Part 1 the begining

We are the Berlin family of three soon to be five. My name is Jeremy the DAD, Heidi the MOM and London our 12 year old Daughter. we have two dogs Hewy and Lewis. Our story starts a year ago. My wife and I had been trying to have a baby for over three years. We went to multiple specialists and tried multiple forms of fertility. Every doctor we went to said they couldn't understand why we were not getting pregnant when there was nothing wrong with either of us. Being a family that strives t live to live their lives according to God's plan we chalked it up to that it was not God's timing even though that was extremely difficult to accept.



During August of 2009 a group from our church was going on a missions trip to an orphanage in Ukraine. During the fertility process Heidi and I had talked about adopting and older child that would be a sibling closer to the age of London. Our friend Lisa was going on the missions trip and I asked her to find us a son about ten or eleven. I never thought she would do just that. When Lisa returned she had so many pictures and it was hard for your heart not to go out to these children who didn't have families. Lisa said I found your son his name is Iliah and she pulled out a stack of photos of an eleven year old boy. When we saw the pictures of him and when Lisa told us about him we were so excited. We wanted to adopt him but also wanted to make sure he wanted the same. We decided to host Iliah through a non profit organization out of VA Beach.

We joined the winter hosting program which allowed us to host him for three weeks over Christmas.
O December 16th we went to Washington D.C. to pick up Iliah. I will never forget how as the children came through customs(about 5o of them) they looked so scared and confused. Heidi was the first to see Iliah and she threw her arms around him and hugged him as if the son she had not seen for eleven years had finally come home. She cried and it was at that moment that I realized how much her heart was prepared to adopt a child.
A translator quickly introduced us and we were off for Williamsburg. What a crazy experience for a child to come to a strange country get into a car with strangers and to stay in their home for three weeks but... what an amazing time we had with Iliah and he with us. It did not take lng for it to be hard to picture our family with out him so at the end of the three weeks we had a translator ask Iliah if he would like to be part of our family. With the biggest smile you've ever seen he nodded yes and hugged us.
So we started the adoption process On Jan 5th and were at peace with not having a baby. We felt that god had wanted us to adopt this child and that was why we did not have a child of our own.
The adoption paperwork was grueling and there were many bumps along the road but when we had finished the paperwork and we were emotionally and financially committed to Iliah BAM!!! Out of nowhere Heidi gets Pregnant!Needless to say this was unplanned and took us by a pleasant surprise. Some have asked why we would still adopt now that Heidi is pregnant but we never saw it as an option. In God's timing there was no medical reason for why we were not getting pregnant, only that we ad yet to meet and fall in love with Iliah.