COVID and International Travel - Prayer Requests

 Hello friends and family!

We want to first say thank you for the many words of encouragement and prayers over the last few weeks especially as we've neared the end of our adoption process. God has been good and we've had so much movement forward in the last month! At the end of February, we passed court and received our written court orders. Following that, we received Article 23 from India, our emergency visas for travel and our daughter's birth certificate! We are currently waiting to get a phone call that our daughter's passport has been printed. Once we receive that news, we can book flights and make travel preparations. Lord willing, we will travel within a week or two of that call! We are so excited to meet our little girl! 

As we prepare for travel, we have a few specific, travel related prayer requests:

1) We are required to have a COVID test before leaving the U.S. as well as once we are in India in order to enter our daughter's state. We will also need a 3rd COVID test before leaving India and flying back to the U.S. Would you pray with us that our tests come back quickly and that our tests are negative each time? We want to avoid having to quarantine in India and/or having to cancel flights or change arrangements if we would test positive. So we are boldly praying that we would have negative test results at each of those times!

2) Please pray for traveling mercies for us and for our daughter. She will be experiencing so many overwhelming "firsts" - flying, staying in a hotel, various appointments, etc. and we can only begin to imagine how stressful that will likely be for her. Please pray for us to have wisdom in how to care well for her needs as we do a lot of traveling on top of navigating the stress of added logistics with COVID. 

3) Pray for our boys as they are home with family. Pray that they would have peace as we are gone and excitement to meet their little sister! Pray for our hearts as we say goodbye to them for a few weeks. This is the longest we have been apart from them and we know there will be a lot of emotions for all of us.

4) Pray for us as we pack and try to determine what we need. We're thankful for some great packing lists from our agency and friends who have traveled before us, but it's still a bit overwhelming to think about packing for a new child and for travel in a country we've never been to. 

5) Pray for these last few weeks before travel, as we try to soak up time with our boys and invest well in them while also preparing for travel and all that entails. We want to use our time wisely and focus on our marriage, family and relationship with God as we prepare to welcome another little one into our family. We know there will be a lot of adjustments to be made once our daughter is home and we want to be prepared as best as we can to attach well to her and have a smooth of a transition as possible.

6) Our daughter's state is seeing a rise in COVID cases and is discussing different lockdowns and/or other safety measures. Please pray that her state would remain open long enough for the passport to be issued and for us to bring her home! 

7) Praise God for His provision so far! We made a budget outlining our travel costs and they are completely covered almost down to the dollar! How amazing is that? We are praising God for His financial provision over this adoption along with His provision is so many other small and big ways. He has been so faithful to us all throughout this process.

Thanks for all your prayers! We can truly feel your prayers lifting our family up these last few weeks as we wait for the word that it is time to travel. God has been so good to surround us with such an amazing community of family and friends! We can't wait for you all to finally meet our little girl!