Family Bears Mother Teresa’s Special Touch A Few Words From Revered Nun Dissolved Red Tape In Adoption Bid

A Richland family lives each day with a legacy of the good works of Mother Teresa.

Four of Jim and Anne Griggs’ dark-haired little girls once lived in an orphanage run by Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity.

Mother Teresa intervened two years ago to allow the older girls - Joyce, 8, and Agnes, 6 - to come to the United States.

Friday was a day of tears and prayers in the Griggs household following word that the 87-year-old Roman Catholic nun had died of a heart attack.

Agnes carries the nun’s birth name. A drawing of Mother Teresa in the traditional blue-edged white sari of her order hangs over the family’s kitchen table. Each year, on Aug. 27, the girls celebrate her birthday as if she were one of the family.

Others mourners around the state ranged from clergy to student volunteer anti-poverty workers.

A bell tolled Friday at St. James Cathedral in Seattle. Masses included tributes to Mother Teresa and a special memorial Mass was set for Thursday evening.

“Mother Teresa of Calcutta was a selfless servant of the poor and a humble ambassador for Christ,” said the Very Rev. George Thomas, administrator of the Archdiocese of Seattle. “I believe that her legacy will last forever.”

The Rev. Fulton Buntain, pastor of Life Center First Assembly of God in Tacoma, said he met with her three times, most recently in 1995, while raising funds for the Mission of Mercy in Calcutta. The mission, which includes a school, feeding program and hospital, was run by Buntain’s brother, Mark, who died in 1989.

“She called my brother her son,” Buntain said.

Megan McArthur, 21, a Seattle University student, said she was inspired to devote her life to helping others by meeting Mother Teresa while working as a volunteer at an orphanage the nun founded in Calcutta.

“Being a spiritual person, it meant a lot to me to meet such a role model,” McArthur said.

The Griggses wanted to adopt children when they were newly married and living in Vienna, Austria.

Austrian officials were reluctant to work with an American couple. American adoption agencies were reluctant to work with a couple living overseas.

They turned to the Catholic Church and were referred to nuns of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, who were feeding the poor in a Vienna soup kitchen.

The nuns sent information about the Griggses to India, and they got a call from Sister Joyce, who manages an adoption agency for the order.

“How many children would you like?” she asked.

On Christmas day 1993, the Griggses brought home 5-month-old twins Hanna and Helene.

After the family returned to the United States in late 1994, the Griggses asked the Missionaries of Charity if they could adopt more children. In November 1995, Anne and her father traveled to Delhi to pick up Joyce and Agnes, while Jim stayed home with the twins.

But the U.S. Embassy in India entangled the girls’ visas in red tape.

One evening as Anne returned to the orphanage, she saw Mother Teresa. The nun told Anne she would have no more trouble with the visas.

Mother Teresa had been to the U.S. embassy that day to speak, but told officials she would not talk if they did not release the visas.

“It was incredible,” Anne said. “She was so small and so frail. With all she had given us, I just wanted to hug her.”

“Thank you for taking these children,” Anne remembers Mother Teresa telling her.