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The Rostedt Family Love Story

Posted on February 17th, 2023 by

We have a deep love for orphan care and adoption and it is our desire to see every child in a family. We believe children belong in families, not in institutions, orphanages, or in the transitory life of foster care. When Jason and I first met, I was in the process of adopting our first daughter, Senlove who is from Haiti. Our love story is so unique in the fact that the Lord knew that not only did Senlove need a mother, she also needes a father, and the Lord provided. Being a witness to countless miracles in OUR adoption story fueled my faith as a believer and planted a seed of deep love for the fatherless. Since bringing Senlove home, Jason and I have been obedient in financial supporting an orphanage in Haiti and it is a joy to come along side them in prayer as well (GO-Haiti). The Lord has continued to abundantly bless us with 3 more healthy and beautiful children! We have always discussed adopting again, but we suspected it would happen much later. Perhaps when our youngest was along in elementary school. BUT God, His perfect will and perfect timing brought this desire of hearts much sooner. We weren't looking to necessarily adopt at this moment in time, but LOVE found us. It was through a waiting child photo listing that was emailed to me. Many adoption agencies advocate for waiting children through sharing photos and little but about the child. The moment I saw his face, I just knew instantly that he was ours. It was the same knowing that I had in my spirit, the first time I saw Senlove. Jason and I prayed for about 6 weeks before submitting our application to the Ministry of Justice in Bulgaria. We really just wanted the Lord's will. After a very long 2 month wait, we received the wonderful news that we had a provisional match with our desired child. This means we have 6 months to complete our homestudy and dossier and then we will, Lord willing, receive an official referral! Because he is a waiting child who has some special needs, the process should be much quicker than a traditional process. This is great news for him, as it means he will potentially be with his family, US, sooner! There are tremendous adoption costs, typically 30k-45k for the Bulgaria program. We are hoping to raise about 15k in donations to offset some of the financial burden. We would mostly ask that you join us in prayer as that is of far more value than money to us! Here's how you can pray:

1. Please pray for our sweet 5 year old Bulgarian. We have yet to meet him in person but please pray for him to have an understanding in his heart about what is to come. Please pray for his health, his rest, and his progress as there are some delays.

2. Please pray for our children. That they will have wisdom beyond their years to understand what is to come and how our whole family dynamic will be different when he arrives.

3. Please pray for our upcoming trip to Bulgaria. We are not sure when this will take place yet but it will be the first time we will leave our children. Please pray for my anxious heart and just for safe travel and for our children to remain safe and healthy while we are gone.

4. Please pray for all who are involved in our adoption process. Our adoption agency, our homestudy agency, our NGO in Bulgaria, the Bulgarian government, specifically the ministry of Justice, and of course ours, USCIS.

5. Please pray that this adoption glorifies the Lord, and that people who do not believe can see the very illustration of the gospel being modeled and that we can can be a light in the darkness and that more would come to Christ.

Waiting for our Snowflake Baby

Posted on February 3rd, 2023 by

Ty and I were married in 2015. This was Ty’s second marriage and my first. We knew that conceiving a child would be difficult as Ty has three adopted sons from his first marriage who at that time were 11, 10, and 8. However, I was still not without hope of being able to conceive and bear a child because after all, God bringing us together was a miracle, He could answer anything. It was not until a few years ago that I also learned that I was contributing to our infertility issues.

Each month would come and go without pregnancy. There were months that my hopes would rise and then be dashed. In the summer of 2017, there was a sermon series preached at church about superheroes. One of the messages that was given came from a man who he and his wife have fostered/adopted several children. That superhero message was about how foster and adoptive parents are superheroes to children who need loving families and how all of us were adopted into God’s family. During that message, I began feeling God stirring in my heart to consider the path of foster care or adoption. We discussed this option and even attended the small group at our church for foster and adoptive families. However, we were not in a place financially or personally to begin the process.

Once again this past year I felt God prompting me to investigate adoption again. After our discussions, we agreed to pursue the adoption process and not stand in the way of where God is calling us during this next season. After much discernment and investigation into different adoption platforms, we surprisingly landed on embryo adoption.

Ty & Heather are Adopting Snowflakes

Posted on January 31st, 2023 by

We are so excited that you have taken the time to consider donating to our embryo adoption journey. God stirred in my (Heather) heart the desire to adopt several years ago. We are finally in a place where adopting is a possibility. Finding the right agency to pursue adoption through brought many different road blocks, but we have found an agency that fit us perfectly. When we began the process of finding an agency neither of us were familiar with embryo adoption. Embryo adoption allows for the adoptive mom to carry and give birth to their genetically unrelated child. We are in the process of adopting our own snowflakes (embryos). Every snowflake is uniquely create, just a every person is uniquely created by God and with a purpose. We thank you for considering donating to our snowflake adoption.

Five Haffs Make a Whole

Posted on February 5th, 2019 by

Our family's story is a little crazy. It began with Shane and I marrying and having completely different ideas about what our family would look like- and adoption was not on either of our minds. We were surprised with our biological son- and after his first birthday we decided we were done having kids (those long newborn nights and teething, am I right?!). However, we weren't done growing our family! First came Ruth- our sweet and spicy daughter from Lagos, Nigeria. She was our first adoption experience and it couldn't have been better. Now, we're adding to the mix a precious girl from Asia, and our family is pretty much going to look like a mini United Nations Convention! We are blessed with a supportive family and church, but adoption is certainly a test of our faith. We are trusting that God will provide all our needs- not only financial (which is enormous!) but also emotionally- we want to be all our kids need us to be, and point them to Him- who is all they truly need. Thank you for giving to our family- your gift is helping us change the world for one more child by being her forever family.

Waiting for Our Menegocci Little(s)

Posted on November 26th, 2018 by

Adoption has always been part of our conversations and prayers––how could it not? We have been adopted by God into His family, and have been shown indescribable love and grace. The desire of our hearts is to be parents and extend these gifts to our kids by pouring out into their lives, teaching them the ways they should go, showing them their identity in Christ and loving them unconditionally.

We could not be more thrilled for the joys and victories to come, as well as the challenges and difficulties that will sharpen us to become more like the One who loved us first.

If willing, please join us financially in bringing our sweet kid(s) home. This money will go toward our matching fee, most of which will be sent to the orphanage to help cover caring for our child and for court costs.

Thank you for embarking on this journey with us!

"We love, because He first loved us." 1 John 4:19

The Shamblin Family Adventure

Posted on November 23rd, 2018 by

Hey! We are the Shamblin family from North Georgia. We are Steve and Nikki Shamblin and our five kids Thomas(24), Emily (22), Sadie (19), Reed (15), and Lydia (6). We adopted Lydia from China three years ago, through Nightlight Christian Adoptions, and we have been so blessed with her as an addition to our family! We consider her a precious gift from the Lord. I, Nikki, asked Steve to pray about adopting several years ago. Unbeknownst to me, he began to pray that the Lord would take the desire to adopt away from me! We already had four biological children and zero money, so there was no way! Well, God had different plans than Steve, and instead of changing my heart, God changed his. Now, he is just as passionate about adoption as I am.
Since adopting Lydia, we have considered adopting again. We decided to host a waiting child over Christmas last year. We had the pleasure of hosting two children from Columbia for two weeks. It was wonderful. Needless to say, we fell in love with the kiddos. The oldest one is not available for us to adopt, but the younger one is. We want to bring her into our family forever. She is thirteen years old. On our adoption journey three years ago, the Lord provided the finances in amazing ways! Both Steve and I are administrators of a small Christian school. We do not have a budget for international adoption, but we have a love for kids, and we know that the Lord will provide whatever we need to fulfill His calling in our lives. He has called us to open our home to children in need, and we are excited to participate in the journey of adoption again!

Our Waiting Family Story

Posted on July 20th, 2018 by

"When you ask you must believe and not doubt" James 1:6. We have asked God to bless us with a child and we believe without doubt that this blessing will come through adoption. We are thrilled and humbled that you are taking the time to get to know us and would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your time in learning of our adoption story. We are Casey and Cody and are entering into this next step in the journey of our life with so much hope and joy. We are extremely fortunate to live in the beautiful state of Colorado on our family owned ranch. We share our home with our beloved dogs, Sis and Milo; we also have many horses and cattle on the ranch.

We are 33 and 31 years old and have been married for 7 years. We met through mutual friends 8 years ago and have never looked back. Casey is a rancher and a cattle buyer with a Bachelor's degree in Agricultural Business. I am an emergency room nurse with a Bachelors of Nursing. We are fortunate enough to have flexible schedules and family close by that will be able to assist with child care when we are at work. We love to travel but it is unusual for us to ever be apart and always enjoy having evenings together and eating a family dinner. We both compete at professional rodeos throughout the country. Horses are a huge part of our lives and we enjoy raising, training, and competing with them.

We entered into our marriage with the knowledge that, due to an accident when Cody was 16, bearing children would be impossible. We have put the matter into God's hands and have faith that everything happens for a reason. We know without doubt that we are ready to fully commit ourselves to a child and look forward to doing this through adoption. We are both Christians and have faith that our family will be complete when the timing is right.

While we could never understand the depth of emotions or the weight of the decisions that a birthmother experiences in considering an adoption plan, we have faith that these choices will be made from a place of love and are made by them to give their child the best life possible. We look forward to sharing our lives with a child and bringing them up in our western lifestyle. We love sharing in the lives of our nieces, nephews, and close friends' children. We want to extend that love to our future son or daughter and have opened our hearts fully to this being delivered to us through adoption. Thank you again for taking the time to read this letter. We are both very hopeful that we will get to meet our child's birth mother soon and begin to share in this journey with them.

Love,
Casey and Cody

Creating a Forever Family

Posted on July 19th, 2018 by

My husband and I met at church and contrary to storybooks it was not “love at first sight”. Rather the opposite, we both couldn’t care less for each other, but God had other plans. I prayed for a year that God would give me a husband and then God prompted Ed to make a call and ask me out to “bless me with dinner”. I reluctantly said ok, but something strange happened, we had a good time with each other and within two weeks we had decided to “go steady”. Within two months we knew that we were going to get married and 7 months later we were. We became a blended family with his two teenage kids and within a year began the process of expanding through foster adoption. We adopted a 15 year old girl, when the other two kids were 18 and 21. Then we felt it was finally time to try for a biological child. After 8 months of trying, the Dr. felt a fertility specialist was necessary. It was then a rocky rollercoaster of tests and fertility treatments to find out that I’m a carrier for syndrome that would almost guarantee a severe special needs child without IVF. Since we couldn’t afford IVF, we took a break and then got a second opinion about a year later and that specialist said that recessive gene I carry was, in fact, not a concern for any generation in my family tree and might only possibly happen to be passed down hundreds of generations later. Putting aside my anger and fear, week tried multiple rounds of fertility unsuccessfully for one silly reason or another and then the cost caught up to us again, so we had to take a break. Meanwhile, our Daugther graduated from Highschool and I was feeling empty nesty, so we got a puppy and started to host foreign exchange students. We have tried to adoption a second time and have been matched successfully, then it fell through. Despite everything, We are hopeful that Nightlight will provide us with the opportunity to expand and create a forever family.

Adams Family Waiting Story

Posted on July 19th, 2018 by

"When you ask you must believe and not doubt" James 1:6. We have asked God to bless us with a child and we believe without doubt that this blessing will come through adoption. We are thrilled and humbled that you are taking the time to get to know us and would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your time in learning of our adoption story. We are Casey and Cody and are entering into this next step in the journey of our life with so much hope and joy. We are extremely fortunate to live in the beautiful state of Colorado on our family owned ranch. We share our home with our beloved dogs, Sis and Milo; we also have many horses and cattle on the ranch.

We are 33 and 31 years old and have been married for 7 years. We met through mutual friends 8 years ago and have never looked back. Casey is a rancher and a cattle buyer with a Bachelor's degree in Agricultural Business. I am an emergency room nurse with a Bachelors of Nursing. We are fortunate enough to have flexible schedules and family close by that will be able to assist with child care when we are at work. We love to travel but it is unusual for us to ever be apart and always enjoy having evenings together and eating a family dinner. We both compete at professional rodeos throughout the country. Horses are a huge part of our lives and we enjoy raising, training, and competing with them.

We entered into our marriage with the knowledge that, due to an accident when Cody was 16, bearing children would be impossible. We have put the matter into God's hands and have faith that everything happens for a reason. We know without doubt that we are ready to fully commit ourselves to a child and look forward to doing this through adoption. We are both Christians and have faith that our family will be complete when the timing is right.

While we could never understand the depth of emotions or the weight of the decisions that a birthmother experiences in considering an adoption plan, we have faith that these choices will be made from a place of love and are made by them to give their child the best life possible. We look forward to sharing our lives with a child and bringing them up in our western lifestyle. We love sharing in the lives of our nieces, nephews, and close friends' children. We want to extend that love to our future son or daughter and have opened our hearts fully to this being delivered to us through adoption. Thank you again for taking the time to read this letter. We are both very hopeful that we will get to meet our child's birth mother soon and begin to share in this journey with them.

Love,
Casey and Cody

Harder Family Adoption

Posted on April 9th, 2018 by

We are Matt and Katie Harder from Yukon, Oklahoma and we have two biological children, Canon age 5, and Knox age 6. We are now in the process of adopting a little girl from China!

This is not a sudden decision. We have been discussing adoption for several months, and have determined that God is calling our family to adopt. We think adoption is a clear picture of the Gospel and are excited to be on this journey to bring our daughter home. We have put a lot of thought and research into this decision, and now we need your support!

Adoption as you know is very expensive. We have done several fundraisers so far and will continue to do whatever we can to raise the $20,000 still needed. We will apply for grants, have a huge garage sale, and use our tax credit to go toward our adoption costs. Plus more!

We would like to invite you to be a part of Millie’s story. If you are willing to donate to our adoption fund, your name will go on the back of a puzzle piece that when put together, will go in her room. Once every single piece has been “sold”, we will put the puzzle together and hang it in a double-sided glass frame for her room so that she will have a visual keepsake to show her how much she is loved and she will be reminded of who had a “piece” of bringing her home!

Thank you for your support!