An unending gift for love

By KAYLEY MENDENHALL Chronicle Staff Writer

Jessica Burgard looked her 13-year-old adopted sister Julia in the eye and asked very sweetly if she could trim her hair.

Julia grabbed the ends of her long hair and with puppy dog eyes begged Jessica to trim as little as possible.

"I was bald, you know," she said.

Julia and her biological siblings Celia, 12, and Jonathan, 10, in April moved from an orphanage in Kazakstan to the Burgards' home.

While in the orphanage Julia and Celia were each infested with lice. Their heads were shaved.

Now, understandably, Julia is protective of her hair.

"The stories they tell are heartbreaking," said Mike Burgard, their adoptive father.

It's because of a combination of some of those heartbreaking stories, a devout Christian faith and a seemingly unending capacity for love that Mike and Bonnie Burgard have ended up with 10 kids.

"It just gets to you when you see these kids," Bonnie said. "Somebody said somewhere, 'You don't ask why you should adopt, you ask why you shouldn't.'"

An unexpected road

The Burgards have three of their own children, Jessica, 21, Justin, 19 and Nick, 16.

When Nick was entering first grade, Mike and Bonnie realized they weren't ready to have a quiet house all day, every day.

They looked into adoption and ended up bringing home Natalie from Korea as a baby. Two years later another Korean baby girl, Christy, became part of their family.

"We knew when we did it we wouldn't adopt just one Asian child," Bonnie said. "We had read and heard there's a lot of identity issues. You look at your family and nobody looks like you. ... Plus (Natalie) was so much younger than the other kids, we wanted to give her somebody to grow up with."

It's been eight years since the Burgards adopted Christy.

But within the past year, they have added five more children for a total of 10.

It began in the summer of 2002 through a Christian organization called Kidsave International. A local chapter decided to bring orphans from Kazakstan to America for six weeks in hopes of finding them adoptive families.

The Burgards agreed to host three siblings and try to find them a family, but had no intentions of adopting themselves.

"It took me minutes from the time they walked off the plane and I saw little Jonathan, with his hat on backwards and his toothless grin,' Mike said. "In two days we decided to adopt."

Finding the room

While waiting for the adoption to go through, the Burgards learned about 11-year-old Tom who also needed a home.

Tom had been adopted from Russia by a family in New York, but the situation didn't work out. He was shipped to a ranch for troubled kids in northwestern Montana and the caretaker there asked the Burgards if they could find him a family in Bozeman.

Instead, he became part of the clan.

The same ranch then sent them a picture of Vanessa, 12, hoping to find her a home in Bozeman.

"I said, 'I can't sell a picture, I need a kid,'" Bonnie said.

And even though a different family here was interested in adopting her, Vanessa cried at the thought of leaving the Burgards.

"She had moved around too much," Bonnie said. "She wanted to be here and we didn't have any reason we couldn't have her."

Tom and Vanessa have not been adopted yet, but the Burgards plan to make it official after a mandatory six-month waiting period is up around the first of January.

At first Vanessa didn't have a bed. And the oldest, Jessica, spent her summer home from college sleeping on a neighbor's couch.

"I like it, but it is overwhelming," Jessica said about her new siblings. "The family doubled in size. I lost my room."

Now that school has started again, she comes home from Billings often on weekends to help out.

"I come home two out of three weekends, which is more than I thought I would," she said. "But it turns out I'm useful around here."

Fears and challenges

Jessica's helping hands are needed, along with many others around the Burgard household these days as Bonnie was diagnosed with ovarian cancer about two months ago.

She has started chemotherapy, and is looking ahead to eight months of treatment, including surgery.

With five new kids in the picture, the timing of the diagnosis is not good.

"We were taking on a lot, but we both needed to be there to make it work," Bonnie said about the recent adoptions. "It's not working the way I thought it would work, but it's working."

The added stress of the illness has changed the structure of the Burgard household. A private family by nature, Bonnie and Mike have had to open themselves to help from friends, family, neighbors and their church congregation.

"It has changed how we live. We're like a fish bowl," Bonnie said. "People knock on the door and come in. We have to let these kids be raised by other people partially."

And she's learning to accept her changing role from the person who always gives, to a person in need of help.

"It's not easy to take all the time and not be able to give anything back," she said. "I hope to be in a position of strength again, to give back. I don't have any guarantee of that."

Their neighbor and longtime friend Roberta LaShelle is organizing people in the community to make meals for the Burgards four nights a week.

It's a big meal, for 12 to 14 people, depending on how many relatives are staying with them at the time. But so far more than 40 people have signed up to help. Each is making about one meal a month.

"Some people are like, 'Why do they do this? Why would anyone take on that much?' Some people may look at it like, 'You've made a mistake,'" LaShelle said. "They are pretty phenomenal people. They are strong believers in God. God is the one that enables them to give to the capacity that they do."

Because of the Burgards, she said, seven kids have a family that might not have otherwise.

Finding the strength

People who have worked with the newest Burgard children over the past few months say having that home base has made a definite difference.

Tom, a fifth-grader at Morning Star Elementary School, arrived with some behavioral and learning problems. He qualifies for help through the school's speech and language program because he has a learning disability that put him behind even in Russian, making learning to read and speak English more of a challenge.

But Steve Dayhuff, Tom's speech clinician, said so far it seems like he's adjusting well.

"He dresses like the other kids. He's very talented in basketball, a very coordinated child," Dayhuff said. "He struggles with learning to read and that has some frustration for him."

Knowing his new family is there to support him, seems to be helping Tom face his battles, Dayhuff said.

"To me, it seems like one of the first anchors this kid has had in a long time," he said. "These kind of kids never had anything they could count on or trust."

Christine Johnson, an English as a second language teacher, meets with Julia, Celia and Vanessa every day. She said the girls are bright and grateful to be here, but that they do miss their native countries and friends from the orphanages.

More than anything, Johnson said she's learned how vulnerable and yet resilient kids can be.

"They are just beautiful children," she said. "Beautiful in every way, inside and out."

Bonnie and Mike have told the kids as much as they think they need to know about the cancer.

"The surgery is the scariest part," Bonnie said. "Three of the kids, their mom died after surgery in Kazakstan. That's what they see. I intend to be one of the survivors."

Even with the cancer diagnosis, Mike and Bonnie don't regret adopting the five new kids. In fact, she sees the situation as a greater reason to fight.

"There are twice as many kids counting on me getting well," she said.

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