We are Matched with a 4 year old boy!

We are matched with a 4 year old little boy! We can't post pictures of him yet, but he's stinkin' cute and we're pretty excited. 

Hitting the Pause Button

 It has taken quite a bit of paperwork to get to this point, and we are not done. I feel like that is all we have done the last few months - finishing up the home study paperwork and working on all the dossier documents to represent us in the country. In the middle of that, we had several gracious doctors answering our questions about medical records, and we continued working on referral paperwork which is now complete as we are semi-officially matched pending our dossier.. We'll receive our last document for our dossier Monday evening (the 2 month circus it took to get this one right) and then send our dossier out the same night to our agency.

Sledding with our four kids recently

Sometimes I feel like we hit the pause button on part of our lives during this part of the adoption journey. We obviously have hopes and dreams for this child, and it's exciting to finally put a name and a face with it. We are hoping to travel sometime this year, so we will not plan a vacation because we have no control of when we are going. I have some plans in my head of who can help with the kiddos while we are gone and activities for them to do, but it also depends if they will be in school or on summer vacation. We are enjoying this time in life and our kids, but a part of our hearts are with a little boy halfway around the world. We are starting to ready the house, and organize things with the thoughts of how will this all look. We have started saying to the kids “when your brother comes home...”, and they are putting things aside for him. So while life is continuing around us, we are also on hold, just waiting. We want him to be home.

Wehrspan lake path down the road covered in snow recently

Late in the fall, I was just starting to feel like we were searching for a needle in a haystack. How long would it take to find him? Of course we knew God had a child for us, and he would come home when the time was right. At the same time, we want everything to move quickly, because we just want him home. God gave me these verses in Romans 8 – “But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently...And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose...What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” Such a reminder to walk in faith and trust Him. Do I really trust Him? Some days it can be such a challenge, which I guess is why it is called faith.

The pause button is about to hit fast forward I think.

~Chris

Ways to donate to our adoption cause:

Facebook Donate Button

(not tax deductible, but has the lowest fees per donation)

GoFundMe.com/team-mayfield-adoption

(not tax deductible, but lower fees per donation)

PureCharity.com/team-mayfield-adoption 

(tax deductible and grants can go straight to our Adoption Agency)

Our Adoption math: ~$44,000 total - $6,000 company match - $8,000 already raised - $13840 tax benefit = roughly $16,000 left to fund. The tax refund will take a few years to totally recoup, so we will take a loan to finance the upfront costs. We are currently financing $11000 and will need to add the full amount soon as it becomes due.

We're traveling through our HomeStudy

I came on to post a blog I started about a month ago. After adding to it, I see that I'm not much of a story teller, so I ditched most of it...Writing a blog is like writing facts to me it seems...kind of like a report at work or something.  As I'm typing my Vizsla, Autumn, who wants to be a lap dog...is slipping and sliding and trying to not fall off the chair.  At one point her hind legs slipped and she was standing on the floor but in the same position in my lap. We have bar chairs for our table. She's not the 8 week puppy that she was when we brought her home, but she's not full grown either.  Most of the kids decided to sleep on the floor in our room last night with blankets and pillows and she usually finds one of them to cuddle up with. This morning when I couldn't sleep, I got up to go downstairs and found her under the blanket with Katie. Now she has found a comfortable position in my lap and is snoring. At least one of us is comfortable.

She can somehow squeeze under the couch still as well

We attempted to go camping this weekend. It wasn't much of an attempt, but with the Holiday on Monday, we wanted to try for something. My wife and I were really feeling like just keeping everyone close this weekend and being a family. With the cold and rainy weather, we decided to stay home but find some fun things to do. This also gave us some time to get some more paperwork figured out for adoption. I made the boys a deal yesterday....do the dirty pick up after the dog work and I would do all the mowing. They also helped put up some branches that I cut down from the trees a week ago. We eventually made it to see a Marvel movie showing at the dollar theatre...Christopher Robin is in our future tomorrow. The dollar theater costs 2.50 these days, but it's still quite a bit cheaper when you have 6 people.

Just wanted to say thanks for everyone's support so far. Every donation is a huge help and we're humbled by your willingness to help.  We've been able to raise $8050 to date...sacrifices from a lot of people and huge blessings for which we are thankful. Hopefully we can get a grant and/or hold a fundraising event before the next portion is due. If you're were on the list for a survival bracelet, we've finished them and they're on their way...except for a check we received this week..a few more to make!

Enjoying time with family and friends a few weeks ago

We submitted some more paperwork this week to our agency and continued with more training items. Chris is halfway through “The Connected Child" book that I handed off to her and we will both submit reports for credit towards our training.  We completed a Hague training package recently and another third of our training was filled by the connected child two day conference that we attended a few months ago. We learned about Trust Based Relational Interference (TBRI) which discussed a lot about caring for children that have undergone trauma.

Our home study is almost completed. All four meetings are done with our case worker...I think they're making it into a movie script. I'll let you know when the trailer is released (kidding). Just waiting for it to be finalized so we can begin our Dossier process at our agency...that means lots of over-nighting paperwork back and forth with our agency and immigration. Our home study is part of that package.

Our thoughts are often filled with our son sitting in a care center somewhere in Asia.  We've been praying that he has enough food, protection, and love until we're able to be joined as a family. We feel like we're in a kind of limbo right now as we're anxiously waiting for our home study to be finalized.  God knows who our son is and His timing is perfect, so we continue to trust in him.

Click on on one of these links to Donate:

    GoFundMe.com/team-mayfield-adoption 
        (not tax deductible, but less fees )

     PureCharity.com/team-mayfield-adoption 

        (tax deductible and grants can go straight to our Adoption Agency)

Gotcha Day Rollercoaster

We celebrated Lily's Gotcha Day this past weekend.  She's been home and part of our family now for 5 years! 5 years seems so short, and other times seems so long.  We have a tradition of going out for Chinese food and Dim Sum.  This year we discovered our favorite place to go has apparently closed, which we didn't find out until we drove to the restaurant, so then we had to scramble to find a new dim sum place.  Thank goodness we could just search from our phones, because by the time we got to the new restaurant we had been in the car for an hour.  Best laid plans.

Gotcha Day always reminds me of the weeks before and after Lily came home, and what a roller-coaster it was.  The planning and packing before was like the huge climb at the beginning of the ride, you are excited and a little nervous because you really can't see past the top.  We were really running on adrenaline getting ready to leave.  Making sure I had food for school lunches and snacks, and people lined up to help with the kids so my parents could have some breaks.  Making sure my house was halfway cleaned and organized because my mom likes things to be very clean and organized.  Making sure we had packed everything including items for our child we had never met.

The Great Wall - near Beijing

We chose to tour Beijing for a couple of days before going to get Lily so we could attempt to acclimate to China.  That was like going over the top of the roller-coaster, flying halfway around the world, changing our eating and sleeping habits.  My husband is always up to the adventure, me not as much, it takes me a bit longer. We did enjoy Beijing, and then it was off on another plane to southern China to meet Lily.
 

 Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium

Here's where we rode the loops of the roller-coaster: meeting your child for the first time, taking her back to your hotel, holding her while she cries because she is with strangers who can't really speak to her and she is beginning to grieve her loss.  Doing it all over again the next day with less crying.  I remember Lily waking up and looking at us that second day, you guys again?  We quickly discovered the way into Lily's heart was holding hands, food and snacks, and holding little toys.  By the third day of having her we got genuine smiles and even little giggles out of her.  In our hotel room she would run back and forth between us and play a game where she would tell Justin 'tsai chien' in Mandarin, then 'bye-bye' in English with big smiles. 

The rest of our two weeks in China and the flight home (who doesn't enjoy being awake for 30 hours with a three year old who only speaks Chinese when you don't, and she only sleeps 2 hours of the 15+ hour flight home) and even the first year having Lily home was the ups and downs after the loops of the roller-coaster.  I might have thought once or twice we weren't going to ever get off the roller-coaster.  And then as her first Gotcha Day came around, I realized we had gotten off the ride, almost to my surprise.  We truly felt like her parents, and a family, and we where even thriving as a family.

So, we realized how much we enjoyed the adoption roller-coaster, and are standing in line again to get back on the ride.  Hopefully our journey in the waiting line won't be too long.  We are ready for the adventure to begin!

A Decision and Commitment

Fireworks 2018

A decision
It took me a couple weeks to tell my wife...that I was open to adoption again and what I felt was on my heart about trusting God..  When I did, I found out she wasn't ready or sure that was an option yet.  We moved on with life and the subject didn't come up again until about 7 months later when she met me for lunch on my birthday.  There's a lot that happens in 7 months...soccer for two of the kids, basketball, dance, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's...all four of the kids's birthdays.  We finally celebrated our 20 year anniversary (from July) and took a small trip to Nashville that November.

Somehow the conversation came up and she told me "I'm ready".  I was surprised to hear it all of a sudden.  Ironically and coincidentally, we had one more payment left on our existing adoption loan.  I had figured out the previous summer how to rearrange all of our finances once this moment came...but that plan didn't include another adoption at the time.  Just thoughts of emergency savings, college funds, future weddings, and vehicles to pay for

Celebrating Lily's Gotchya Day in 2015

Trip to the Black Hills in 2016

A commitment
We went up for prayer a couple times at church.  It was the second time that sealed it and we cemented the decision that evening.  No more questions, we're ready and committed to moving forward.  All that day I had been thinking about a "boy" somewhere in a care center.  Whatever my fears, he needs a family and we can provide that for him.  Who's going to rescue him? Whatever we do as a family, he can either be part of it or we can exclude him when he needs us.

You might be asking "what about the girls?  Isn't there a greater need for girls?".  Believe it or not, in the last few years, the need to adopt boys is about the same as girls or greater.  That is a switch from when we first adopted because now most prefer or ask for girls when adopting.

Every bit makes a huge difference!

Facebook Donate Button

(not tax deductible, but has the lowest fees per donation)

GoFundMe.com/team-mayfield-adoption

(not tax deductible, but lower fees per donation)

 

PureCharity.com/team-mayfield-adoption 

tax deductible and grants can go straight to our Adoption Agency)

A new challenge

Last summer, I felt like I was being challenged.  I had recently read a couple books.  One about a missionary who went to live in the Amazon (End of the Spear) and the other by my favorite christian artist about his life, music career, and his own families adoption stories (Between Heaven and the Real World).  Interestingly the two authors stories intersected as well.  We were familiar with the stories, but even as I look back through the pages it wasn't any one particular thing that caught me, except the faithfulness of God that reigns true and the reward that comes by knowing and trusting Him.  I had been thinking about how small this life is in comparison to eternity with my Savior and how the Lord has blessed us.  Blessed us enough to help someone else.  The words that came to my heart were "What if you did something crazy and trusted me?".

At the South China Botanical Graden in Guangzhou

 At the great Wall in Beijing

Thanks for everyone's help so far.  Every bit makes a huge difference!

Facebook Donate Button
(not tax deductible, but has the lowest fees per donation)

GoFundMe.com/team-mayfield-adoption 

(not tax deductible, but lower fees per donation)

PureCharity.com/team-mayfield-adoption
(tax deductible and grants can go straight to our Adoption Agency)

Blessings

Thanks for everyone's help so far.  Every bit makes a huge difference!

Facebook Donate Button
(not tax deductible, but has the lowest fees per donation)

GoFundMe.com/team-mayfield-adoption 

(not tax deductible, but lower fees per donation)

PureCharity.com/team-mayfield-adoption
(tax deductible and grants can go straight to our Adoption Agency)

Please remember to pray for us! We believe God has laid this on our hearts and we trust him. The words that God impressed on my heart a year ago were "What if you did something crazy...and trusted me?"

 Blessings...

 So, we've had our ups and downs in the last 4 and a half years...with adoption, jobs, friends, healing, family, church, life... but God has been faithful even when we felt wrecked...the Lord pulled us through.  Our children are such a blessing and we've all grown emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

I remember when we had Lily with us in China. She had these two toys that she had in her hands since we met her and would never put them down. It was all she brought with her from the care center including the clothes she was wearing, that we sent her, and also the small photo album we sent of our family and dog. They also gave us the disposable camera we sent for them to take pictures of her in their care. All through China, Lily never put the toys down...it was her only bond that she had left.

The only time in China she dropped those toys was in the grocery store picking out some snacks. One of our favorite memories was when we finally made it to the house. The kids, family, and friends had welcomed us home at the airport from Hong Kong through Chicago and we drove home with all four kids. When we stepped into the house, and the kids wanted to play with Lily, we saw her drop those toys and she never really picked them up again. It was something that warmed our hearts.

 So much more of the story with Lily, but even two-three years later, we thought our family was complete...until now...

Fundraiser Update! (We got our feet wet and our hands dirty)

We have raised $3880 in one week so far from Friends and Family on and off crowdfunding. Thanks for everyone's help so far! Almost 10% raised. Very Thankful and blessed. Praise God!

We went up for prayer at church to pray about our fundraiser.  The word the person had for us was "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear...1 John 4:18

You guys are the best!