Back to School

...Baby School, that is!  We got a call this afternoon.  We have the government's approval.  We have approval from the director of the orphanage.  We have the okay to continue our training to learn how to take care of her.  In other words, tomorrow we get to go back to holding her and feeding her and playing with her.  Prayerfully tomorrow is the first day of a string of days, and weeks, and months, and years of caring for our little bundle of joy. 

Thank you for continuing to pray.  We know God is orchestrating all of this.  He is hearing and answering our prayers...yours and ours.  From the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU!

Red Tape

We’ve come to understand that getting government approval is standard protocol for any foreigners wanting to enter the orphanage.  It was somehow overlooked or forgotten before they told us we could start the seven days of training.  For normal volunteers, it takes about a week to get this government approval.  We’re not sure if that’s what we need or if we need something extra because we want to foster.  Thankfully, we don’t have to run around town with papers to get this approval, the orphanage workers are doing that for us.  We just get to sit and wait for a phone call.  So, please continue to pray that appropriate government officials give our paperwork the proper red stamps quickly so that we can get back to what Mark has dubbed “baby school.” 

Yesterday purple curtains were hung and today we bought formula.  We continue to trust He wants this little girl in our care.

 (These were taken at night, so this is not the true color.  It's more purple.  And doesn't my shadow look funny?  Oh well.)

A Mommy's Patience

No calls today telling us we can continue.  I'm praying we get a call tomorrow saying we can come back Saturday.  We'll see.  Meanwhile, we're getting a room ready. 

here are my thoughts about the decision:

We keep describing how I’m feeling about this as being on “cloud nine”.  I’m not sure where the expression comes from, so let me give you a few more adjectives…overjoyed, ecstatic, like I could jump up and down and break down in tears at any moment.  Emotionally, I’ve been attached since I first heard about her, and then a few days later, we met her!  Mark warned me that maybe that wouldn’t be best.  I felt like my heart would be okay…I was wrong.  Separating my mind, my logical thinking, from my emotions has been the most difficult part of this decision making process.  She’s beautiful.  She’s four months old.  She can come into our care so quickly.  Her special needs are within the realm of what we said we were willing to accept.  All of these things caused my heart to say, “yes” rather early.  However, while I knew that hearing from doctors and making a wise decision was important, saying no to this opportunity would have been rather crushing.  So, while we had heard from one doctor to be very cautious and were still waiting to hear from a few specialists, we contacted an American doctor on the west coast.  I sent him an email at 2pm my time.  By 4:30pm he had replied with a very thorough and favorable report.  The bottom line of his recommendation was that her medical conditions are not ones to be overly concerned about and that with good nutrition and a loving and stable and stimulating environment, she will likely do just fine.  I was thrilled, but still needed to wait on my husband and make sure that he was convinced that we had enough information to say “yes” and move forward.  It took about 24 more hours for that to happen.  (It might have been less, but he was in another city and he had limited time that week.)  

 

I was actually in the orphanage turning in some paperwork when Mark called to say that we could move forward.  That afternoon I was able to sit with her outside, feed her another bottle, and she fell asleep in my arms for the first time.  I cried as I told her that I’d been waiting for her for a very long time. 

Still riding the coaster

We showed up about nine this morning and she was wide awake.  She wasn’t as smiley today as previous times we’ve seen her—she has a cold!  She was really congested all day and her breathing was a bit labored.  Please pray for a quick recovery.  We held her almost all morning and helped with some other babies too.  We copied down her typical schedule for a day.  Overall it was a great morning.  My favorite part was when she had fallen asleep in my arms and Mark said, “Oh she looks like an angel.”  

However, at about 5:30 this evening, the director of foster care called us and said that we shouldn’t come back for a few days.  Before we can continue they need to take our paperwork to the government and get permission from them.  Our hearts are having a hard time with these ups and downs.  Do we get excited?  Do we remain cautious?  What will happen next?

I’m not sure if we explained clearly that we are the first foreigners to get involved in foster care in our city.  It’s not been done here before.  We are the guinea pigs.  We are the ones paving the road.  So, we are doing this, not only for our little one…although that would absolutely be worth it.  We are also doing this so that more babies can have one mother and one father caring for them in a home instead of seven babies being cared for by one worker. 

Please pray.  Pray that tomorrow the right permission would come from the right people and that we can continue our training on Friday.  Pray that the director of foster care and the director of the orphanage will advocate for us with the government officials.  Pray that this is one small blip in the road to bringing her home and making her a Fertig.  Thank you for continuing on this journey with us.

The Heart of a Daddy

Things are happening at lightning speed and it’s fun and crazy and overwhelming.  There are several procedures we’ve had to do to be able to foster her.  One is a home visit.  That happened today—our home passed inspection!  Another is a training period in the orphanage to learn how to care for her.   That starts tomorrow!  We will arrive in the morning and spend most of the day with her, learning how to feed her, change her diaper, bathe her, etc.  The director of foster care has said that we need to do seven days of this training and then we can bring her home.  I asked, “if we can do these things properly before seven days, can it possibly be less time?”  She said, yes, but there’s a test we have to pass at the end.  If we don’t pass we’ll have to keep coming until we can.  At least she hasn’t said that if we don’t pass the first time, we can’t bring her home. 

Because there’s so much to share right now, we’ve decided to try to post each night.  If you want to keep up, keep checking our blog.  Tonight we’ll share Mark’s thoughts on how we came to the decision to foster this little girl.  Tomorrow night we’ll share mine.

 

For me (Mark), it was a hard process.  I often need all the details and time to make good decisions.  This time, it seemed there was extra pressure, as Erika was on “Cloud Nine” and I needed to be the voice of caution and reason.  I did, however, often find my mind and heart wandering to the mental pictures I had taken of this little girl.  Holding her and looking in her eyes.  Watching her smile at me.  Knowing she had had a very rough life at only four months of age.  There were times when I wept just thinking about her biological family and the decisions they had to make.  When she came in to the orphanage, she had severe pneumonia.  She was in septic shock, had heart and respiratory failure and had been left in the snow for an unknown amount of time.  What I saw in her was the strength of a Fertig… a fighter, someone who will not give up in adversity.  I also related with her in some of her illness.  Born as a preemie, she has a heart condition.  I was born with a heart condition.  She was near death with pneumonia.  I spent a week or so in the ICU with spinal meningitis with my parents not knowing if I would survive or what kind of damage would be done to my body or brain.  I couldn’t get her out of my heart, out of my mind.  In the end, I could only answer with, “It is within God’s heart to adopt this little girl.  It is within His will to bring her home.”  The question was, “Is our home the best place for her?”  Would she get the care she needs in our city?  Would we be able to care for her better than someone else.  In the end, we made the decision that we would CHOOSE to be the parents she needs.  No matter what may come, I choose to be her father… to embrace the unknown, as any parent does.  I will shed the tears, go the extra mile, give my life, and go to the end of the earth that she might know she is no longer abandoned, unloved, unwanted, left.  She will be ours.  I will be hers.  In wisdom we see that her issues are minor and could possibly disappear altogether.  We can hope for that, but for now, whatever they may be, I will choose to meet these challenges in HIS strength, as HE knows best, trusting as HE leads.  There are not enough medical forms, tests or doctors visits that can help me know the future.  I truly can only depend on Him to be that kind of parent.