On a cold, snowy January day in Columbus, Nebraska, 5-year-old Ernest Hausmann stepped onto U.S. soil for the very first time.
He had just left Uganda for a better life in the United States. His arrival in America marked the end of a long and challenging adoption process, capped by a 20-plus-hour flight. It was a journey filled with uncertainty and fear, but Hausmann put in an extraordinary amount of effort to reach this moment to not just change his life, but to one day change the lives of those he loved the most back home.
Even at such a young age, Hausmann had a rare sense of perspective.