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So often when adoption is in the news, it is not a positive story (the religious folks shadily trying to get orphans out of Haiti, for example). But on today's Huffington Post, there is an absolutely "happily ever after" story about a family who adopted a little boy from Malawi.
The adoptive mother is a former seminary classmate of mine and the former religion reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times (and author of several books). Cathleen Falsani and her husband, Maurice Possley (also a journalist), met 8-year-old Vasco while on an African trip they had won as a raffle prize. Orphaned by AIDS, Vasco was sickly and needed heart surgery.
Falsani couldn't stop thinking about that little boy. So when she returned home, she did what she does best: she wrote about him. Soon doctors and hospitals were volunteering to give Vasco his needed surgery. Falsani and Possley brought him to Chicago in 2009 for the surgery, but never dreamed of adopting him--until Madonna successfully adopted her daughter, Mercy, from Malawi. That precedent paved the way for Vasco's successful adoption, which was legalized just a few weeks ago.
Trust me: read this story here. It will make your weekend.
