Infectious love and kindness

Jacob, Sarah and their kids.[photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Jacob Myers is an American teacher of English at Northeast Normal University. He and his wife have two biological children and have adopted three children, including an African boy and two Chinese children. They help poor children and also get lots of help from people. Love and kindness are infectious, continuously spreading between people.

Jacob and his wife Sarah wanted to adopt children. One of the important reasons is Sarah's experiences in high school. Sarah, an American, grew up in the Ivory Coast, West Africa. She joined an orphanage volunteer group in high school. It was through caring for young orphans when she was 16 that inspired her to one day adopt an African boy.

In addition, she wrote a research paper on the world orphan crisis that made her want to adopt a little Chinese girl. Another important reason relates to their religious beliefs. When Jacob and Sarah first started dating in college, she told him about her desire for adoption. Jacob said he agreed with this because they are both Christians and it reflected their values to care for orphans, widows, and foreigners based on the Bible's teaching.

Jacob and Sarah have received a lot of help from other people during the adoption process. It was at the time when Jacob and Sarah had been married for seven years and had a daughter aged three that they started to adopt an African boy. One of their friends, having adopted some children, worked as a volunteer at an orphanage in Uganda. The son fell in love with a four-year-old African boy and told his parents so the family began the adopting process.

The mother knew that Jacob and Sarah desired to adopt an African boy and gave them some information. So they communicated with the orphanage's director in Uganda and read several biographies of orphans. They finally decided to adopt a three-year-old boy called Ephraim. The adoption process lasted for nine months, including filling out paperwork and raising funds with their friends from church.

International adoption is immensely expensive because of attorney, orphanage, travel and many other fees. A very kind lady donated U.S. $15,000 for both his and the other family. Both Jacob, Sarah and the other adopting family went to Uganda in December, 2010. In the end, Jacob, Sarah and their daughter welcomed their new family member Ephraim excitedly.

Jacob's family moved to Changchun, China in 2013. They had not forgotten their dream of adopting a little Chinese girl. They met an American family, living in China, who had adopted seven Chinese children, including one girl and six boys. They found that the lady worked as a social worker with an expatriate family who live in China to adopt Chinese children through an American adoption agency. They learned some information about adoption in China from this kind lady. She also inspired them to consider adopting a little Chinese boy because boys are less likely to be adopted than girls. They decided to adopt a three-year-old Chinese girl and a four-year-old Chinese boy in February, 2015 and welcomed them to their home on 4th February, 2016.

Nowadays, Jacob's family has still got help from other people. Someone even taught him how to use Chinese apps such as Taobao and Baidu Waimai. Jacob thinks that how much money he makes is not important but the point is to manage money wisely.

Jacob and Sarah treat and educate their children with all of their love. They love both their biological and adopted children equally. They try their best to understand each child's unique way of expressing love. They try to model and teach their children how and why to honor, respect and love each other.

They even started to learn some Chinese to help them to talk with their Chinese adopted children during this year's winter vacation. Not only have they studied some phrases from a tutor for several months, but they have also learned using language software. In addition, they has also learned a lot of new words from their Chinese son.

Jacob and Sarah teach their children to be kind people. From Jacob's perspective, teaching children any behavior is based on the parents' consistency in reinforcing and modeling the behavior. They provide plenty of chances for their children to be kind. Their oldest daughter and son both say they want to grow up and help orphans or write books about orphans. Kindness is contagious and is being promoted from parents to children.

Jacob also teaches students to be kind. He has a thought that modeling kindness and giving students opportunities to be kind is the best way . Once he taught English at Jilin University, and he was willing to help the students clean the snow off the roads and brought one of his children to help as well. Moved by his kindness, the boys in his class even bought him a Lei Feng hat. Jacob has started to understand who Lei Feng was since then.

"I believe it's more blessed to give than to receive. When we give or help others, it produces good and inspiration for others to do good for other people. When a person gives, they do not think about themselves but about the other person's well being. When a person receives, they only think about how lucky they are and want to receive more," Jacob said. This is his opinions about positive energy. More importantly, he promotes positive energy though showing kindness to others, helping people in need, and guiding children and students to be warm-hearted.

Love is powerful, and kindness is sunshine. Jacob and Sarah help poor children because they are deeply moved by them. They also receive uncountable help from other people. Besides, they positively influence their children and students to be more caring. People affect each other directly or indirectly to help others. Love and kindness irresistibly spread and powerfully warm our hearts. Jacob and Sarah demonstrate this in the way they live their lives.