Adopting an Iraqi boy.(THE GOODNESS OF AMERICA)(Ala'a Eddeen)

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Back in September 2003, Captain Scott Southworth, a National Guard officer from New Lisbon, Wisconsin, was midway through a 13-month deployment in Iraq. While visiting the Mother Teresa Orphanage in Baghdad that day, Southworth met nine-year-old Ala'a Eddeen, a spirited 55-pound boy suffering from cerebral palsy.

Southworth's MP unit returned to the orphanage many more times, and he began to regard Ala'a as a little brother. And, unknown to him, Ala'a had secretly started referring to Southworth as "Baba," Arabic for "Daddy."

When one of the sisters told Southworth that Ala'a was getting too big for the orphanage and would soon be moved to a government-run facility, the captain became very concerned about the boy. "Best case scenario was that he would stare at a blank wall for the rest of his life," South-worth related in an AP interview.

Southworth wanted to bring Ala'a--who picked his own name, which means to be near God--back to Wisconsin with him, but the intricacies of both Iraqi and U.S. law presented a formidable bureaucratic hurdle. And the fact that he was single and did not have steady employment back home complicated matters further.

Inspired by Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of The Christ, which he watched in the spring of 2004, Southworth searched his conscience and decided he did not want to have to explain to Jesus some day that he had failed little Ala'a. At his mother's advice, he started praying about the dilemma.

Southworth's prayers were heard. Near the end of his ...