goodies for my brown skinned babe

I was browsing the card section looking for a birthday card for miss Sophia Mekdes, when I saw a card adorned with a cute, brown faced girl. Behind the duplicate stack of cards, was a sign that said ‘Ebony’. “Wow, they have a section of cards for my sweet, brown baby”, I thought. I looked for more cards, and to my dismay, I didn’t find any. The entire section of girl’s birthday cards had ONE card with a little girl who had the same color skin as Sophia’s. ONE out of probably 50 cards. Now, many of them were bears, elephants, Dora, etc. They weren’t all little white girls, but you get the idea.

What really makes me sad…I never would have noticed this prior to our Ethiopian blessing. Never. That is embarrassing and I don’t really feel like I can complain, when I think about my previous lack of awareness. I do, however, wonder if there is a need for an ‘Ebony’ label, especially for only one card. Shouldn’t we just mix all of the cards together like one big {expensive} paper world?

I am noticing these types of situations more and more. I am fine with Sophia having both white and brown dolls, after all both colors exist in her family. However, I would like to have as many options for brown as there are for white, or at least somewhat close to the number of options. It seems like most clothing items with little girls on them, only have white girls. My sister was able to find a really cute ballerina shirt with a sweet brown girl on it. I love it. Yay, Old N*vy! (her legs are longer than two inches...she is somewhat squating in the picture)

Don’t forget about Sophia’s birthday celebration benefiting the Linck family. You can read about it in the previous post. Thank you to those of you who have posted about it on facebook and your blog. I really appreciate it!

Will you help us celebrate Sophia's birthday?

Our little Sophia is growing up so quickly! She will be one on October 12. We are celebrating in a BIG way and we want YOU to be a part of it!!!

As I said in my last blog post, we believe God calls Christians to care for orphans. Adoption is one way He uses us to care for His children. I LOVE reading adoption stories and especially love seeing how God provides the funding for adoptions. He provided for our adoption of Sophia in so many amazing ways. We never could have paid for her adoption on our own. So many of our family and friends gave their hard earned money to help bring her home and we are so thankful. You have no idea!

We know that it wasn’t too long ago that many of you helped with our adoption, but we are asking for you to give a little of your money to help bring another Ethiopian baby home to his or her forever family.

You see, we have some friends who are adopting from Ethiopia and we want to help them out. They are in the fundraising stage and are hoping to turn their application in on October 25, their 2nd wedding anniversary. They want to have all of the money for the fees raised ($18,000) before they submit the application. God has already provided in HUGE ways for them and it has been a blessing to watch.

So, back to Sophia’s birthday CELEBRATION!!!!! We are asking all of our friends, family, blogland buddies, total strangers, etc. to donate to the Linck’s adoption fund in Sophia’s name. If you know Sophia and she has brought joy to your life, would you please consider giving $5 or more, so Baby Linck can come home? If you don’t know her, but know how precious children are, would you donate money, as well?

For every $5 you donate, we will enter your name into a drawing for a prize. We will have a drawing when $100 has been donated and then again at $200, $300, etc. The more you donate the bigger your chance is to win.

The first prize is a brand new copy of “The Hole in Our Gospel”, by Richard Stearns!

Would you like an additional chance to win? If you donate money AND do a blog or facebook post about this, then your name will be entered an additional time (twice if you post on fb and your blog). Make sure you comment on my blog and let me know you posted about it.

To donate, please click here or on the link on the sidebar. This will take you to the ChipIn page I have created for Sophia’s birthday celebration. You are also welcome to write a check or pay with cash, if you will be seeing one of us in the near future.

“‘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 the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’” (Matthew 25:37-40)

For more information on John and Jennifer Linck, please visit their blog http://ourmissinglinck.blogspot.com/.

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Thank you so much for reading this and for your consideration in helping John and Jennifer bring home their "Missing Linck". I am so excited to see how God will use Sophia's life to help bring an orphan home to their forever family!