By Michelle Sutherlin

For The Transcript

Annie Grace Wood, 11, and Hope Wood, 9, are the typical American pre-teens. They love to laugh, especially at each other and also are a little shy around strangers.

Annie Grace loves to sew and knit and Hope loves basketball and softball. They both love to read.

What makes them special is where they came from. Annie Grace was adopted from a Chinese orphanage when she was 27 months old, and Hope was adopted from a nearby Chinese orphanage when she was 21 months old.

Their parents, Bim and Nancy Wood are typical American parents. But together the parents and there daughters have made a fascinating Chinese-American family in Norman.

Birthland Tour

In June, the Woods and several other families who adopted children through Dillon International, an adoption company based out of Tulsa, took their children to China so they could see where they came from.

This was Dillon’s second Birthland Tour that they had arranged for the families, Nancy said.

The families stayed in the same hotels they stayed in when they picked up their children and even went to the orphanages where they were adopted from.

Annie Grace and Hope were orphaned in the same Chinese province. The family toured Annie Grace’s first home.

“We went to the rooms where the babies were and saw them,” Annie Grace said. “It was fun.”

Nancy said although the babies looked clean, healthy and well-fed, they didn’t look happy.

“Their little faces were forlorn,” Nancy said. “They weren’t playing or giggling or laughing. They were clean and their beds were clean and they seemed healthy. They just needed parents. They needed a family.”

Not only did Hope get to visit the orphanage she came from, she also got to meet her caregiver from when she was a baby.

“Her caretaker came out and hugged her and talked to her and held her hand,” Nancy said.

Hope said although it was a little uncomfortable being the center of attention, meeting her caregiver was the best part of the trip.

“It was fun,” she said.

When the Woods were there they asked the orphanage what they might need. Bim said they needed a washer. So one day the family stopped by a Chinese factory, bought a washing machine and delivered it to the orphanage.

A washing machine wasn’t all they got.

Nancy said she made each orphanage a photo album of each girl as they had grown up.

“We wanted them to see how each girl has changed over the years,” Nancy said. “We wanted them to see that the work they had done when Hope and Annie Grace were little was worthwhile.”

On the last night of the 12-day trip, the girls wore authentic Chinese dresses that were made especially for them. The girls had been fitted for the dresses and picked out the material at the beginning of the trip.

Annie Grace’s dress was made of pink satin with little flowers and butterflies that were a slightly darker shade of pink all over the dress. Hope’s dress was made of red satin and had gold trim with gold Chinese symbols written all over the dress.

The girls, who are both taking Chinese, struggled to read the characters as they admired their dresses.

“The writing is too sloppy,” Hope laughed.



How it all started

Nancy and Bim fell in love and were married in 1994. Neither had had any children.

“I began thinking we weren’t too old to adopt,” Nancy said.

But Bim thought they were. The couple was in their 40s by then.

Nancy said she began to pray about adoption. After a while, Bim came home from his job as a meteorologist at the National Severe Storms Lab in Norman with a change of heart.

The couple started looking into adoption and soon found themselves working through Dillon International to adopt a child. Not only did they discover they had a love for China through this experience, Nancy also discovered a new calling.

Nancy had been in a counseling practice but was ready to use her social work license another way. She soon began to work for Dillon by helping with its home studies in central and western Oklahoma.

Bim and Nancy filled out all the pre-adoption paper work. And then they waited and waited and waited.

Finally in September 1997, the call came that the couple had a daughter in China. The next day a Fed Ex package arrived with her picture.

“She was beautiful, but she looked sad and scared,” Nancy said. “We prayed that someday we would see a smile on her face” she said as Annie Grace, the child in the picture sat across from her parents with a broad smile on her face.

In November 1997, the Woods and several other families traveled to China to pick up their daughters. The anniversary of the day they got their daughters is now called “Gotcha Day” and the families get together every year to celebrate it, Nancy said.

Nancy said it wasn’t long before she told Bim that Annie Grace needed a sister.

“He said, ‘We’re way too old now,’” Nancy said.

So she prayed and it wasn’t long before he came home saying he was ready to adopt again.

“I said, ‘Bim, did you change your mind?’ and he said, ‘No, God changed my heart.’”

Hope came home in November 1999.



Moving forward

The family has melded nicely into a community full of adopted children at their church, Trinity Baptist in Norman, where they joined after adopting the girls. Nancy said there are several families with children adopted from other countries. She said there are children adopted from China, Korea, India, Guatemala and Haiti.

There is also a Chinese ministry at the church, where Nancy teaches and Bim is in charge of the refreshments.

“It’s normal to see other races and kids who don’t look like their parents,” Nancy said. “It’s really a neat environment.”

The couple said the adoption changed their lives in more ways that one.

“First, I never imagined I would ever go to China,” Nancy said. “I didn’t think that would change me, but it did. It changed both of us. We developed a heart for China and its people.

“Our daughters not only made us parents but they connected us to a country we wouldn’t have had any affiliation to. We really became a Chinese-American family.”

The couple has many Chinese friends now, the girls take Chinese language classes and they both attend Heritage Camp each summer through Dillon International where they learn more about where they cam from. Nancy and Bim also work at the camp.

Bim said he is so glad to have gone back to China.

“We’ve been waiting for 10 years,” he said.

“We wanted to visit the orphanages when we went but we weren’t allowed to. We didn’t do much sight seeing.”

The family hopes to go back someday. And Annie Grace already has plans for a trip.

“When I’m older — a lot older — I would like to go back with my Gotcha Day friends,” Annie Grace said. “We will travel together, stay in a hotel together and see things we didn’t get to see.”

Even the love from her homeland couldn’t change one thing, though.

“I will try to beg them to eat American food.”