Skip to main content
Wednesday, November 11, 2026Nov 11

Tennessee family’s long adoption process has happy end

Cal Johnson embraces his daughter-in-law, Julie Johnson, and his new grandson, Daniel, as family and friends welcome them home at Nashville International Airport on Friday. After several years of effort, Julie and Roger Johnson of Franklin finally brought the adopted Daniel home from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
(Photo: Shelley Mays / The Tennessean)
Cal Johnson embraces his daughter-in-law, Julie Johnson, and his new grandson, Daniel, as family and friends welcome them home at Nashville International Airport on Friday. After several years of effort, Julie and Roger Johnson of Franklin finally brought the adopted Daniel home from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (Photo: Shelley Mays / The Tennessean) Cal Johnson embraces his daughter-in-law, Julie Johnson, and his new grandson, Daniel, as family and friends welcome them home at Nashville International Airport on Friday. After several years of effort, Julie and Roger Johnson of Franklin finally brought the adopted Daniel home from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (Photo: Shelley Mays / The Tennessean)

It took more than two years, a bureaucracy battle and international flights, but a little boy named Daniel JoJo finally made it to his new home country.

The 2-year-old boy, who was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is the adoptive son of Roger and Julie Johnson of Franklin. After much work and prayer, the couple touched down Friday evening at Nashville International Airport with Daniel, uniting their entire family for the first time.

“This is a really neat time because when you go through an adoption you struggle for years to get through all the process. It’s painful. It’s hard. It’s not predictable,” Roger Johnson said. “This period right here that we celebrate kind of marks the beginning of the rest of the story, which is really a story about what life is going to become for him and for us as a family.”

Read the full story from our news partner, The Tennessee, here.