Heartwarming footage captured the moment an adopted boy from Sierra Leone, who now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, was brought to tears when he caught a glimpse of his first-ever birthday cake.
A viral video posted to Jaimie Walker’s Facebook, showing her son Abraham receiving his cake, has garnered nearly 40,000 Facebook shares and some 56,000 interactions. The video shows the family singing Happy Birthday to Abraham as he is overcome with emotion, hiding his face in his hands as tears roll down his cheeks. When the cake is set in front of him, he runs over to his father and hugs him before blowing out his candles.
“What a gift He is. What a gift this moment was. Incredibly simple yet wholly significant,” she wrote in her Facebook post. “As it unfolded it dawned on me that Abraham would have no idea what ‘make a wish’ meant so we let him have a redo.”
While speaking with Queen City News, Abraham described the rich meaning he felt when he received his cake.
“We never knew about something called a birthday,” he explained. “It just feels like God is showing all the blessings in you. Everybody in the whole world is giving you their best love that they have ever given. That is what it feels like to have that cake.”
In October 2021, Joe Walker and Jamie adopted brothers Abraham and James after getting to know the boys, WCNC reported. It all began when Joe “took a trip down to Sierra Leone with his friend who started an orphanage there.” While at the orphanage, Joe met James, and the pair hit it off.
After Joe returned home, James kept up with the Walker family through monthly Skype sessions, but trouble struck in the months that followed when he was “forced out of the orphanage,” according to the outlet.
Joe purchased a cell phone for James so they could keep in contact, and after James returned to his village, Joe was introduced to his younger sibling Abraham, WCNC noted. Eventually, with the help of a team, he worked out a plan to get the boys into the orphanage, and after another trip to Africa to see the pair, Joe had an epiphany.
“And by then we had formed this really special connected bond,” Joe told WCNC. “And I came home from that trip and said to my wife, ‘I just feel like there’s more being asked of us.'”
When presented with the idea of adoption, their four children were instantly on board with having James and Abraham as their two new siblings and the brothers from Sierra Leone were eager to join the Walker Family, WCNC noted. The siblings made it to their new home last fall after a delay in the adoption process due to the coronavirus pandemic and restrictions that followed.
“I love them more than they can ever imagine in the world,” Abraham told Queen City News of his family.
“They’re the ones that showed me to the world, and showed me what happiness is, and showed me what love is, and showed me what it means to have a family around you,” he continued. “I really, really want to say thank you to them for that.”