magine a home with a kitchen table so large, there is always room for one more - and a family with hearts big enough to match, a family who believes all children are God’s blessings.

Theirs is a Christmas story for the season, filled with love, faith and the family values learned in church and on the farm where they work and live in Fremont.

Even in the most casual conversation, they talk about giving God the glory for everything in their lives, and celebrating the birth of Christ by being faithful.

But in this house, those who dwell within do more than talk.

Kent and Kim Karnemaat live out their faith, a husband and wife who had no idea what their journey would be when they were married 25 years ago at the tender ages of 18 and 20.

“God’s plans for our lives were way bigger than our own,” Kim Karnemaat admits.

She and her husband met when they were in junior high school and fell in love, right then and there, sweethearts always.

“I don’t know how you know, but you do,” Kent Karnemaat says. “I always knew I was lucky to get her.”

He was a farm kid, working with his dad at Karnemaat Farms, a modest family vegetable operation at the time, outside of Fremont when he and Kim got married and started their lives together. In hindsight, they remember talking about having a family. They both wanted one, that went without question, but they never talked numbers.

How many kids was never an issue.

Nine children later, it still isn’t.

In the Karnemaat family, there are five biological children, all sons — Nate, 21; Trent, 19; Spencer, 10; Justin, 8; and Will, 4. And there are four adopted children, each one purposely chosen: Gillian, 13, and Hope, 11, both adopted from Guatemala; Victoria, 5, who comes with a special story in a family of special circumstances; and Isaiah, 4, adopted from Korea.

“Each child has come because of a prompting,” Kim Karnemaat says. “God was moving us.”

Still, she says, there is “no way” that either she or her husband could have envisioned such a family to come - a big, beautiful, blended family of adopted and biological children, a rainbow of cultures, and such a collection of personalities.

“This is way more than I deserve,” Kim Karnemaat says. “I get to live with them.”

She not only lives with them, farms with them and goes to church with them. Kim Karnemaat also home schools the whole lot of them. Only Nate - who is married with a baby of his own with another on the way - has had a taste of public school education. He went to kindergarten in Fremont before his mom decided to teach him at home.

Today, Nate works full-time on the farm, the third generation of Karnemaats. Trent, who is studying business management at Grace Bible College in Wyoming, plans on joining the family business, as well.

Kent and Kim Karnemaat started talking about the possibility of adoption a few years after those two guys were born. The scientific truth is, they were having trouble conceiving. But they were also being called to action. There were children in the world who needed parents.

“Faith is a huge thing for us,” Kim Karnemaat says.

They were parents who like to say they weren’t “stuck” on just two babies at the table. So they looked into foreign adoption, fearful of some of the stories they were reading at the time about birth parents “taking back” children in domestic adoptions.

The first child they met was Gillian, a baby girl in Guatemala with whom they fell in love. It took four visits, but in 1999, they brought her home when she was little more than 9 months old. The next year, Hope came home to Fremont.

“People ask: How do you get that (paternal) connection when you adopt? I tell them it’s similar to when you give birth,” Kent Karnemaat says. “You fall in love when you meet them.”

That includes Nate and Trent, who went to Guatemala with their parents. The boys immediately claimed the girls as sisters, not strangers.

Still, answering God’s call to adopt meant some big decisions for the Karnemaat family.

“Multicultural adoption changes your family history forever,” Kim Karnemaat says.

When she looks at Gillian, Hope, Victoria and Isaiah, she sees her kids - but strangers, and even some friends, see children whose appearance is very different from the rest of the Karnemaats.

“Not very many people have nine kids from four different countries,” Nate says.

Until recently, the family has escaped the sting of others’ prejudice but just a week or so ago, something was said about one of the girls’ dark skin and eyes; something hurtful.

“It’s hard. I wasn’t ready for it,” Kim Karnemaat says. “But here is what I told them: God picked us to be who we are going to be.”

The incident prompted a heartfelt conversation within the family, and Kim Karnemaat asked the kids if they knew anyone in the family who was adopted or an orphan.

Will raised his hand and said yes. Mom asked whom. Will pointed at Spencer, who happens to be his biological brother, and the spitting image of him - and his dad who stands 6 feet 6 inches tall.

“I’m pretty sure that’s why God has told us to have faith like a child,” Kim Karnemaat says.

Five years ago, the Karnemaats were on vacation - at the time, there were only six kids in the family - when they got a call from home that changed their lives. One of the seasonal workers at the farm was unwed and pregnant. She didn’t work for Kent Karnemaat, but she knew about his family, and she asked them to adopt her baby.

That’s how Victoria came to be a Karnemaat.

“When God brings that type of invitation, how can you say no?” Kent Karnemaat says.

The family didn’t say no to Isaiah, either, the little guy from Korea whom they adopted a year ago. His story called to their hearts, even though Kent Karnemaat remembers days when all he did was pray; all he did was ask God for guidance.

“As the dad, I was filled with what-ifs?” he says.

Isaiah has Fanconi’s anemia, a relatively rare genetic disease that stunts his growth and causes physical disabilities. He faces surgeries and medical treatment for the rest of his life.

“I worried how we could do it,” Kent Karnemaat says.

But the family farm has “prospered,” he says, “and its prosperity has been so I could take care of this family.” He, his father and brother now farm 2,800 acres. They hold a share in Michigan Freeze Pack, a business in Hart, and recently added a hog “finishing” business on the premises. The farm employs 18 full-time workers and 300 seasonal workers.

“To whom much is given, much is expected,” Kent Karnemaat says.

He has a philosopher’s heart, a father and husband’s strong sense of responsibility. In 1995, Kent Karnemaat lost his left ring finger in a gruesome farm accident. For eight days, he was confined to the hospital while doctors tried - unsuccessfully - to reattach the finger. During his hospital stay, Kent Karnemaat says he thought about his life and decided “I wasn’t taking care of Kim and the kids the way I wanted to.”

His missing finger is “a visual reminder” of the promise he made to God, Kim and himself.

“It is a privilege just to live this day,” he says. “Every breath we take is a gift.”

Steve DeHaan, the family’s pastor at Grace Community Church in Fremont, says he “doesn’t have the words” to describe the Karnemaats, except to say they “extend God’s love to others.”

“It is a joy to see how they demonstrate that love,” DeHaan says.

Theirs is an unceasing calendar of activities, a commitment to fulfill each child’s interests and personalities.

“Gillian deserves to ride horses just as much as Trent deserves to play basketball, and Hope deserves her music,” Kent Karnemaat says.

Wherever they go, people ask the Karnemaats if they’re “done adopting,” he says. Because they never talked numbers, not even as newlyweds, they do not know.

“We follow where God’s leading us,” Kim Karnemaat says. “Only he knows if there is another child.”