It's A Girl

BROOKSVILLE - The little girl with the piercing blue eyes and hair as blonde and fine as corn silk was the first child that Jim and Tammy Manners saw at the Ukrainian orphanage.
Now that girl is theirs.
"It's like lightning," Jim said. "You know when it strikes, it's real."
"I felt the same way about her as I did when our boys were shown to us," said Tammy, recalling the births of the couple's biological sons, Jay, 14, and Jacob, 12.
The Manners family, of Brooksville, brought Carissa Sue Manners home in January. The 2-year-old is the joyous result of a yearlong process to adopt a child from the Ukraine.
"We felt God laid it on our heart to do it," Tammy said. "I just always felt that we had so much to offer to a child who didn't have the love and family we can give."
Jim, a Hernando County deputy sheriff, did hesitate at first, though. In fact, he refused, and Tammy, who for the last decade had "the burning desire" to adopt, finally stopped mentioning the subject.
That was difficult, Tammy recalled last week, especially when another family came to church one Sunday showing off their newly-adopted daughter. But, as Tammy wrote in a letter to God last October, "I truly relinquished my wants for Yours."
A few weeks later, husband looked at wife and said, "You're right. We need a little girl. Let's start the process."
The couple hired the Christian World Adoption agency, which connects parents with children in Ethiopia, China and Russia, among other countries.
That was nearly one year and many pieces of paperwork ago.
To be sure the family could provide a stable environment, a "home study provider" came to do a full inspection of the house and spent time with Jacob and Jay.
In December, Tammy and Jim made the first trip together to the orphanage in the city of Harhiv, the former capital when Ukraine was under Soviet rule.
They noted the cleanliness of the orphanage with a sigh of relief. But it was dark and dreary, and they were eager to get Carissa back to Brooksville.
A judge finalized the adoption in January, and Tammy and her mother, Pam Wilfong, went back to Ukraine to bring her home.
The big brothers said they are excited not just to have a little sister, but to be old enough to pass on their knowledge.
Jay said he wants to hit the pool to teach Carissa how to swim. Jacob is ready to kick off her soccer lessons.
"I'm going to pick on her first date," Jay vowed, laughing.
Dad said he plans to make his daughter well-rounded by teaching her, "how to be a young lady and how to hunt and fish."
Carissa already seems more interested in soccer balls than baby dolls, the family agreed.
And, Tammy said, "She's stubborn, like her mother."
Picking the right agency, the Manners said, is the key to making the process much easier. They've talked with other families who say the same.
That "lightning moment" that the Manners describe is a common one, said Mark Lucas, a spokesman for Christian World Adoption.
"We believe God has destined children for particular parents," Lucas said, "and we have story after story where parents say, 'This is the child that was meant for us.'"
Carissa's birth parents were older, had a disabled child and feared they couldn't take care of another, the Manners said.
Jim and Tammy said they won't wait to tell Carissa how she came to Brooksville. Tammy, a former teacher who now home-schools her boys, has already practiced by writing a letter.
"As soon as she can understand," Tammy said.