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TAMPA - Maybe it was divine intervention, maybe luck. Whichever, Carol Gomez thanks God every day for steering her to the lot for sale on Bay Vista Avenue in Bayshore Beautiful.

She and her husband, Jerry, had toddler triplets and a great hope that Jerry's cancer was gone for good. They were ready to move on with their lives: build a bigger house with a big yard for their growing children. When they found the generous slice of land with a pond and protective old oaks, Carol knew it would be home.

As she and Jerry explored the property, a slender blonde came hurrying over from the house across the street.

"Are you moving here?" she asked, her smile a big welcome.

Carol and Deborah McFadden, also a mother of three, bonded over morning "coffee talks" whenever they could find a precious few minutes. Deborah, a nurse, was staying home to raise her children. Her husband, Doug, a physician specializing in internal medicine, was quieter than his wife but just as friendly. Carol and Jerry were glad to have found such nice neighbors. Too soon, they discovered just how nice.

A few months after moving to Bay Vista, Jerry learned his cancer had returned. The 47-year-old financial planner faced debilitating treatments of chemotherapy, radiation and, eventually, a bone marrow transplant in his battle against non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

The fight was almost as exhausting for Carol, who worked in advertising sales. Sometimes she was too tired to cook; the McFaddens showed up with complete homemade meals. When she had to be at the hospital with Jerry, the McFaddens took in her triplets, sometimes on a moment's notice. If Doug went camping with his children or off to play tennis, he brought the Gomez children along, too.

During Jerry's hospital stays, Deborah and Doug visited regularly. When Jerry was sent to Seattle for six months for the transplant, the couple gave each other an unusual 10th anniversary present: a trip to Washington to help cheer their friend.

Jerry died April 1. The day before, Deborah and Carol flanked him as he lay unconscious at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center. They held his hands and prayed. Tearfully, they told him it was OK to let go.

"I know what this village concept is all about now," Carol says. "I couldn't have made it through without them. How could I ever find the words to thank them for what they did for us?"

A Lifestyle Choice
Giving is just what the McFaddens do. Call it a lifestyle choice.

For a year, Deborah took her children - now there are four - to Wimauma once a week to deliver donated food and package it for distribution at Good Samaritan Mission for migrant farmworkers.

Luke, 10; Rebekah, 8; Micah, 6; and Sean-David, 4, also are regular visitors to a local nursing home, where they chat with residents and entertain them with piano recitals.

"They don't have any children," Micah says. "So we shake their hands and sing to them. I like it when they smile."

Although Deborah can afford to shop at any store in town, she's most likely to be found at the Salvation Army thrift store, where buying helps others.

"We want our children to have imprinted on their hearts and minds a love for God and a love for all people of the world," she says. "I want them to know they're part of a bigger picture, and that we've all got responsibilities to make this a better place."

She's a stickler for manners, gently correcting the children when they forget to say "ma'am" or "thank you" to visitors. When the family gathers for dinner, complaints are not on the menu. She encourages each child to share at least one positive thing from the day.

The eldest, Luke, is already showing signs of preteen independence. He talks of going into the Marines or the Air Force one day so he can "join the men and women who fight to protect this country." His mother is torn. She and Doug taught him the values that could take their son away from them.

"How about the Coast Guard, Luke?" she suggests hopefully. "You could rescue boaters out on Tampa Bay."

Luke smiles.

Love of country isn't the only thing he has learned from mom and dad, he says. The one that resonates most is loving his brothers and sister.

"You should always stick with them. You will never lose them," he says. "They'll be your best friends for life."

'A Match Made In Heaven'
Deborah and Doug grew up strictly middle-class. He was raised in south Seminole Heights, one of two sons of a Tampa Electric Co. worker and a nurse. The family attended church, but Doug never considered himself a heartfelt Christian until he got involved with a campus ministry at the University of Florida.

Deborah and her brother also had a nurse for a mom. Their dad taught math and physics at the high school in El Dorado, Ark., where Deborah was voted "Valentine's sweetheart" in her senior year. Family life was expertly stitched together with strong, Bible-based values.

Deborah eventually moved to Tampa, where her grandparents lived, to pursue a master's in public health at the University of South Florida. She was working in the office of cardiologist Eric Harrison when she met Doug. He was in his last year of medical school at Columbia University in New York and had come home for a one-month internship.

Deborah wasn't interested.

Med students were arrogant, often buried in their studies, or too focused on making a lot of money. Deborah was the girl who had spent a year in middle school wearing Amish bonnets and longish dresses because she liked the style.

She wanted a man who shared her need for simplicity, devotion to faith and sense of community.

Harrison knew them both, and he wasn't surprised when they fell in love.

"Doug is empathetic, caring and genuine. He's respected immensely by his peers and his patients. In short, he's just the kind of person you would want to be your own doctor," Harrison says. "They complement each other in so many ways. It really was a match made in heaven."

The two married 11 years ago, paid off their hefty combined education debt and bought a four-bedroom house for $210,000. They had no need to trade up as their family grew, no desire for more - at least, more of the things money buys.

"How much stuff do you need really?" Deborah says.

Today, their children each will receive three gifts. Deborah, 40, thinks that's a nice number. It reminds her of the Three Wise Men, who followed the Star of Bethlehem to bring gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby Messiah.

Rebekah will be looking under the tree for an electric guitar. She and her brothers, along with some neighborhood kids, put together a band called Golden Cross. They've even built a 4-foot cross as a stage prop. She says the plan is to write and play "good music, not the bad stuff."

That kind of present suits Deborah. She prefers board games such as Monopoly or a musical instrument, maybe art supplies. No iPods, cell phones or video games. In a society of increasingly isolated children, she looks for ways to keep her four creatively engaged - even if it means refereeing hammer-sharing between backyard builders Rebekah, Micah and Sean-David.

"I'll take away the hammer, Rebekah, if you don't let your brother have a turn," Deborah warns as her children troop in and out of the family room from the backyard to tattle.

She sighs.

"This is why people put their kids in front of the TV."

A little denial and a lot of hands-on parenting seem to go a long way.

"They're the most joyous family I know," says Steve Hill, an administrative assistant at Bayshore Christian School, where the three oldest attend. He sees Deborah every day when she makes the two-block walk from her home with Sean-David and Hunter, the family's gregarious golden retriever, to pick up the children.

"Even the dog looks happy. They just make me smile when I see them all together."

In his work and at church - Hill and the McFaddens attend Davis Islands Baptist - Hill says he meets plenty of people who live out their faith, more or less. But the McFaddens stand out as a family "who really gets it."

"It just seems to come natural," he says. "It comes across in everything they do. Their faith is part of their everyday lives."

A Family On A Mission
In 2001, Doug traveled to Guatemala to provide sorely needed health care in an impoverished village. Since then, he has taken leave from his job at Bay Area Hospitalists five more times to go on short-term missions to South and Central American countries. Deb joined him on three of those trips as his nurse.

Unlike most volunteers, who seek donations to pay for their trips, the McFaddens pay their own expenses. Conditions can be primitive and obstacles heartbreaking, such as the time when government officials in Bolivia confiscated $100,000 worth of donated medicines. Sometimes, all the volunteers can offer are prayer and human touch.

"We're called to pray and expect miracles," says Doug, who loves being a physician but finds the work even more gratifying when he can openly share his faith.

Still, even prayer doesn't save patients who might have survived with a routine procedure in Tampa. Some children never make it past infancy because they can't get basic medical care or enough to eat.

These are times he has to call upon his own faith and accept that "God has reasons for everything." It's what he had to tell himself when Jerry died.

In October, the whole family took a weeklong trip to Nicaragua, where they visited projects run by Orlando-based Missionary Ventures. Doug and Deborah want their kids exposed to other cultures and to the realities of poverty.

"It's so easy to get caught up in all the material excesses of life," Doug says. "Going on these trips brings me back to what's really important. That's something I want my children to understand, too."

It seems to be working. Rebekah can't stop thinking about the people she met in Nicaragua. She remembers three sisters living in a one-room shack half the size of her family's dining room.

"The good thing is, they had beds," she says. "But they didn't have mattresses."

She says it makes her more grateful for all the blessings she has. "If you have food in front of you, you shouldn't say you don't like it or won't eat it, because some people have nothing."

Jerry Gomez used to tell his wife: Promise me that if anything happens, you'll never leave this neighborhood. The McFaddens are your angels. I won't worry about you and the kids if I know they're nearby.

Carol Gomez says she's not budging. When she looks across the street, she can see a light on in the McFaddens' living room. She can't explain why, but it gives her a sense of comfort.

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