LaVerne Matthew knew that instantly, as she tenderly folded a wide-eyed Liberian toddler into her arms Monday at Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

She had had her doubts as she spent the past six months tracking down Liberian adoption officials and trying to figure out where she and her husband, Joe, would find the $27,000 needed to adopt her deceased cousin's twin girls.

Take in two more children, now that they were nearly done raising their own four? They might have abandoned the idea, if an assortment of Cleveland-area residents hadn't become determined to be as generous to them as the Liberian-born couple have been to East Cleveland.

On Tuesday, the Matthews couldn't stop admiring their family's newest addition, little Decontee, dressed in pink with gold ear studs and thick lashes covering her big eyes.

They had no regrets - except that their second crib is still empty. The other twin, Yealey, was too ill to make the trip. An adoption worker told LaVerne that the girl is recovering from malaria and had a blood transfusion on Saturday. No date has been given for her arrival.

The Matthews are used to delays.

They spent months waiting for the adoptions to be completed, and were originally told both twins would arrive a week ago.

Finally, Liberian officials approved one toddler to fly to her new home. The Matthews and their two teen daughters picked her up Monday at O'Hare, stationing themselves inside the terminal for the first glimpse of Decontee.

"Ohhh," they collectively sighed as the escort family emerged from customs and handed over the pink bundle to LaVerne.

Quietly - too quietly - the little one allowed herself to be placed in her new mom's arms and stared at her new surroundings.

The Matthews buckled the listless toddler into her car seat and drove her straight to the Cleveland Clinic.

At 17 pounds, she's underweight but responding well to a day of intravenous feeding.

"She's got a real spunky attitude; she'll be fine," said LaVerne, who is 47. "These little African kids are tough." She has good reason to know: She came from Liberia at age 17.

The twins' mother, LaVerne's first cousin, died after giving birth to them on Feb. 3, 2006. Relatives in Liberia had sent news of them to LaVerne last year, and it wasn't good. The girls were battling malaria and malnutrition.

LaVerne's relatives there couldn't help much. They had turmoil of their own, living in a Third World country torn apart by civil war. Eventually LaVerne heard that the father of the twins, an illiterate farmer with two older children, planned to give them up for adoption so they could have a better life.

That clinched it. She didn't want the twins going to strangers. "I wanted them to know they were loved," she said. "I want these kids one day to be able to see their siblings."

When she asked her husband about taking them in, Joe didn't balk, even though it was a daunting idea. "That's how long it's been since I saw diapers," said Joe, 48, gesturing with a laugh at his youngest daughter, a leggy freshman at Villa Angela-St. Joseph High School. "We're starting all over again."

Bringing the twins to the United States, where they will have access to schools and health care unavailable in Liberia, was the right thing to do, said Joe, who immigrated here at age 26.

So the Matthews plunged into the adoption process and found the costs to be so staggeringly high that even now, the couple have no idea how they will pay for them. They spent their tax refund on adoption fees and borrowed thousands more. Joe, a computer programmer at Sherwin-Williams Co., started taking the rapid to work to save money after his car broke down.

"I didn't know how it would all come about," LaVerne said. "But I did know that we had to try." One weekend last fall they converted their college-age son's bedroom into a nursery, hauling in the crib that once belonged to him.

It needed a new mattress. They needed so much stuff, it seemed overwhelming.

That Monday, Matthew went to her job as a bookkeeper at Christ the King Catholic Church in East Cleveland and Lyndhurst resident Jessica Rini popped in with some donations. "Think anybody could use this?" she asked, pointing to a crib mattress in her car.

"How could you have possibly known we needed this?" Matthew remembers marveling.

Those serendipitous moments and countless unexpected gifts gave the couple the energy to keep pursuing the adoption. The local Liberian association and Joe's colleagues at Sherwin-Williams donated clothes and gift cards. Their daughters' friends offered prayers. Joe's teenage nephew, another Liberian refugee, pitched in $15; "I could have been that kid," nephew James Welwolie said soberly.

Word of the adoption continued to spread, reaching the ears of people who knew LaVerne because she coordinates the Christmas giving program at her church. Longtime donors started dropping off baby items.

"She's always helping everyone else out. It's a big change for her family to take on two new babies. I just wanted to help," said one Solon donor who bought the Matthews a double stroller and asked not to be named.

Now, the woman who provides Christmas to many East Cleveland residents has learned how it feels to be on the receiving end.

Touched by the outpouring, LaVerne is confident the toddlers will grow up and return the multitude of blessings they have received.

"Most people who are given to, they learn to give," she said Tuesday, tired but eager for Decontee to be released from the hospital so they could begin a new chapter as mom and daughter.