Sim's Childhood

I was born in Atlanta, GA at Georgia Baptist Hospital, which is now Atlanta Medical Center.  That was the same hospital where my older brother, Jon, was born.  When I was two years old my parents moved to Indonesia to be missionaries.  We lived on the island of Sumatra in Palembang, Indonesia for a while and my younger brother, Harold, was born there.  After that we moved to Jambi, where we owned a monkey.

We moved back to the US for almost a year and lived in Lawrence, Kansas.  After our furlough in the US we returned to Indonesia and lived in Lahat, which is on the island of Sumatra as well.  While there I attended Indonesian schools till the third grade in the mornings, and my Mom taught me through correspondence coursesin the afternoons.  I read a lot, and tried to keep up with whatever my older brother was doing.

We did another year in the US in Tucker, GA, a suburb of Atlanta, GA.  There I attended the fourth grade where I was prolific at drawing horses heads that the girls all liked.

We then moved back to the big city of Medan on North Sumatra.  I attended the Medan International School, an American style school that no Indonesians were allowed to attend.  It was a great school for me and I learned a lot in the small classrooms from the great teachers.

After five years in Medan we moved back to the Atlanta area and lived in Decatur, GA.  I attended Decatur High School, which was a bit of a change.  Classes in general were pretty easy and it was hard to get used to the fact that most people had not travelled around the world -- many had never left the US.  But I survived.