Welcome back to our family blog! I obviously have not been great at updating our blog in the past umm ...year and a half. That is sad! A lot has changed in that gap including our newest adventure.
God willing, we are adopting a daughter from China!
A few years ago, we were introduced to a local ministry that provides hope and guidance to orphans around the world. Forgotten Children Worldwide, https://www.forgottenchildren.org/ ,
opened our eyes to devastating issues around the world and God open doors of opportunity for me to get involved. My passion for orphans quickly grew but I was unsure if adoption was part of God's plan or serving in other ways was my future. I definitely felt a desire to adopt but Nick had no desire at all. In February 2012 I officially joined the FCW sponsorship team. AMAZING!!! God is doing glorious things and I get to help. Serving in this ministry did not fulfill my desire to help. Instead, it made my desire to adopt grow even stronger.
Adoption is not a new term in Nick's family. Our Bertsch family has been blessed by adoption twice in the past 5 years. I have a nephew from Ethiopia (home June 2008) and a niece from China (home December 2012). They are such blessings to our family and we all look forward to watching them blossom. They now have the opportunity to hear about Jesus and to have a loving family. God is so amazing and I am so thankful He has brought them into our lives. As these two children joined our family, we could ignore the devastating numbers of children just like Eli and Adalynn. I continued to pray for the Lord's direction.
Our official adoption journey began in January 2013. Adoption has been on my heart for many years but in January, God was speaking clearly to Nick that we should start the process. God told Nick to "just do the next thing" and He will take care of the details. We both like to have an exact plan for our adventures and have everything laid out. For this adventure we did not and that was petrifying and still is at times.
The financial stress of adoption is not secret to the community. We all know it is very expensive and that can seem like such a mountain to climb. We felt God leading us to have faith and trust in Him with the financial part. So with out a plan and without a large amount of cash saved up we decided to follow God's prompting and have FAITH.
With millions of orphans worldwide, it is hard to narrow down the field to specifics They all need to know Jesus and they all want to feel unconditional love. We were open to domestic and international adoption but through lots of prayer, God lead us to international adoption. It seemed that there were so many different countries to adopt from, we did not know where to start. A local orphan ministry, Loving Shepherd Ministries, https://loving-shepherd.org/ ,was able to guide us to the point of choosing a country and then deciding on an agency. The month of January was spent in deep prayer on the specific topic of adoption. In February 2013, we sent our application to Holt International that that was just the beginning of our adoption adventure.
Right away, we set up our first home study visit. On April 3rd was our first home study visit. We were very nervous and the kids were very excited. May 3 was second visit and we were excited to have both visits out of the way.
Our next step was to complete 12 credit hours of Hague training. We completed this by the end of May and it was another item checked off our list.
For the next couple of months we started collecting certain documents that would soon be use in our dossier. A dossier is every detail of our lives (birth certificates, marriage certificate, employment letters, passports, financial status, medical exams, police clearances, photographs) put into one large packet to be given to the Chinese government. As of now, our documents are all completed and are waiting to go to Indianapolis to be state certified.
Our home study was in our hands on July 24 2013. It was such a great feeling to finally have that done and ready to go. Our next step was the I-800A. The I-800A goes to the Department of Homeland Security for our immigration approval and our fingerprints. Our fingerprint appointment is today down in Indianapolis. We are also taking along the remaining documents that need to be state certified for our dossier. Those documents are being sent to the Chicago Consulate today for authentication. We will wait for another 30+ days to get our approved I-800A which is called the I-797. Our approval will then need to be state certified in Indy and then sent to Chicago to be authenticated. THEN....our documents are headed to China!!!! As of now, our projected travel time frame is March-August 2014. There is a lot to be done before then.
Since we are further along in our process, we are ready to start fundraising for our daughter. We have a couple smaller fundraisers planned and one large one scheduled for this fall. We are blessed to have family and friends willing and ready to help us raise money to bring our daughter home. I will post later this week on ways that you can support our adoption financially and in prayer.
This is a lot of paperwork and is very time consuming but our daughter is worth it. Our entire family is very excited to see what God brings out of this adventure. Could we ask you to pray for the millions of orphans that will never get the chance to know about Jesus and for the Mothers who have to make difficult choices for different reasons. Our daughter are all very excited but this is going to be very hard on them as they welcome a new sister into our family.We would love for you to join us in prayer as we continually seek God's direction is this long and difficult path.
