“This was more than a movie about adoption,” said Pergrem, 30, a 2000 Middletown Christian graduate. “It has a higher purpose.”
So he interviewed the Carlisle couple numerous times during a 10-month period and made a 90-minute documentary, “The Almond Tree.” It debuted Friday night at Berachah Baptist Church in Middletown where Pergrem and the Engles are members and the Rev. Lamar Ferrell — one of the central characters in the adoption process — is pastor.
“This is a story that is beyond a local story,” Ferrell said. “This story has to be told. With our world today, when people try to extinguish life, there are incredible stories out there.”
Danny, a 1998 Carlisle High School graduate, and Leslie, a 2000 Franklin graduate, dated throughout high school and married in 2003.
Next up: Parenthood.
But after numerous failed pregnancy attempts and eight surgeries, the Engles were told she couldn’t conceive. The numbing news ripped their relationship.
“We can’t even complete a family,” said Danny Engle, sales manager at Walker Toyota in Miami Twp.
Their lives changed forever in late 2010 when Pat Evans, a member of Berachah, performed her jail ministry in Warren County and met an inmate who said she wanted to give up her baby for adoption to a Christian family. She said the baby’s biological father wanted the baby aborted.
Evans asked Ferrell if he knew a couple looking to adopt. He called the Engles, a “shot in the dark,” he said.
“It wasn’t like I was calling to see if they wanted to go to the movies,” Ferrell said with a laugh. “I said, ‘Do you guys know any couples that could be interested in pursuing this?’ God was working on their hearts at the same time.”
They were interested and they asked him to visit the incarcerated woman. During the conversation, Ferrell, separated by a glass wall, said it was “very clear” she wanted her baby raised in a Christian home.
“That was a powerful piece of it,” Ferrell said. “It was nothing short of miraculous.”
The baby boy was born on Jan. 12, 2011 at Bethesda North Hospital with Ferrell and the Engles in the delivery room. Seconds later, the woman handed her son over and said to him: “I love you but it’s time to go to your daddy.”
The baby is named Jeremiah Lamar Engle in honor of the Bible and Ferrell, the Godfather.
Pergrem said the movie shows that those who travel “broken roads, face dead end roads and hopeless scenarios, sometimes make miraculous turnarounds.”
After Friday’s debut, Danny Engle said he received about 40 phone and text messages from people who viewed the documentary. They told him it had “an incredible impact” on their lives in just a short time.
The documentary was recently given an official selection at the Appalachian Film Festival in Huntington, W.Va., Pergrem said.
Pergrem said his first documentary, filmed with a skeleton staff and a paper-thing budget, was easy because it “was telling itself and putting itself together.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.
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