Greetings all! We know that there are a lot of hard things happening in our world today. We are praying for the people of Afghanistan and Haiti as they suffering in different ways. We are also keenly aware that we are still in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and so we are praying that wisdom and common sense will wash over the nation so that we can get back to life as normal.
Not that there is an easy transition after mentioning such heavy things, but we wanted to put out a brief update to let you all know where things stand with us and with our adoption.
For general life updates, in typical Echols Family fashion, it’s been a busy summer.
Life Updates
Adoption Updates
In our last post we mentioned that we had to update our psychological evaluation, home study, and i-800a. We are happy to report that all of the updates have been completed on those items and will be finalized this week. From there our i-800a extension application and home study update will be sent to USCIS to extend our immigration approval for another year.
In addition to these updates, most of the documents in our dossier are due for updates. This includes FBI finger prints, medical and employer letters for both of us, and a few other documents. Once we have these documents, we will need to have them notarized and apostilled (notarize the notary) before we can send them off to Colombia. We will begin working on those updates ASAP with the hopes of having our dossier completely up to date by October. This will be helpful as we’ve had some positive conversations recently and do not want to be hindered by out of date paperwork.
How You Can Be Praying For Us?
- Please pray that we are diligent in getting our paperwork done, but also that those that we are depending on to provide us with these updates are responsive. In the past getting our medical letters done correctly has been a battle as well as Laura’s employment letter. Finally, Laura applied for a passport renewal due to it getting ready to expire, so please pray that it comes back ASAP as it is a necessary part of this next round of updates.
- With the rise of the Delta variant, naturally there will be challenges for international adoption. Please pray that the US, Colombia, and other countries that participate in international adoption can effectively combat the virus so that children and families can be brought together without significant delay.
- Finally, please pray for our Colombian family. Pray that they are spiritually, emotionally, and physically kept by the hand of almighty God. Pray for courage as they wait for us, and patience as we wait for them.
As mentioned before, our goal is to complete our updates and have our documents sent off to Colombia by October. Once we are all done, we will hop back on here with another update and hopefully some more positive news. As always, we greatly appreciate everyone who has been on this very long journey with us!
Stay tuned!
Beautiful In Time 
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