Just like sisters

Grace Allen, 14, and Faith Kincaid, 13, sat in the third row at a youth group session at Valley Fourth Memorial Church on a recent Sunday. Dwarfed by everyone else in the room, the girls listened to the youth group’s band.

With the occasional stifled giggle they write notes in Chinese characters and pass them back and forth as Steve Allen, Grace’s dad and the youth pastor make announcements and speak about the holiday season.

“Tell your best friend: I want you to know how much I appreciate you investing in my life,” Allen said. With that, Grace nudges Faith and they share a secret smile.

Despite being the only two Chinese girls in the room, the two best friends couldn’t be more different.

Grace, an eighth-grader at Valley Christian School and a cheerleader for its basketball team, wore a gray zip-up jacket paired with a brown skirt and brown ballet flats. She swayed to the music and sung along to the lyrics, her long black hair loose.

Faith, a seventh-grader at Salk Middle School in Spokane, was dressed in jeans, a black zip-up jacket and athletic shoes with her hair in a ponytail, sat back and chewed gum.

Personally, she preferred punk rock. And, she really just didn’t understand the lyrics, or much else of what people were saying. Having only moved to Spokane from Dong Guang, a city in China, earlier in the year, Faith was still getting used to the English language.

The two adoptees have been friends since Faith was 8 years old and Grace was 9 , when Faith first arrived at the orphanage in Dong Guang.

Grace moved to Spokane Valley two years ago, but they continued to talk on the phone with Grace using calling cards to call Faith in China. Now living within miles from each other, they continue to develop a strong friendship – helping them as they grow up typical American teenagers.

“We can say anything to each other,” Grace said in her native Cantonese, a dialect of Chinese. They consider each other like sisters and speak to each other by phone every week. The night before church they had a sleepover at Grace’s house, spending most of the night listening to music and sharing secrets.

When Faith first arrived in America, she saw Grace every week, but now, with Faith being on a soccer team, their visits are less frequent. Before the sleepover weekend, the girls hadn’t seen each other in a month.

“They’re here,” Carrie Allen, Grace’s mother announced earlier that week when Faith and her family came for a visit.

“Yay!” said a usually reserved Grace, jumping off the couch.

The two sit on the couch, speaking in Cantonese about typical teenager girls stuff: school, clothes and hair. Faith has holes ripped into each knee of her jeans.

“I want to do that, too, but my mom won’t let me,” Grace said. Faith admits that she did it without asking.

“Now my mom won’t let me do it either,” she said sheepishly. She said she would like longer hair like Grace’s, but because she enjoys playing sports, it’s too much trouble.

The Allens and the Kincaids have a unique friendship, bonded by their adopted Chinese girls – each family has three.

The families met during their first adoption trip to China. The Allens went to adopt Lily, now 6, and the Kincaids, Adi, 6. They saw each other again when they went back a second time to adopt Abby Allen, 3, and Rylee, 4.

“There’s a different type of friendship with those girls,” Steven Allen said.

The Allens adopted Grace when she was 12 years old, an age where most girls usually don’t get adopted.

China has an issue with child trafficking, so the process to adopt takes longer with older girls, Steve Allen said.

Grace also had to decide for herself if she wanted to move to America. At first she said no.

“I was too scared to come here,” she said in English. The U.S., another country, was frightening to her.

But, luckily for everyone, including Faith, Grace decided that it would be a great opportunity to learn more English and possibly have a better life.

After Faith decided she also wanted to be adopted, the Allens told the Kincaids about her.

“How could we not get her friend and bring her over here,” said Renee Kincaid, Faith’s mother. Kincaid had not planned on adopting a teenager, but she and her family made the choice together.

“If she needed a home, we need to take her … she seemed like a cool kid,” said Mandy Kincaid, 14, Faith’s sister.

Mandy shares Faith’s interest in punk rock and gave her a CD by Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, a punk rock group, for her 13th birthday.

Grace prefers music that is “quieter and calmer,” she said, like High School Musical and Hannah Montana.

The girls intend to stay friends for a long time. They know they are lucky to have their friendship, but still miss the other girls from the orphanage.

“I still get sad sometimes and miss friends,” Faith said. “I want them to come over here, too.”

Grace said they would like to go back together for a visit together. Maybe when they are like 20, Grace offers.

“What? That old?” Faith exclaims. “At 20 we wouldn’t even know where everyone lives.”

The two laugh and resolve to figure it out later.

Unless DisneyWorld comes up first, Grace adds. “I would pick DisneyWorld over China because I’ve never been there,” she said.

As the two chatter on in Cantonese, Grace occasionally looks up at her father to confirm things, forgetting that she had been speaking entirely in Cantonese.

“Right, dad?” Grace asked at one point.

“Right, sure,” Allen answered, mockingly. “I don’t know what you’re saying,” he reminds her. The girls giggle.

“We don’t teach them Cantonese very much,” Grace said about their families.

“Because then they will understand what we’re saying,” she said. “And we have our secrets.”