Cedarville Magazine, Spring 2018

In November of 2016, our 16-year-old sophomore, Gracie, was putting the finishing touches on her second quarter project for school, a family crest with motto. As her family motto, she came up with Inserta sunt Electi , which in Latin means “Chosen and Grafted Together,” and began to create the crest from there. Neither Troy ’89 nor I helped her come up with that motto. It’s something she’s known from the time she has been able to understand. Gracie was handed to me in the crowded hallway of a hotel in the Guangxi Province of China in March 2002. As hotel porters were busy carrying the luggage of the 12 families traveling in our adoption group, staff members from the local orphanage were delivering babies. It was complete joy-filled chaos! “Hagan,” our translator yelled above the noise, and the Hagan family laughed and waved their arms, trying to be seen at the end of the hall. An orphanage worker, making her way through the maze of luggage, porters, and anxious parents, handed little Janie to her mom as the translator shouted, “Siefker,” “Edwards,” and other names, until we finally heard “VanLiere.” A Chinese woman smiled and handed me my baby, the one I had been praying about for years. She had a beautiful face, black slick-backed hair, and GRAFTEDTOGETHER International Adoption Completes Best-Selling Author’s Family BY DONNA (PAYNE) VANLIERE ’89 Chosen Cedarville Magazine | 19