{"id":1029,"date":"2025-02-04T12:51:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T18:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christianorphanfund.com\/?p=1029"},"modified":"2025-02-08T19:05:31","modified_gmt":"2025-02-09T01:05:31","slug":"kreutzer-family-in-missouri-gives-5-year-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianorphanfund.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/04\/kreutzer-family-in-missouri-gives-5-year-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Kreutzer family in Missouri gives 5-year update"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We are about 5 years overdue for sharing an update of our precious daughter, Hannah, whom we adopted from India with the financial assistance and prayer support of Christian Orphan Fund. Hannah came home December 23, 2019, after a whirlwind trip (complete with a nearby earthquake and civil unrest!) in New Delhi. God\u2019s sovereignty allowed Hannah to come home just before the world shut down with Covid, a time that, while uncertain and painful for all, was exactly what Hannah and our family needed for bonding and attachment. The first weeks were challenging, but Hannah quickly became a secure, confident, joyful, perfect puzzle piece to our family.

Today, we are just enjoying the gift of watching her flourish and live her best (newly) 7 year old life. She\u2019s so amazing, and we were recently reflecting on her adoption and how GRACIOUS God has been to bring her into our family (we are so blessed by her) and help her thrive in so many different ways.

She is in first grade, yet excelling and doing 2nd grade math and science, reading well beyond her grade level, loves building castles for dinosaurs with magnet tiles and being the best friend of everyone in her homeschool co-op and Sunday school classes. She is so perceptive and knows what\u2019s going on with each friend, cares about who is sick at home, and celebrates the joys of her buddies. Truly a tender heart.

Last year, she was asked to be a Patient Ambassador for Shriner\u2019s Children\u2019s Hospital, where she received ortho surgeries in 2020 and prostheses, and has since been filmed for 2 national commercials, a local commercial, and many digital ad spots and articles. You might see her in ads! She\u2019s been featured on TV segments locally about her ortho and prosthetics journey and even threw out the first pitch at a St. Louis Cardinals game! She has also been the cover girl for the international Shriner\u2019s Children\u2019s magazine! Despite all the attention, she is still very humble. The big siblings cheer her on and don\u2019t feel *too* jealous. They also get some perks that come with being the siblings of a local \u201ccelebrity.\u201d

Hannah blows everyone away with her boundless energy and abilities. She does gymnastics, swims for our swim team, and trampolines and cartwheels all day long. She loves to sing (often to herself when she is playing or thinks no one is listening, which is just so, so, SO sweet), and is the BEST big sister to her little brother, Thomas. She loves to be a big helper around the house and comes to the rescue when her baby brother is upset.

She loves to pray and sing to Jesus, which is just the most wonderful thing to see and hear. While other siblings request podcasts or pop music in car rides, she always asks for “Jesus music.” She also takes pride in learning more about India, trying Indian food and exploring the culture more. Her birthday was last Friday, and she wanted butter chicken and naan for her special birthday dinner. Big sis Eden did a report on India last year for school, and everyone gets so excited about anything we encounter that is from India.

We’ve been blessed to see another facet of God’s purpose for Hannah both here in our family and in our city, but also through the adversity of having a “disability” – which is hard to even attribute to her because she can do everything she wants to do, despite having a smaller, amputated leg with a prosthetic. This past Christmas, Hannah was delivering some treats to our team at Shriner’s, and it so happened, through God’s providence, that there was a little girl from South America, who came to Shriner\u2019s St. Louis with her parents for surgery. They were shocked to learn that the best treatment course would be an amputation and subsequent prosthesis. The little girl expressed that hoped to one day be able to dance and run. The day we were there was the day after this life-changing surgery, and Hannah was asked if she’d like to say hi to this patient and show off her awesome rainbow stripe prosthetic leg, which would be similar to what this patient would receive. A bit apprehensive, and without pushing, Hannah agreed to say hi. What a beautiful moment we were able to witness, where Hannah was able to provide hope to this sweet 8 year old girl and her parents that while this time felt so scary and uncertain, a few months of healing will pass and our friend will be walking, running, and dancing again, just like Hannah. We were able to answer some practical questions and give glory to God for bringing both little girls there to receive care and inspire one another. The car ride home was so full of praise to the Lord for providing this family hope and much-needed medical care and for enabling Hannah to share how He redeemed hard things like syndromes, amputations, and adoption, to bring hope to others and glory to God.

All that to say, Hannah is doing unimaginably well. She is a gift and a joy, spilling over with love, and it\u2019s amazing to watch her grow into an extraordinary little girl. Her identity is not an adoptee or amputee, but a treasured member of our family and daughter of God. We are so grateful for everything she teaches our family and how her story shows God\u2019s provision, faithfulness, and truly miraculous nature through countless testimonies, both in large ways and tiny details. We love when people want to discuss adoption, sometimes even giving our number to inquisitive strangers at the store in the hopes they, too, will pursue adoption! We encourage, encourage, encourage adoption and are open books about our story, knowing that for so many, the idea of adoption sounds both incredible and impossible. God made the way for us, and He often uses the generosity of others, largely through organizations like COF, to do it. We still pray for her orphanage in Delhi each night, both as gratitude for how well she was protected and cared for before we could bring her home, and for the children there, that they may be given warm families and opportunities to thrive as Hannah does.

Our thanks will never be enough, our words will never be complete, to express anppreciation for what COF has done to help bring Hannah into our family. Through you, God has done a mighty work, and it is incredible to see how Hannah\u2019s story unfolds with each year and each achievement or milestone. We hope you have been encouraged by Hannah’s update and know that a day does not go by that we are not tremendously grateful for the aid and support of COF, even 5 years after bringing her home.

Because of Christ,
Matt and Deanne Kreutzer

P.S. Here is a link to one of her commercials and (more than) a few photos of our gorgeous girl!
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We are about 5 years overdue for sharing an update of our precious daughter, Hannah, whom we adopted from India with the financial assistance and prayer support of Christian Orphan Fund. Hannah came home December 23, 2019, after a whirlwind trip (complete with a nearby earthquake and civil unrest!) in New Delhi. God\u2019s sovereignty allowed […]\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1035,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-updates"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/christianorphanfund.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/IMG_5042.heic","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianorphanfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianorphanfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianorphanfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianorphanfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianorphanfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1029"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/christianorphanfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1037,"href":"https:\/\/christianorphanfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029\/revisions\/1037"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianorphanfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianorphanfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianorphanfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianorphanfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}