Finding a Forever Family,
Giving Back to Community
By Mary McCoy
My Saint Leo is
helping others!
Bill and Jeanne Fuller chose him. They
14 FALL 18 Spirit Magazine
came to an orphanage in Chelyabinsk,
Russia, in 1996, and gazed
at a blond toddler in a crib. “I picked
him up and he started laughing,” said Jeanne
Fuller.
And at that moment, Joseph Fuller won
their hearts and found his forever family.
Joseph “Joe” Fuller, now 23, graduated
from Saint Leo in April 2018 with a Bachelor
of Arts degree in management. He secured
a position in youth development service at
Youth and Family Alternatives Inc.’s RAP
House in New Port Richey, FL, where he works
with children ages 10 to 17, who may be homeless,
have school-related or family problems,
or face other issues.
For Fuller, his life has come full circle. The
child who was helped is now helping others.
“I can, without a doubt, say my life has been
truly blessed,” he wrote in a blog.
Jeanne and Bill Fuller tried for 10 years
to conceive a child. “We didn’t want to be
childless,” Jeanne Fuller said. “So we started
to look at domestic adoptions. But we didn’t
want the parents to come back and claim
the child.”
Jeanne Fuller attended a seminar on
international adoptions and thought it was
a good fi t for the couple. They worked with
a now-defunct agency in New Mexico that
would send videos of children and provide as
much history about the children as it could. At
that point, Americans could still go to Russia
to adopt, Jeanne said. “All of the sudden,”
she said, “Joe came along. He was so cute! He
was just a year old in the video, but he took
control of the whole play area of the Russian
orphanage.”
At one point, the Fullers were afraid they
were not going to able to adopt Joseph.
“Luckily, things loosened up,” Jeanne
Fuller said.
When they arrived at the orphanage, the
inside was decorated with bright, primary
colors. “They took us to a room with all the
boys, and there he was,” she said of Joseph.
“He was playing with dolls, which he denies!
We got to play with him for a little while.”
After a rather informal adoption proceed