Every year a new baby -- and more joy

Every year, Dorothy Bode asks for two things for Christmas: a new Bible and a new baby. The previous year's Bible inevitably has been destroyed by one of the babies. "There's something about those crinkly pages that attract little hands," she said.

So the Bibles keep coming, and so do the babies. This year's arrival is Jeremiah.

This is the seventh Christmas that Dorothy and her husband, Robert, have adopted an infant. Their two-story home in northeast Minneapolis teems with 10 kids from infancy to 12 years old, a blend of birth and adopted children, white faces, black faces and unknown races. The new babies come to them battling autism, fetal alcohol syndrome or their birth mother's drug addiction.

To them this is not sacrifice, it's a mission. It's their way of following Jesus' teaching to love your neighbor. "Every person is equally valuable and important," Dorothy said. "[We are] doing all of this in Jesus' name -- with no strings attached for those we serve."
Love is one thing the Bodes have plenty of. Time? Not so much. But they manage with humor, faith and air-tight scheduling.

"There is a lot of love in this house, and you can feel it," Robert said. "But we do have to focus a lot on the kids. We've been to those seminars where they say married couples should have a date night once a week. We tried that, but it doesn't work for us. Now our date night consists of bringing in Chipotle and watching a movie after all the kids are in bed."

An open-door policy has added to the clan, making pseudo-family members out of a teenage neighbor who sought refuge during family distress and an 87-year-old from across the street who shows up for dinner so often that everyone calls him Grandpa.

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If you guessed they attend Pipers church you get bonus points.