New Orleans Here We Come

So it's done.

Back in the hands of the United States bureaucracy.

I just returned from mailing the re-adoption paperwork to the passport office in New Orleans.

No more hiccups, please.

Sheila in Congressman Roe's office will be following up with the New Orleans office on Friday but doesn't expect any problems.  A big thanks to Tracie and Sheila for all their help and support from that office.  Oh, I guess I'll mention Wanda also, who happens to have Phil Roe on speed dial - seriously.  She is one piece of work.

Last, I'm still playing with video footage from the Heritage concert.  I uploaded a compilation from Born to Praise the Lord and Out of His Great Love a day or two ago.  Here is the video channel.  I'm still not sure if the quick video feed on the right column of the blog is updating.  I'll probably add one more that combines clips from the last two songs.

Randy

A Second Birthday

It's been a while since I updated, and thought I would share a little this evening. The past two weeks have been an emotional roller coaster ride for Randy and I especially, but in reality, our whole family as well.

We have been brought to our knees many times, pleading and begging with our Father for mercy, but this time just seemed BIGGER for some reason. A God-sized prayer that needed a God-sized answer. From our perspective, we knew we were hopeless to resolve the issue ourselves and it was a true "hands-up Lord" moment. My dad told me last week that he knew the Lord had something really big planned for us this summer since the devil has been fighting us every step. Can you say AMEN to that??

A quick recap of the past week since I last updated. Our attorney meeting on Monday of last week was awesome. We feel very blessed to have been led to Ron, and we are truly grateful for his help, patience, and perseverance with us. On Tuesday evening, he had a draft of the petition for re-adoption ready for our review. A few minor changes, and the final draft was finished by Friday. Ron called on Wednesday to tell us our court date in Sullivan County would be on Monday, April 25, 2011 at 8:15. Which, brings us to this very special day!!!

Today, April 25, 2011, will now and forevermore be known as Daniel Stephen Gardner's second birthday. Today, he became a citizen of the United States of America and our American son. We are so grateful for the signatures on the decree today that will allow us to now get his AMERICAN passport. Praise the Lord from whom ALL blessings flow. Now, I anxiously await his third birthday, when he will be adopted in to the eternal family of God and live with us forever. You are welcome to join me in that prayer as well. :)

Overwhelmed with gratitude would be an understatement. We have been so blessed by the number of people who have fervently prayed on our behalf. Please don't stop praying for us, as we don't have the passport YET. Praise the Lord for His faithful people who pray , what a blessing. We also can not express how thankful we are to each and every person who has joined with us financially in this journey as well. What a blessing to carry you with us to Romania and Croatia.

Prayer requests for this week:

• Speedy service from the passport office in Louisiana
• That we could get our focus back to planning and preparing for the trip, practicing, etc.
• We will use this experience as a witness to others
• Transportation issue is still undetermined....prayers for wisdom and discretion in finishing our reservations.

Thank you again to you all. I would love for you to leave some comments, just so I know someone is reading this! :)

Kim

Along the Journey....

Just returned home from a meeting with our attorney this morning. We have been blessed to find a man of God with a heart for missions who is helping us with the citizenship issue. I feel so blessed right now, and my heart is full.

We would covet your prayers for an "expedient" court date in the Sullivan County courts so that we can legally "re-adopt" our precious Daniel. This will give him automatic US citizenship, a Tennessee birth certificate, and finally have IN WRITING his full given name of Daniel Stephen Gardner. There are no legal documents affirming his whole name at this point, so this is an exciting thing for us as well. Even his social security card just says Daniel S. Gardner.

I am continually reminded of how blessed I am and how BIG God is. This is not a concrete resolution to our travel issues, but it's a big step forward. Once we have the court date, our attorney feels the adoption can be completed on THAT same day. Wow, that's big!!! After that, we will have to get on the passport issue immediately. We are counting on our congressman, Dr. Phil Roe and his wonderful staff to help us get this accomplished as efficiently and quickly as possible.

We would covet your prayers for a quick court date. Also, we would ask that you pray for us as we discuss this with Daniel. We talked this morning about letting him know we will be adopting him here in Tennessee. He will most likely be going with us to court on this day and we want it to be a very special day for him and us as well. But, we also don't want him to have ANY doubts of who is was, is or will be. He was created to be a member of our family from day one, and we want him to know this firmly!

So thankful to God for the way He continues to direct our paths and footsteps on this journey we're taking with HIM!
Kim

Gardner Video Channel

So I've been doing some work on videos at the request of several people who missed the concert.  I've set up a new channel on youtube for us as well as put a shortcut to the latest videos on the right hand column.  If you have a youtube account you can easily subscribe to it and know when I post new videos.

So far I have the first half online and a couple of songs from Christmas when we sang at my father-in-law's church.  Hope you enjoy.  Except for acapella songs I usually clip the front and back because I'm not entirely sure about copyright issues.  For a quick view, here is the last song of the first half below.

Giving praise

I wanted to do a quick update this morning on where things stand and what we have found out so far this week. We were not FULLY informed at the time of our adoption all the legal requirements for citizenship. Daniel is a legal, permanent resident of the USA, but he does NOT have US citizenship. Therefore, without citizenship, you can't apply for a US passport. This, my friends is the big issue.

First and foremost, we are BLESSED beyond measure with an abundance of praying friends. Where would we be if not for the power of prayer. I can not begin to express my gratitude and humbleness over the prayers going up on our behalf. Please !!! DON'T STOP PRAYING!!! There's much to pray for!

The one really BIG bright spot for the week came in a phone call last night from our adoption agency. Finally, they had some good news for us. I can't remember her name at the moment, but she was just as shocked tell me as I was to hear. CHI (Children's House International) in Washington State dug out our files from their archives and found ORIGINAL documents from Romania. She told me, this NEVER happens. They never find originals from Romanian adoptions. I don't know about you, but I really think that was a total GOD thing. God put those documents there just for us to have today. They are overnight FEDEX shipping here, hopefully to be in our hands today. With these documents, our chances of getting things expedited for citizenship are much stronger. Or, for re-adoption, whichever route our attorney feels is best, (and fastest!)

We are working with a local attorney who God miraculously directed us to through a fellow church member. He attends Heritage with us, but we have not yet had the privilege of meeting him. We will meet with him with a load of documents on Monday morning.

Please continue to pray. There is really no human way to fix this and get it completed in time for travel in July. But, we know that God is in control, God lead us to this trip and has gone before us in every stage of planning thus far. God will NOT leave us, He will not forsake us, and we are just trusting in His almighty plan.

Specific areas for prayer:

• Expedient answers to the citizenship issue
• Good, effective meeting with our lawyer Monday morning 9:00
• Peace for Randy & I (and Kelsie!)
• We will make God look good as we walk through a difficult period
• Daniel WILL be able to travel with us in July
• Did I mention PEACE???

I so love and appreciate all the phone calls, notes of encouragement and words of encouragement I've received this week. Thank you all so much for uplifting our family.

Kim

Heritage Concert - A Media Frenzy

So as several people were unable to attend (such as that slacker Kim Hecht in Croatia, :)) but still wanted to see or at least hear the concert, I drafted the boys into helping out. 

I gave Daniel my digital Canon with 70-300 IS lens for taking pictures and I had Dustin take video.  The video is still in the works but I've posted some of the pictures that Daniel snapped.

All I can say is - good job Daniel!  Very nicely done for a 10 yr-old.

(note to Eric M - This means one of two things - either doing a live photo shoot is so easy a 10 yr-old can do it, or it means you may have some serious competition in a few years)

Mountaintops and Valleys

Wow! That's really ALL I can say tonight is WOW! It has been a wild ride these last 24 hours.

Let me start off with our mountaintop experience.

Yesterday evening, we were honored, humbled and blessed to be able to share the gospel in music with our family and friends at our local church, Heritage Baptist in Johnson City, TN. Someone shared with Kelsie after the event, that he felt like we had shared the "Gardner comedy hour". Well, I don't know if that's a compliment or not, but we were truly blessed to get a little "personal" with our extended family and share some of our struggles, blessings, triumphs, failures, and heart-felt burden. We had some very lighthearted moments, like Randy forgetting his lyrics to the song we have sung for the longest time. Kelsie got so tickled at one point, she couldn't even sing. So, yes, we had our moments. It was a fun evening filled with joy, love, laughter and we felt so loved on it was a true mountain top experience.

We started our song service out last night with one of our newest songs, "Trust and Obey". It's an A Capella arrangement that the Martins did several years ago. The words to that song have played over and over again in my mind today. Truly, it is THE ONLY Way!! Trust....
that's what the Lord calls us to do, is just to trust in Him. His ways are higher than our ways, my head knows this....my heart....well.....

When I went to the mailbox this morning, there it was, the dreaded letter we had prayed against receiving! It was from the state department, official government business....not good news. I felt the envelope, hoping beyond hope that the passport card was in the envelope. Nope, NOT TODAY! Instead, it was a letter stating that we had not provided sufficient evidence to finish his passport application. We hadn't provided proof of CITIZENSHIP for Daniel.

What??? We had sent his birth certificate, his social security number, his "proof of permanent residency" card, everything except a sample of mine and Randy's blood it seemed, but it was NOT enough. TRUST.....

Randy has been on the phone to two attorneys, our adoption agency in Washington State, the State Department, and I don't even know who else. He has sent e-mails to our senators and representative, another agency connected to the government passport office, and a family lawyer. We are praying and TRUSTING in the provision and timing of God, but let me tell you, it's HARD! Saying it, singing it, knowing it, believing it, well, it's all different on the mountaintop. When you're in the valley...that, my friends is a different story. Tonight, my spirit is encouraged, but my heart is heavy. No mom or dad enjoys the type of day we have had today. It's been heart-wrenching and one of my worst nightmares. I've always had a "fear" of the "what-ifs" in regard to adoption. This would not be near as big of an issue for us, however, we have spent a significant amount of money on plane tickets for our mission trip this summer that is only 3 months and 8 days away. The time expectancy on resolving this type of issue....a minimum of 5 months.

TRUST......"With God, all things are possible"...Matthew 19:25-27. Even when things seem impossible to me and in an earthly way look to be too hard , God is still in control. God is still God and is worthy of my trust.

God has been faithful, He is faithful and He will be faithful. I TRUST in Him!

We covet your prayers as we try to resolve this little bump in the road. We are getting so excited about the trip, and Daniel is collecting soccer balls to give out to the village children. He's so excited and has over $35 to buy new soccer balls so far. He is an inspiration to us; he has such a giving heart.

Continue to also pray about these things as well:

• Renting a van or Train transportation
• Opportunities to witness while in Hungary, Romania, and Croatia. Even as we are traveling, I pray that we will be a witness to those around us.
• Safety while in Europe and traveling to and from.

Thank you to everyone who is supporting us and lifting us up to our Great God ! He truly is worthy of our praise!

Kim

Prayers for YET ANOTHER Passport Issue

Just to prove my sweet dear husband WRONG, I'm going to make this very brief.

We submitted the paperwork, and necessary funds, pictures, etc. for Daniel's passport over one month ago. I went to the US Passport website this morning to see how the progress was going. There is no record of his documents in the system. This is a source of concern and so I'm taking it straight to the SOURCE of all answers! praying that God will find these documents, and it will indeed arrive in the mail soon.

Coveting your prayers for Daniel's passport situation.

More later! I promise! I hate being brief!!!
Kim