Merry Christmas!!

Well, this whole process has taken us longer than we would have liked but we are confident it is all in God's timing! We still are awaiting our referrals for our girls and haven't heard anything for the past month or so.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their support of our adoption adventure as we work to get Leah and Rachel from Ethiopia. It is our wish that each of you receive a special blessing this Christmas season!

God bless!

Mike, Sandy, Joshua, Benjamin and Hannah Mayfield

New Fundraiser in Progress

We have launched a new online coffee store to assist in our adoption fundraising. The link to the website is http://www.justlovecoffee.com/TheMayfields . The story about how this company came to be found at this website under the "our story" tab. All coffee is Fair Trade coffees and proceeds from sales help to fund an orphanage in Ethiopia as well as provide financial assistance for families adopting from Ethiopia and other countries. For every pound of coffee we sell through our store, we will receive $5.00.

Timing is everything.....

Lately, Sandy and I have been worrying over the timing of our adoptions due to the delay in getting our referrals. Our main concern has been "what if our referral timeline dictates we travel during tax season." For those of you who know us well, you know that with Sandy's job, that is not practical or even possible. I know we should be practicing Matthew 6:25-34 but somehow we (mostly I) get caught up in the "what ifs" and that takes my focus off of what is really important...that God is using our family to provide forever families to two precious little girls halfway around the world right now. God's timing is perfect even if it isn't the timing we would like.

Last Friday, we had a conversation with our agency about our timing concerns and were assured that if we don't receive our referrals with enough time to travel before tax season, we could request different referrals for after the first of the year like in February so that we could end up traveling after tax season. This would also allow Sandy to take some time off to spend getting to know Leah and Rachel.

Please pray that our referrals come very soon so that we don't have to wait any more to give our girls a home.

Please Pray

Well, it seems like forever since we posted anything and it has been but that is because there has not been any news to report since we were entered into the system in Ethiopia. We are asking specifically for your prayers now that we would receive our referrals very soon so that there is still time for us to get the girls home before the end of the year. God tells us to be specific in our petitions to Him so we are praying specifically for 3 yr. old twin girls. Will you please join us in praying for this? Of course we will be thrilled with whatever age they are but it doesn't hurt to make your requests known. We really appreciate all the encouragement and support you have provided us during this waiting time.

Waiting on our Referrals!

We are officially in the Ethiopian system for a referral as of July 30th. We had not heard anything since our last post on July 27th but just found out for sure that we are in the system. The next step will be to be given our referrals. We do not know how long this will take as some people get referrals in a few weeks but others it is a few months. Please pray that our referrals will come quickly since we really need to travel this Fall due to Sandy's work schedule during the tax season.

Thank you for your continued prayer support and encouragement.

Finally some news!

Thanks for all your prayers that we would find out the status of our dossier. I just heard from our agency that our dossier is in Ethiopia going through translation, certification and registration. The next thing we will hear is that we are in their system for a referral. We expect to hear that within the next week. We are now being told that a referral could take as long as 4 months so please pray that ours will come much quicker than that. If ours does take 4 months, that could mean we would be traveling during tax season which would not be good at all for Sandy. Please pray that all the timing, details, etc. will work out.

Keep on Praying!

Sandy and I would like to ask each of you to take time to say a short prayer for us every day that we will find out if our paperwork is in Ethiopia and that we would receive a referral for our two precious little girls soon.

Still No News!

Thanks to everyone who is following us on our adoption adventure. Unfortunately we do not have any news to report at this time. We are still just waiting for our dossier to be registered in Ethiopia. We are supposed to find out from our agency whenever that happens so please pray that that will happen quickly! We know God is working all of this out in His time but that is painfully slow for us. We cannot wait to go over and get our precious little girls and I (Mike) have even found myself dreaming about what they will be like and what their little personalities will be.

Have a safe and happy 4th of July weekend!

Waiting, Waiting, Waiting

Right from the first day that we started the adoption process, we were told that when we get done with all the paperwork, the waiting would be the hardest part. We are definitely experiencing that right now! We are currently waiting for our dossier to be sent to Ethiopia so that we can then ultimately get our referrals. So far, our dossier has been at the US Embassy in Washington, DC for almost 2 weeks. We are hoping it will be sent on to Ethiopia this week if it has not already been sent. Please pray that we will have patience and let God work out His timing. We know He already has 2 girls picked out for our family that will be a perfect match for us but we are just ready to find out who they are.

Adoption Resource Foundation Fundraiser

Tonight, I had the privilege of sharing our adoption story briefly with supporters of the Adoption Resource Foundation which is a ministry of Woods Chapel United Methodist Church in Lees' Summit, MO. Today was their annual fundraising golf tournament and since they had provided us some early financial assistance, we were asked to share our story. The hardest part for me was keeping it short because once I get to telling our story, I get more excited and just keep talking. I know that is hard for many of you to believe that I like to talk. Anyway, it was great to meet such a nice group of people who have such a heart for orphans. Thanks to Dave Coffman for extending the invitation to us and for all the work you do for orphans around the world.

Dossier update

Finally we have something new to report.  First, we were waiting while our agency went through our dossier to make sure everything was in order and then we had to wait for the money we sent in to clear the bank.  I just received word from our program director at International Family Services that the money had cleared and our dossier will be sent to the US Embassy in Washington, D.C. on Monday for their approval and then on to Ethiopia!

Please keep our family in your prayers as we inch our way closer to getting our little girls home from Ethiopia.  Also, please pray that we will be able to find the vehicle that God wants us to have to safely transport our expanded family.

God has blessed our lives so much by calling us to adopt.  When we first felt the calling, I (Mike), thought "why us" but now I am so glad that we accepted his challenge and followed the call.  It is amazing how in love we are with our little girls already and we don't have any idea who they are or what they are like but God does!  

If you want to walk on water, you have to get out of the boat!

First of all, thanks to everyone who has been praying about our adoption decision since the last post. We have decided to go for it and adopt 2 girls instead of just 1! I think in the back of our minds, at least for the past week if not longer, we really wanted 2 but were afraid to take that additional step. Last week, while driving around Kearney while waiting for the boys to get our of karate, I heard a DJ on K-Love talking about the story of Gideon and how God kept testing him by shrinking his army until it looked like victory against the Midianites was impossible and the DJ paraphrased a verse from Judges that basically had God telling Gideon that "You will only see My power when I see your faith." That hit me like a iron girder right between the eyes and I could not let go of that phrase all week.

God is so faithful to provide needs when we show Him our faith. Along with the decision to add a 2nd girl to the adoption, there are additional costs associated with a second adoption. Through a matching grant that we are currently in the process of raising funds for, we had enough collected for the initial Ethiopian adoption program fee for one child but didn't really know where the additional money would come from for this phase of payments. This morning, Sandy called me and said she had a revelation. Her employer provides adoption assistance funds which we had collected for the first child but they provide that amount per child. That amount is exactly the amount we were short! We are just amazed at God's faithfulness!

We stepped out of the boat not knowing where this extra money would come from and the day after we started telling people of our new plans for 2 additional children, He has provided in a way we did not expect.

Please keep us in your prayers as we will be sending off our dossier to our agency this a.m. for their approval and then ultimately on to the US embassy and Ethiopian embassy.

INS Approval Received!!!

Thank you to all for your continued prayers! We finally received the long-awaited INS approval letter on Friday, May 8th. We are now faced with a major decision for our next step. When we were filling out all of our paperwork for the home study, INS application, etc., we indicated that we would consider adopting a second child if there was a twin or other sibling to our little girl. Well....our INS approval letter specifically gives us approval to adopt 2 children. This is potentially another major step of faith for us should we decide to pursue a second child in this adoption. We are currently praying over this decision to make sure that our decision is one truly led by God. Please pray specifically that we will both feel God's guidance in this matter! We will be sure to update this blog as soon as our decision is made.

The Latest Phase of Waiting

Thanks for your continued prayers for our adoption. Last weekend we received a letter from INS requesting information on our ability to support another child. We have been told that this has become increasingly more common in the past few months. We submitted the appropriate documentation early this week and are once again awaiting our approval letter. Everyone told us from the beginning that the waiting was the hardest part and that is definitely true! Please pray that all the remaining steps will go smoothly and quickly.

The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

I never thought I would be naming a blog post the title of a Tom Petty song but the chorus to this song applies pretty well to the adoption process. There are so many steps of faith involved in an adoption but it seems like almost every day I hear some words of encouragement about the adoption or hear of someone who has adopted from Ethiopia. The chorus to the song goes:

The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart,
Yeah the waiting is the hardest part.

Well, it has been 2 weeks exactly since we submitted our paperwork to INS for approval to adopt internationally. We don't know how long it will be before we get our approval letter but our friends letter came in 3 weeks so hopefully ours will be coming soon.

Ways you can pray for us at this time:

1. Please pray that the approval comes soon so that our dossier can be completed and sent to Ethiopia.
2. Please pray that we will get some good news from the grants that we applied for. Adoption is an expensive proposition but we have no doubts that God will make a way for this to happen.
3. Pray for patience for our family as we will have many more days of waiting before we can go get our little girl.
4. Finally, please pray that our little girl is doing well in the orphanage. It is so amazing how in just a short time since we started the process, she already has a big place in our hearts and we don't even know who she is, but God does!

INS Appointment Completed!

Thanks to everyone who prayed for a good INS appointment for us! We were in and out of the appointment in about 20 minutes. Now we wait for the results. Now we wait to receive an approval letter from INS to bring an orphan into the U.S. Please pray that the approval process will go smoothly and we will receive our approval letter as quickly as possible.

Home Study Done!

Our home study is completed and in our possession....next step is our INS appointment on Friday at 3:00 p.m. Please pray that all goes well with that appointment and that we get our approval letter back quickly! We have friends who just got their approval letter back in 3 weeks!

Homestudy and INS appointment

Tomorrow, March 17th, our home study will be done and ready to be picked up! Not wanting to wait on the mail, I am going to drive over to pick it up after work tomorrow afternoon. We also have our INS appointment scheduled this week for Friday afternoon. Slowly the pieces of the puzzle are starting to fit together....just pray that everything will continue to fall into place for our adoption so that we will be able to bring our new daughter home as quickly as possible. Even though we have know idea who she is or what she looks like, etc. it is so exciting to think that there is a cute little Ethiopian girl who God has chosen to be our daughter. God is so good!

Keep praying her home!

Mike

Brief Home Study Update

Just a brief update regarding the home study document. Corrections have been made and the corrected document has been emailed to our adoption agency, IFS, to be read over to make sure everything looks fine to them. Once we get their approval, the final document will be prepared and given to us. We will let you know once that happens. Our social worker was great to work with and we highly recommend Adoption and Beyond to anyone who needs a home study for any adoption, whether it is domestic or international.

Home Study Visit completed

Thank you to all who prayed for our home study visit to go well. I am pleased to report that it went great! Our social worker was great and it was a very relaxed time for everyone.

Our next steps are to wait to get the draft copy of the final home study report to read over and request corrections as necessary. Then, our social worker will make any needed corrections and then finalize the report for our international agency.

Please pray that this next step goes quickly so we can keep this process rolling along.

Homestudy Visit Rescheduled

Our homestudy visit has been rescheduled to tomorrow, March 1st at 7:00 pm. Our homestudy coordinator was not able to make it today due to the weather. Please pray that she will be able to come tomorrow and that everything will go well so that we can move on to the next step of the process.

Homestudy visit scheduled!

Just a brief note to announce that our home study visit has officially been scheduled! We will home study visit on Saturday, February 28th at 8 a.m. Please pray that all will go well! We are so thankful that our social worker could meet us on Saturday, especially since Sandy's work schedule is getting so crazy as tax season ramps up. Thanks for all your continued prayers as we work to get our little girl home from Ethiopia!

Homestudy documentation submitted!

Just a brief note to let everyone know that the mass of paperwork we were working on for our home study has been submitted to the home study agency for review. We are hoping to have our home study visit in the next couple of weeks so that this process can be completed. Keep us in your prayers as we continue to provide what is required of us in order to get our little girl home!

Paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork!

Sorry for the lack of postings lately but we have been running full steam ahead to get all the paperwork done for the home study and the dossier. About the only thing left that we have any control over for the home study is to get fingerprinted (1st of 2 times) on February 11th and to get the kids tested for TB, also on the 11th. After those two steps, we will be ready to turn in our home study documentation. What a relief that will be! We have nearly everything done for our dossier, as well so I am sure it will be a hurry up and wait time for us. Pray for patience for us!

God is so good in providing us so many of you to have as encouragement to us during this adventure. Your friendship and prayers mean more to us than you will ever know.

God's call

Ever since we made the decision to follow God's call and adopt a little girl from Ethiopia, I have had James 1:27 running through my mind almost continuously. It goes like this:

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27 (NIV).

Another set of scriptures that keep coming to mind are:

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.' Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'" Matthew 25:34-40 (NIV)

I ran across a statistic on Steven Curtis Chapman's adoption website for his Shaohannah's Hope foundation that really hit home and reinforced our commitment to adoption. The statistics show that if just 7% of the 2 billion Christians worldwide would adopt just one orphan, there would be no orphans in the world. Let that sink in a little bit....only 7% of Christians worldwide could give a home to all the orphans in the world!

We don't know exactly how God is going to bring this all about but we know without a doubt that He capable of anything if we are willing to say "yes, Lord, use me."

1st home study meeting scheduled!

This is a brief post but one to let everyone know that we have our first home study meeting on January 28th at 7 p.m. This will be the meeting where we receive all the document requirements that must be completed during the home study period. Hopefully we are a little bit ahead of the game because we are using the same agency and same social worker that our friends, the Ninemires, are using for their adoption so we know some of what is expected of us. Please keep our family in your prayers are we begin to work on the home study, dossier and immigration requirements in the next couple of months.

In the beginning....Part 1

I believe our journey that brought us to this point began Sept. 5, 2001. We were expecting our 4th child and were 3 months along when my wife had a miscarriage. We were heartbroken but knew that God was in control. After this tragedy, my wife still wanted to have another child but I locked up my heart and refused to even think about it for fear of being hurt again. I was also fearful for my Sandy's health should she have a troubled pregnancy. During this time, Sandy would bring up adopting a child from another country periodically and I was always unwilling to even consider this even though it is something that both she and Hannah wanted so badly. I just somewhat made myself numb to the thought of having another child in the family.

Fast forward now from the tragedy we experienced in 2001, to January 2008. We were presented with an opportunity to bring a 1 yr. old girl into our house with the expectation and the understanding that we would be given the opportunity to adopt her later in the year. This girl was quickly acclimated to our family and we had a terrific time with her. She was abruptly taken from our house in early August with only a few hours notice by some of her family and we have not seen her since that time. This left our family devastated and I once again made myself numb to the thought of adoption.

This numbness was not so deep this time, though, that it could not be penetrated. Sandy began bringing up international adoption once again but I just couldn't wrap my mind around the concept but I vowed to pray about it.

During the Fall of 2008 there was several times when I felt burdened for the orphans around the world and God began softening my heart. On at least a couple of occasions when I was trying to reason why it didn't make sense either from a financial standpoint or from a practical standpoint, etc., God reminded me of some lyrics we sing from time to time in our worship. They are written by Diane Thiel and the song is title "If you say go"

If you say go, we will go
If you say wait, we will wait
If you say step out on the water
And they say it can't be done
We'll fix our eyes on You and we will come.

Your ways are higher than our ways
And plans that You have laid are good and true
If you call us to the fire
You will not withdraw Your hand
We'll gaze into the flames and look for you.

The encouragement received by God through lyrics like these began to melt my heart. God was working, preparing me for what He had in store. Looking back, I have 2 regrets. First of all, that I didn't act on His promptings sooner, because if I had, we would be that much closer to having our new little girl. Secondly, I regret not sharing all that was going on in my heart with Sandy. I held back because I was so scared to step out on faith. Ultimately what made the difference in overcoming the fear was when I realized I was more afraid of missing what God intended for my family than I was afraid of actually all that is involved in an adoption.

Application submitted!

Yesterday, January 7th, 2009, we embarked on what could be the biggest adventure of our lives. After weeks of promptings by the Holy Spirit that we should become a forever family for an orphan in Ethiopia, we responded to Him by sending in our application to begin the process of bringing one of His precious little orphans home from Ethiopia. In the coming days, I want to post about some of the things leading up to our decision and why we believe God chose Ethiopia for us.