown reason this caught our eye. Through a week of praying and asking God what He wanted us to do, we decided to go for it.

    As we looked over the photos of all the children, one stuck out to us. His name was Aleksejs Jurcenko. He was 11 years old and lived in Latvia. Once we saw his picture we new instantly that this would be the boy that we host.

    We took the initial steps without the realization of how much this was going to cost. We would soon find out--$2,500.  Where would we get that amount of money?  We certainly did not have this kind of money laying around!  But, we knew this is what God wanted us to do. So we began to pray and within one week God had provided all the moneys necessary to host Aleks. It was like a huge Domino Chain Reaction.  People, whom we have never met, began to step up and contribute generously to help us host Aleks.  One by one they came, and dollar by dollar the amount began to grow.

    Next thing we know, its December 16th around 3am.  Aleks’ plane has landed at Atlanta International Airport and he is making his way towards us. We can’t explain the emotions that came over us. The question that seemed to resonate was how do we love him so much, yet we have never met him. This kid had stolen our hearts and all we had of him was a 2x3 photo!

    Aleks walks up and gives us a hug with the biggest smile you have ever seen. We handed him a gift that we bought for him (a soccer ball). He immediately took it out of the box and began to play with it in the airport. This was the coolest kid ever!

    We left the airport and headed back to our hotel. The next thing that happened was not a surprise but a realization that we will never forget. We walked into our room and we began to go through Aleks things--sadly, all contained within a small a book bag.  Inside the bag, Aleks carried a handmade gift for me and Jamie.  With broken hearts we realized all that was left was a T-Shirt, pair of socks, and one pair of underwear.  The reality that he is an “orphan”, with nothing to call his own, started to set in at that moment. 

   We immediately began to show him some of the things that we had brought for him;  t-shirts, underwear, socks, blue jeans, hoodies, and basic toiletries.  These were just the basics, but for Aleks, it was the world!  Thus, began what we call the greatest experience of our lives.

    It would be hard for us to write about every single experience with Aleks; each day different, watching Aleks blossom before our eyes.  It was amazing what unconditional love was doing in this child’s life; and in ours!

   After 4+ life changing weeks, it was time for Aleks to return to Latvia.   We can still remember how sick we were.  We were packing up this little boy who we had fallen in love with, and sending him back to an orphanage.  WHAT?  Something was wrong about this idea, but we had no other choice. We knew from the beginning of the hosting program that we were too young to adopt. Basically, all we could do was try to find Aleks a forever family, and that is exactly what we were going to do!

    We left the airport on January 15th 2009 without Aleks.  Three days later, determined to find a home for him, we posted the following message on our Facebook page “Is anyone interested in adoption?”.  Who knew if or when a family would answer this call?   One year later, February 2010 Aleks has been adopted and has been living with his family for almost 9 months.

    Looking back we see how God chose us and a lot of other people to be part of the chain reaction that lead Aleks Tuttle to his forever family.  We were ONE domino in the huge chain reaction that changed his life FOREVER!  And in the process our lives changed too!  The cool part of this story is that Aleks is 12 years old now with so much life to live and we get to be a part of watching it unfold.

    Being a domino in one orphans life has changed us forever! This is why we are a part of Project One Forty Three. We choose to acknowledge that 143 million orphans is a problem, and we choose to be a domino; to be a part of helping ONE child at a time.