Mother establishes mission for orphaned children in memory of her adopted son
The shared experience of love and loss of the organization’s leaders now shapes efforts to provide children with medical treatments and permanent families.
After her adopted son died 19 days after heart surgery, a mother drew on her faith to found a nonprofit that provides medical care and adoption assistance to orphaned and abandoned children.
Founded by Lisa Murphy in 2016, the Christian organization Open Hearts for Orphans has helped more than 170 families adopt children with special needs from 27 countries, according to a report published by Atlantic Avenue Magazine.
Murphy shares the work with two other adoptive mothers who lost young daughters with heart conditions — Ann Bartlinski, the organization’s director of medical intervention, and Mary Sammons, its director of adoption programs.
“All three of us are mothers with children in heaven who had heart defects,” Murphy said in the report. “When I started Open Hearts for Orphans, the Lord called me to make this a collective of mothers who feel the importance of turning grief into something beautiful.”
Open Hearts for Orphans grew out of Murphy’s adoption of Daniel, a 2-year-old boy from China whose severe heart condition improved temporarily with medication, but he later died just days after open-heart surgery in 2010. The organization described Daniel as its “real founder.”
Bartlinski, who lost her daughter Teresa at age 6, helped launch an Open Hearts for Orphans project that refurbished a pediatric ward at a hospital in Uganda. The effort began after she encountered a gravely ill boy there in 2025 and arranged for him to receive care.
“Teresa’s memory inspires me every day to ensure vulnerable children receive the love, care and medical support they need and deserve,” Bartlinski said. “Through this work, her spirit lives on in the lives we touch.”
Sammons, a mother of seven whose family includes three adopted children, also lost her adopted daughter, Ivy Joy, at age 6.
“Being Ivy’s mom is a love that didn’t end, it just changed form,” Sammons said in the report. “Some days the grief drops me to my knees, but this work gives it somewhere to go. Turning pain into purpose doesn’t erase what I’ve lost, it honors it.”
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