Joliet man opens his home, heart to orphans

JOLIET – Kiel Twietmeyer recalled the day his wife Carolyn called him at work and said, “Babe, I’ve found the picture of our kids.”

Twietmeyer figured Carolyn had lost a treasured photograph and had recovered it. Then he had the shock that changed his life.

The photo was a picture of three Ethiopian siblings. The middle child, age 5, was HIV-positive. This did not sync with the adoption he and Carolyn had envisioned – a little Indian girl with a club foot. The thought of bringing an HIV-positive child into his home terrified him.

“For the first time in our marriage, we were completely opposite,” Twietmeyer said.

That was in 2006. Today, Twietmeyer and Carolyn are the parents of Matthew, 25;  Andarge, 23; Kylie, 22; Brendan, 21; Sarah, 20; Rachel, 18; Ethan, 18; Selah, 17; Gracie, 15; Samuel, 13; Hank, 13; Daniel, 10; Isaac, 9; Seth, 9; and Sofia, 4.

The Twietmeyers run a home-based business, home-school their children and oversee the nonprofit they founded – Project Hopeful – to ease the adoption process of difficult-to-place children.

In a Facebook message from an orphanage in Guatemala – one of many initiatives run through Project Hopeful – Carolyn said Kiel leads by example, is full of contagious hope, has a grip on God’s grace and is a true father to anyone that needs him, regardless of age, race and history.

“He’s blind to anything but the need and he is quick to respond,” Carolyn said. “He is first to admit imperfection, but I can say he is the greatest example of the embodiment of love that I have ever known on this earth.”

“He adores his own children and they know it, and I have yet to see someone he encounters walk away without the same feeling – that they are cherished and valuable and beautiful,” she said. “He has the uncanny ability to challenge people to know, regardless of their history, that they are here for a great reason and to seek out their purpose.”

The road to adoption

Although it was Carolyn that initially championed adoption, Twietmeyer said he didn’t need convincing and cited the Biblical truth that Christians are God’s adopted children.

“We found out there are over 100 million orphans worldwide,” Twietmeyer said. “It’s not OK that all these kids are going to bed at night without a kiss and hug goodnight. We had food in the refrigerator and a roof over our heads. It just didn’t make sense.”

However, the dynamics of blended families did make sense to Twietmeyer. Twietmeyer’s father had married a woman with four children; together they had Twietmeyer. In 1998, Twietmeyer married Carolyn, a single mother of four children, and they quickly had three children together, he said.

But HIV? And three children? On a $60,000 painting and decorating income?

“I said, ‘God, if this is your will for our life, then I need you to be crystal clear. This is scaring me,’ ” Twietmeyer said.

In the meantime, Carolyn began studying up on HIV, using information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, then sharing that information with Twietmeyer. The couple learned HIV was impossible to contract in the normal family setting, Twietmeyer said.

Yet once the couple decided to adopt these children, they encountered a second obstacle: outdated policies about extended wait times for HIV-positive people entering the United States, Twietmeyer said.

Through a friend of friend of a friend who knew someone in Homeland Security, Twietmeyer said the wait time was reduced from an additional six to nine months after the adoption to 11 days. The children “came home” in 2007, and Twietmeyer assumed his family was complete.

Expanding the family

But in 2008, Twietmeyer and Carolyn adopted a little girl with full-blown AIDS. She was 11, weighed 32 pounds, and was not allowed to fly because her hemoglobin was dangerously low.

Doctors told the Twietmeyers, “We don’t waste blood on AIDS patient,” but that didn’t daunt this couple.

“My wife’s blood was a match; she gave her blood and got her on the plane,” Twietmeyer said.

At home, the girl missed her three siblings, who had cared for her until she became too ill for them to manage. In 2010, a week before the oldest turned 18, the Twietmeyers adopted these three teens.

Again, Twietmeyer considered his family complete, until 2011, when he and Carolyn adopted an 8-week-old baby with Down syndrome. And then two years ago, they adopted a 7-year-old boy with Down syndrome from Eastern Europe.

Elements of good fathering

As he reflected on Father’s Day, Twietmeyer said successful fathers are men that understand their identities, their different roles, the significant impact they make and the fact that a healthy marriage is necessary for a healthy family.

Twietmeyer believes being a loving father is the best gift he can give his children. Ultimately, Twietmeyer traces fathering back to God, identified in the Bible as a loving father.

“We love,” Twietmeyer said,” because we were loved first.”

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Know more

To learn more about the Twietmeyers outreach to orphans, visit www.projecthopeful.org.