The Deacon's Bench
Photo: by Desmond Lim
I’m glad we didn’t have nuns like this when I was growing up. I never would have made it past third grade.
When Sister Linda Sim was growing up, all she wanted to do was serve the nation.
In the 1970s, she applied to the Singapore Armed Forces to be a front-line soldier, but was told women could take up only clerical positions. The Singapore Police Force also turned her down as she was too petite.
Undeterred, the gutsy woman took up taekwondo and eventually earned a black belt. Then she heard her religious calling.
“If I couldn’t serve in the army, then I will serve in God’s army,” quipped the 58-year-old Franciscan religious sister.
She ran a Catholic hospital in Zimbabwe for three years, and spent 17 years in England as a religious trainee and trainer before coming home in 2004.
She now works as a mission awareness coordinator at the Mount Alvernia Hospital and Assisi Hospice. On weekends, however, she swops her religious robes for a taekwondo dobok.
She teaches martial arts to kids who are in remission from severe illnesses in a class sponsored by the Singapore Taekwondo Federation.
Check out the rest. And watch a great video at the link.
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