Adopted Ethiopian Twins Reunite With Birth Parents After Completing Missions

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By Leah Haynes, Church News

In October 2022 general conference, Church President Russell M. Nelson made a promise to faithful Latter-day Saints: “In coming days, we will see the greatest manifestations of the Savior’s power that the world has ever seen. Between now and the time He returns with power and great glory, He will bestow countless privileges, blessings, and miracles upon the faithful.”

For a family in Mesa, Arizona, President Nelson’s promise was fulfilled, and a miracle occurred — in just the last few months.

And that miracle began long before President Nelson made his promise at the pulpit.

In a small town in Ethiopia in April 2004, a struggling mother gave birth to twin boys from an unexpected pregnancy. She became sick and was unable to provide for the newborn twins, along with the 2- and 4-year-old children she was already taking care of.

In an ultimate act of love, the mother placed the newborn twins for adoption. After the event, she prayed for a week, without eating or drinking, earnestly praying that her sons would find their way to a home that would raise them in love and would help them come to know God.

A year earlier, while reading in the June 2003 Ensign (now the Liahona) about humanitarian services in Ethiopia, Jamie Williams of Mesa, had an overwhelming impression that there was special work for her to do. Jamie and her husband, Tarik Williams, both felt inspired to adopt a child, even though they had their young hands full with two young daughters.

The process to qualify for an adoption and then be approved was lengthy, taking a total of 18 months from start to adopting the twins, named Jesse and Josh Williams. When the adoption process started, the boys had not even been born yet.

In November 2004, Tarik and Jamie finally received the email they had been waiting for: Confirmation that there were two young boys in Ethiopia waiting to be adopted. Two weeks later, the young couple flew to Ethiopia to pick up the twins, eight months after their birth.

A year after the twins had been brought to the United States, the adoption was finalized, and the family was sealed together for time and all eternity in the Mesa Arizona Temple.

Four more children were born into the family after the twins for a total of seven children.

When the twins were adopted, Jamie and Tarik were told that the boys’ parents had died and that the two had only one living relative, an older sister named Hamame.

“When we were kids, we always prayed to be nice, be kind, and for protection for Hamame,” said Josh Williams.

As the twins reached young adulthood, they both decided to serve full-time missions for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jesse was called to the Maryland Baltimore Mission, starting September 11, 2022, and Josh was called to the Ethiopia Addis Ababa Mission, beginning August 18, 2022, and returning to the nation he was born in.

Josh Williams immediately knew there was a possibility of meeting his sister, Hamame, or even other relatives while on his mission. “Prepare your heart and prepare your mind in the event of meeting your parents,” his father advised him. When he first arrived in Ethiopia, his mission president counseled him to wait until the end of his mission when he knew the language and the culture before he sought opportunities to find his family.

About a year later, a Facebook post looking for the twins found its way to Josh Williams, with a picture of him and his brother. The post, made by a woman named Teynish, who claimed to be family to the twins, stated that the boys had been “abducted” by their adoptive parents. Although Jamie and Tarik Williams were concerned for the well-being of their son at first, after some consideration, Josh Williams decided to reach out to the people who claimed to be his family and to meet in a local meetinghouse.

On September 8, 2023, Josh met his brother, cousin, uncle and cousin’s wife. The family had read about the twins since the day of their adoption through the post-placement reports, required reports from the adoptive parents that are to be sent to the remaining family of the adoptive children.

But as it turned out, the post-placement reports — which included pictures and a write-up of what the boys were doing each year – wasn’t just sent to the twins’ sister Hamame. Actually, they were being sent to a community of people every year who were all family of the boys. And while they received annual reports for the first decade of the twins’ lives, one day the agency unexpectedly shut down, and the family suddenly stopped receiving updates. For that reason, the family assumed something terribly wrong had happened.

Josh Williams quickly learned that he had several family members, all waiting eagerly to get to know him and his twin.

Four months later, on January 16, 2024, he was able to meet his biological father, Terefe Ashebo. When Terefe saw the name Jesus Christ on his new-found son’s missionary name tag, he was filled with gratitude that his sons had grown to know Christ.

“I don’t think I knew the definition of the word ‘surreal’ until I had that experience,” said Josh Williams.

Said his father, Tarik Williams, “I had always expected one day to meet their dad either here or in the next life. I want to be the kind of parent where we could look him in the eyes and tell him that we did our best to raise them to be men of God.”

Ashebo told Josh Williams that there were many more relatives that all wanted to meet him and his twin brother — two older siblings, Moltot and Hamame; as well as five younger siblings, Meskerem, Tenaye, Tariku and Kebenesh.

As much as Josh Williams wanted to reunite with his family, he felt it would be best to wait until he could meet everyone together with his brother, Jesse Williams. “The journey was done together, and I think that is what was most important to me, and that’s what makes it most special,” he said. “What makes a family a family is the people you endure trials with and you have experiences with that bring you up and lift you up and change you.”

Months later, on August 8, 2024, at the conclusion of Jesse Williams’ mission in Baltimore, he and his parents flew to Ethiopia to reunite with the twins’ birth family.

“If you consider the motions of a pendulum, that kind of describes it for me,” said Tarik Williams. “When my wife and I were in a meeting in Salt Lake and we started getting messages that our son Josh was going to meet with some people that there was no evidence who they were or where they came from or how they got his name or his picture, I thought he might even get kidnapped or held for ransom. … To go from that to seeing Josh’s reunion with his dad and see the emotion there and the gratitude was pretty incredible.”

The Williams drove several hours from the airport to Gimbichu, Ethiopia, to be greeted by dozens of family members, including the twins’ birth parents.

“The day we went out there we still didn’t fully know what to expect,” Tarik Williams said. “We knew that the parents and the siblings would be there, maybe a couple other people. To be rolling down a dirt road, eight to 10 hours from the capital in a country that’s in a civil war, and to have people flocking from all areas, riding in on their mopeds, honking and singing this celebration song that I had never heard and clapping and so forth was unbelievable.”

Dozens of people flocked outside the Williams’ car, all anxious to meet Josh and Jesse Williams. There was no power or water available, so the family members brought a generator in order to power a microphone. They also set up a large tent in order to hold a devotional-like meeting with the whole family and a choir.

“I think it’s proof of what is taught in the scriptures: ‘all things in their time and in their season,’” explained Jesse Williams. “God has set it up in such a way that this was the right time and season when we were meant to meet our family. I could feel the warm embrace from the Savior as we met and visited with them — an embrace both literal and figurative.”

For the Williams family, the whole experience was one of the “greatest manifestations of the Savior’s power that the world has ever seen,” just as President Nelson promised years earlier.

“It was the most miraculous, incredible experience of my life. It seemed that everything in our lives had led up to that moment,” said Jamie Williams.

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