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Most of us have thought about how we might answer the question, "After you die, how do you want to be remembered?"

Tom Davis already knows his answer.

"I want to be remembered as a committed husband and father, and as a man who was an advocate for the fatherless—who did something to help the poorest of the poor."

Davis says he doesn't want to merely "stand before God with my accomplishments," and hopes that when he meets Jesus face to face, he won't feel tempted to list the five books he's written, the 10 years he spent as a youth pastor, or even his current position as president of Children's HopeChest, an international orphan-care organization.

"I want to know there were orphans whose lives were transformed because I did something tangible to show them the father-heart of God."

Davis's own transformation began in 1997, when he and his wife, Emily, took 30 kids from their Texas youth group to Vladimir, Russia, where they hosted a camp for 150 orphans. "For the first time, I saw what God's broken heart for the poor looked like. There were all these beautiful kids who God loved, but who had no chance for survival outside of someone helping them."

Tom and Emily asked each other, "What can we do?" They wanted to "throw all those little girls into a suitcase and bring them home." But they sensed God calling them to make a difference in the life of one 10-year-old named Anya. "We couldn't bear to think of her as a statistic—as one of the 70 percent of girls who would leave that orphanage and become a prostitute."

The following year, Tom and Emily adopted Anya. When Tom returned to the orphanage to tell Anya her adoption had been approved, two other girls ran to him, grabbed his leg, gazed up at him with pleading eyes, and said, "Papa, Papa."

"It broke my heart," Davis recalls. "I could tell those girls were thinking, He adopted Anya. If he knows we want a family, maybe he'll adopt us, too."

Tom might have adopted those two little girls if he hadn't had another orphaned child waiting for him back home—Emily's younger sister, Hannah Chynoweth. When Emily and Hannah were 13 and 6, their father was murdered by members of a religious cult to which he belonged. Nine months later, their mother committed suicide. Emily, Hannah, and their four other siblings came under the guardianship of a family from their church.

After Emily and Tom married, Hannah, then 15, asked to move in with them. "My sister and I had a strong relationship, and she understood my trauma and emotional needs," says Hannah, now 25 and out on her own. "Tom didn't have any obligation to me, but he willingly took me in like I was part of his own family. It was very healing for me."

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