Life or death

With international adoptions harder and harder to process and a slowdown in Ethiopia, the second-largest source of hope for American parents wanting to adopt overseas, the outcome can be heartbreak, or worse | Jamie Dean

Joseph, Heidi, and Tate Bayly (Charlie Nye/Genesis)

GREENVILLE, S.C.—When an Ethiopian woman found an abandoned baby girl on the steps of a government building outside the capital city of Addis Ababa in 2008, she reported the discovery to local police and called the baby Bethel: The woman prayed the needy child would eventually belong to a Christian family, and knew that Bethel means "house of God."

More than two years later, the child is fulfilling her name: Grace Bethel leans across the couch in the living room of her Greenville, S.C., home, watching a video of the day her adoptive parents—Scotty and Kerry Anderson—met her at an Ethiopian orphanage. "That's you, daddy!" she says to Anderson, an associate pastor at a nearby church. The curly-haired toddler makes another observation: "I was a tiny baby."