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believing enough to bring benja home to his new family

Story and photo by LIZ QUIRIN
Messenger editor

The story is simple and beautiful, and it’s really more of a beginning than an end, but one family has taken a complicated journey to arrive at this beginning.

The story began 10 years ago when Our Lady of Mt. Carmel pastor, Msgr. Ken Schaefer extended an invitation to Ugandan seminarian Evarist Kabagamabe to come to Herrin to learn about rural southern Illinois.
At the time Evarist was studying for the priesthood at Our Lady of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein, Ill. As part of his training, the seminarian needed a service project, and parishioners at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel helped him by collecting aluminum cans to raise money for his parish in Uganda.

Fast forward to July 2009, and the parish still collects cans and sends the money to the Ugandan parish.
A friend of the seminarian, Father Gerald Wamala also visited the Herrin parish, and when he returned to Uganda he continued his relationship with the pastor and people of the parish. They also support Father Wamala’s projects to help his people.

One parish family, Steve and Tabatha Stone and their four children became close friends of Father Wamala. They were delighted to learn he would be returning for a visit to the parish in October 2006.

During his homily at the parish, Father Wamala spoke passionately about orphans he cared for in his parish. The Stones listened carefully, and their hearts went out to these children who did not have the opportunities their own children enjoyed. And, the Stones had lost a baby earlier in the year. It would have been born that October.

The timing was not lost on the Stones, and they spoke about sponsoring a child at Father Wamala’s orphanage.
They decided that sponsoring a child in Uganda would not be enough. They wanted to adopt a child, make that child part of their family.
The Stones discussed the possibilities and spoke to their own children about adopting a child. Then they approached Father Wamala and asked him to choose a child for them to adopt. Father Wamala decided Benja, born in 2003, would be that child.

Benja’s mother went to the country hospital in 2003 when Benja was due, but complications made it necessary for her to go to a specialty hospital. The only transportation was a motorcycle taxi. She was strapped on a board on the motorcycle when an accident occurred. She delivered the baby on the side of the road and then died.

Benja was the youngest of seven children, and his father was living with AIDS. Father Wamala visited the father who told the priest he had no way to care for or feed the baby. Father Gerald took the baby to the parish orphanage which consisted of two rooms at the parish school for orphans: one for boys and one for girls.

One of Benja’s older sisters died with malaria, and in February 2004 his father died. The older children were then cared for by a grandmother.

So Benja would become the Stone’s fifth child. The adoption process is complicated and difficult, especially with an international adoption. The adopting family was supposed to live in the country for three years before an adoption could be finalized. That requirement was met because the Stones had been financially supporting the orphanage since 2003.

However, that was just one of a number of hurdles the Stones would have to cross as they tried to adopt Benja.
Steve Stone made a trip to Uganda in October 2007 and expected he would go to court, and the judge would be happy to give the Stones custody of Benja. It didn’t happen that way at all, Steve Stone said.

Steve Stone met Benja and spent time with him. It was clear, he said, that Benja was attached to the older orphan girl who cared for him. He was three years old at the time.

“I let doubts weave into my soul,” he said. He wondered if this really was “a good idea.”
His wife encouraged him to “stay strong.”

She said she now knows what it means to “pray unceasingly,” because she was constantly praying for her husband as he met one closed door after another.

While Tabatha stayed home to worry and to pray for her husband “on a mission from God,” she said the couple felt this was something they were “called” to do. “I felt this was something God truly put in our hands.”
Cassie Stone, 17, the oldest of the Stone’s children agreed with her mother. “This was something that felt right,” she said. “I knew this was going to work.”

Through all of the research, the frustrations, the disappointments, their faith held firm.
“If I didn’t believe in angels before, I would after this,” she said.

The young father expected to bring his new son back to the United States, to Herrin and to the rest of his family, but instead, frustrated, he returned home alone.

“It all fell apart at the end” of that first trip, he said. “I cried all the way to Brussels” on the way home.
When he returned home without Benja, he was angry, he said, especially angry with God. For a brief period the Stones wondered if this was truly something they would be able to do.

In the midst of their mission to adopt Benja, Steve Stone experienced some severe medical problems and had to deal with them.

However, the Stones were determined, and they let their faith lead the way.
In May 2008, Steve Stone had a dream that Benja’s mother said a prayer as she lay dying that someone would take care of her child.
While the Stones were ready to care for Benja, Steve Stone wondered “why a mother would pray for only one child.”

The Stones contacted Father Wamala and now support Benja’s brothers and sisters in Uganda.
The Stones were reaching out to one child and have now taken on responsibility for a whole family in Uganda as they care for Benja’s siblings. Again, it is a matter of faith and of love.
In February 2008 Benja came home with Steve Stone to Herrin, to his mother Tabatha, and his brothers Michael, Jacob and T.J., and his sister, Cassie.
Sept. 23, 2008 Benja’s adoption was finalized. In one year’s time he has made great progress with his English, the Stones said. He and T.J. are especially close, the couple said.
The Stones continue to support Benja’s family in Uganda. The grandmother died in February and the children are truly orphans. “I feel they’re my responsibility,” Steve Stone said. “When I saw where the children slept in the school, it broke my heart. They live in the equivalent of a storage shed.”
The Stones have shared their story with others in the parish and elsewhere. And people have been generous, donating money to help the children in Uganda. The Stones formed a foundation, the Benja Project, to accept donations.
Steve Stone said they hope to purchase enough land to build a house for the children where they can live and farm.
Steve Stone said Benja reminds him of his brothers and sisters in Uganda. “If I look into Benja’s face, I see his sisters and brothers; his eyes sparkle like theirs. I can’t live my life without taking care of them.”

In late May Steve Stone returned to Uganda to check on the children, and Msgr. Schaefer went with him to visit Father Wamala and see how money sent from Our Lady of Mt. Carmel had been used to help others.
Msgr. Schaefer and Steve Stone attended a special liturgy celebrating the June 3 feast of Ugandan St. Charles Lwanga and companions. About 1.8 million people attended the outdoor liturgy.

Msgr. Schaefer said he visited the Diocese of Kasana-Luweero and Father Wamala’s parish and its missions.
There, he saw what the Herrin parish’s support had been able to do, and he described it in a message to parishioners in a parish bulletin.

One remote parish has a well, dug with donations from Our Lady of Mt. Carmel; 30 catechists in another parish now have bicycles; a high school has electricity; orphans can stay in school; and an elderly man has a wheel chair.
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel continues to collect aluminum cans and when $3-4,000 is collected, the parish wires the money to Uganda.

During the renovation of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Herrin, the parish children brought coins to the altar during liturgies when the collection was taken. The money was used to pay for the church’s baptismal font.

Now, that money is also sent to Uganda, he said. “I had no clue things would develop this way,” Msgr. Schaefer said, but he was thrilled to be able to go to Uganda to see what is being accomplished and accept the gratitude of the people in the name of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel.

Some of the money is being used to construct a church in one of the sub-parishes (a mission of a main parish) in the diocese.

The people are hoping the bishop in the diocese will permit them to name the church Our Lady of Mt. Carmel as a way of expressing their gratitude and their friendship with the people of Herrin.

“People lined the roads” to greet the two Americans. “You’re just ready to cry,” Msgr. Schaefer said. “The gratitude of the people was overwhelming.

A real highlight of the visit for Msgr. Schaefer was baptizing 131 children, mostly infants, he said.
These are people who have no water, no electricity, and yet their faith brings them to baptism.
Why do the people of Herrin continue to support those whom they do not know, living thousands of miles from southern Illinois?

“We do it because it is a social justice issue,” Msgr. Schaefer said. “We who are well fed, well clothed and well educated must help those who do not have. It’s a matter of the spirit of the Gospel.”