Teen gets family through adoption
Just days before his 14th birthday, Jesus got a great gift—a home to call his own.
“It’s somewhere I feel comfortable, I feel safe, and I know that they care about me—that’s the big thing,” he said.
His adoptive parents, Brandon and Daniel, have been his foster parents for the last year through Global Village Therapeutic Foster Care. As a family, they enjoy snowboarding, snow tubing, and going to places such as the Erie County Fair and Darien Lake.
Jesus, center, celebrates his adoption with parents Brandon, left, and Daniel.
“They’re strict enough to make sure I’m doing the right thing, but they’re not mean or anything,” Jesus said. “They call my school every week to make sure I’m doing okay.”
Brandon, boisterous and outgoing, said he is the one who enforces the rules at home.
“But it’s okay because Jesus knows I love him,” he said.
The couple became interested in adoption “because we already had everything,” explained Brandon. “We had each other for 18 years.
“I have a large family with five siblings—six kids altogether—a mother and a father, 62 cousins. I didn’t have my own family, and this was a way to add to my extended family.”
“I was adopted myself as a baby,” Daniel noted.
Daniel knew Jesus’s previous foster mother through work. She was planning to move out of state, which would prohibit her from keeping Jesus. Daniel and Brandon took Jesus rock climbing and asked him if he’d be interested in living with them.
“When he said yes, we jumped at the chance,” Daniel said, and they immediately began foster parent classes.
The family recently added two foster sons, twins John and Ta’John, 5.
Since Jesus has been living with Brandon and Daniel for a year already, he doesn’t expect much to change—and that’s a good thing.
“I know I’m going to be part of one family,” he said.
Posted July 24, 2006