One day, the Korean sisters who also live in the parish came to cook for the old people who go to the center behind the church for classes every Tuesday and Thursday. That day the sisters cooked Korean food. Watching them prepare the meal, I felt very excited. I could finally eat my favorite Bulgogi, a beef dish. When the food was ready I was so excited that immediately after we said the prayer, I took my chopsticks to pick some Bulgogi. When the chopsticks were about to touch the meat, one of the parishioners shouted to the Korean sisters, “Fr. Taemoon does not eat meat!” So I changed the direction of my chopsticks and picked up the kimchi instead.

Whenever I think of this story, I cannot help but laugh. Because of what I told them, I could not enjoy my favorite Bulgogi that day. It would have been my first Bulgogi in Taiwan. Yet even if I did not get to eat it, I feel consoled by the knowledge that the parishioners paid attention to what I told them and that they care for me.

Columban lay missionary Tabitha Bark offers a song and a smile to migrant workers at the Columban-run Hope Workers’ Center in Taiwan.

Two of the parishes operate day-care centers for mentally handicapped children, most of whom are from non-Christian families. The children receive a level of personal care, training and education that is uncommon in Taiwan. Efforts are underway to join with other centers throughout the island in the hope of raising the standard of care for such children.

Columbans also work among the Atayals, a tribal people who eke out a living in the mountains of Miaoli County. This area is a government-established reservation. All but the resident Aborigines are required to obtain a pass to enter. The aboriginal people in Taiwan suffer from poverty in sharp contrast to the majority of the population, and they are in danger of losing their culture and natural resources.

A disabled child is comforted by Columban Father Patrick O’Beirne in Taiwan in 2001.

Concern for the most marginalized segments of Taiwan society inspires other Columban apostolates. Ministries have been undertaken to prisoners and to the homeless. Twelve-Step spirituality groups have been established for alcoholics and their families.

Workers in Taiwan are often poorly treated by their employers in ways that deny their basic rights and human dignity. This is especially true for foreign workers. Recent years have seen an enormous influx of foreign contract workers, both legal and illegal.

Most of these workers are Thai or Filipinos, although some come from Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and mainland China. Columbans founded two centers in Hsinchu to promote the spiritual and social well-being of workers: New Life Workers’ Center in Taoyuan in 1984 and the Hope Workers’ Center in Chungli in 1987.

Columban Father Peter O'Neill took part in a protest against the abuse of migrant workers in Taiwan.

The New Life Workers’ Center is well-respected among indigenous workers and labor unions. The Hope Workers’ Center emphasizes service to migrant workers and women’s issues. Both centers encourage indigenous and foreign workers to set aside attitudes of competition and animosity so as to present a united front for the betterment of all workers.

Other services provided by the centers include legal support and action, care for the environment, information exchange, faith-sharing and companionship.

These centers are now run by trained local lay people. Columbans continue their involvement with the centers in a variety of support, coordination, liturgical and networking roles.

You have probably read stories about the dramatic economic growth and social transformation of China. Indeed, the changing landscape of China has been remarkable.

But, as you can imagine, not all Chinese people benefit. I see this first-hand with special-needs people in Wuhan City, a city of more than 7 million people located in the central Chinese province of Hubei.

Happy anniversary! Li Qiong and Yuan Hong celebrated their first year in the Columban Crafts Project with a party and a cake.

In April 2006, I started the Columban Crafts Project to help special-needs people develop work skills and earn a modest income by creating and selling beautiful Chinese-themed Christmas cards.

The first people to join our project were Li Qiong and Yuan Hong, who have been our friends for five years. Li Qiong suffers from cerebral palsy, and Yuan Hong has serious visual impairments. The China government provides few opportunities for special education or employment for citizens such as Li Qiong and Yuan Hong.

Li Qiong could not walk until age 10. All of the black-and-white photographs from her childhood show her sitting. She was never accepted into local schools; teachers feared that she would have poor exam results, reflecting poorly on the teachers. Li Qiong is a bright woman, but her mobility and speech difficulties mean that she has never had a job.

Yuan Hong opportunities for regular employment have been receding as his sight continues to worsen.

The idea behind the Columban Crafts Project came as Columban missionaries and I began to discuss the possibility of a project that would provide work, social interaction and basic income for Li Qiong and Yuan Hong. The project involves having Li Qiong and Yuan Hong make Christmas cards in their homes with material supplied to them by Columbans who live in Wuhan City.

They use plain cards, pictures, glue, ink stamps and wood guide tools to make the cards, which are then packed and shipped to people worldwide who have been generous in their support for the project.

The project provides more than just work; the social interaction is just as important. Our twice-weekly visits to Li Qiong and Yuan Hong offer visitors to Wuhan City the opportunity to meet the participants and to lend support and encouragement to this new Columban initiative.

With great glee, Li Qiong urges us to take group photographs with the visitors—photos she adds to her collection of childhood snapshots.

More activities for Li Qiong and Yuan Hong have grown from the initial project. We make occasional visits to local parks, and Chinese friends of Columbans in Wuhan City are helping to run the project.

We realize our contribution is small. However, the good humor of Li Qiong and Yuan Hong as well as the generous support of those who buy our Christmas cards reminds us that something positive is emerging for our two friends who live on the margins of Chinese society.

Human trafficking, the exploitation of people for profit or other motives, continues to be a growing and evolving problem worldwide, especially in countries that attract migrant workers who do jobs their citizens rightly shun.

For more than 17 years, I have worked to help victims of human trafficking and labor exploitation through the Vietnamese Migrant Workers and Brides Office (VMWBO), an extension of the Columbans’ Hope Workers’ Center in Taiwan’s Chungli City. Although the Taiwanese government claims that efforts are being made to eliminate human trafficking, many migrant workers continue to fall victim to human rights abuses.

The least of My brothers. Columban Father Nguyen Van Hung discussed with a homeless man his health conditions at a shelter in Taipei, Taiwan.

The story of a 35-year-old man from Hà Tinh, Vietnam, is a recent example of the type of people our office tries to help.

Ngo Van Mui made an agreement with a labor agency in Vietnam to acquire work in Taiwan. The agreement was for him to work eight hours a day with overtime pay when necessary. He paid the agency $6,900 (in U.S. dollars) to find him work.

A Desperate Search For Work
When Van Mui arrived in Taichung, Taiwan, in July 2006, the agency placed him at the Limited International Eastern Co., the Taiwanese counterpart of the labor agency in Taichung. There, they locked him in for 15 days to wait for work, and he was not allowed contact with anyone outside of the company.

They had Van Mui perform sanitation services and otherwise locked him in the basement of the company building. Each day at 7 p.m., they would bring him to an unknown location about five minutes from the company building to sleep. He also was forbidden to leave that area.

After about five weeks, two labor agency representatives and a Chinese-Vietnamese translator brought him to a home to provide domestic service. When Van Mui entered, the woman of the house said she wanted an Indonesian worker, not a Vietnamese one.

The company representative convinced the woman to give him a work trial. This was his work schedule: up at 5 a.m. to do laundry, clean, cook and garden. In the evening, after preparing dinner, he was to iron clothes. He was not allowed to sleep until 10 or 11 p.m., a workday of 19 hours without overtime pay.

The work consisted entirely of domestic service, which is not what was agreed upon when Van Mui signed his contract. He consequently refused to do the unfair domestic work asked of him.

Van Mui was returned to the company where he was locked in the building, as before, for an additional 15 days. The manager and a translator told him that if he agreed to work in a domestic setting, the company would rebate an agreed-upon sum of money. Van Mui then wrote a statement declaring that he would perform domestic work upon acceptance from the household and an agreed-upon monetary rebate.

After a few days, Van Mui inquired with the labor agency about the status of working in a new household. When the manager informed him that the household did not want his services, Van Mui requested they provide him a different household in which to work.

The manager said a change was not possible and requested that he write a statement declaring his refusal to perform the domestic work.

Van Mui refused to write the unfair statement. The manager still refuses to provide a household change for Van Mui. The company then stated that if he wanted to escape, they would arrange for it. Van Mui only wanted to fulfill the contract, not to escape, so he refused.

On August 15, as he was taking out the trash, Van Mui left the company and arrived at our office to seek assistance.

Help For God’s Children
Like many migrant workers in Taiwan, Van Mui is a victim of human trafficking. He was cheated by the labor agency into paying $6,900, believing that he would be working for a manufacturing company under agreed wages and hours.

When he arrived in Taiwan, however, he was told that he must work as a domestic servant—an unregulated job without worker protections or set hours. Van Mui was locked indoors at the work site and had no access to anyone outside of those in the company for his first month in Taiwan.

Only after his escape from the company was he able to seek assistance. Now we at the VMW-BO are fighting for his fair treatment and a change in work in accordance to the signed contract.

At our office, we help victims, such as Van Mui, with full-time social workers who educate migrants about their rights under Taiwanese labor laws as well as provide psychological and legal assistance, emergency shelter, and a supportive and compassionate environment to these exploited children of God.

Columban Father Nguyen Van Hung’s work with migrant workers was honored by the U.S. State Department in its June 2006 Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report.

For nearly 10 years, Tabitha Bark was a Columban lay missionary in Taiwan, ministering to migrant workers in Chungli City. But her passion has always been food safety and organic farming, part of her wider involvement and interest in ecological issues.

Growing organic. Columban lay missionary Tabitha Bark, who has worked in Taiwan for 10 years, is shown in her garden with parishioners at the DaGuan village church in the TaiAnHePing parish.

That’s why she moved to the Columbans’ ministry among the Atayal aboriginal people in the mountains of central Taiwan. Tabitha works among the Atayals in DaGuan, a village of about 50 families that is perched on the edge of the DaAn River.

Not long after her arrival, Tabitha turned the ground in front of DaGuan’s tiny church into an organic vegetable garden, in which she grows chili, green peppers, spinach, lettuce, basil, onions and other green-leaf vegetables. Tabitha says the garden is an important statement about how we, as Christians, hope to live on Earth and is a valuable way to become part of the lives of the people she serves.

After working in Chungli City, Tabitha, who is from South Korea, realized she wanted to live in a place closer to nature. Moving to the mountains among aboriginal people was a logical step. The Atayals depend upon nature for their livelihood by growing vegetables, fruit trees (persimmons, plums, peaches and oranges) and harvesting bamboo shoots.

It is difficult work with often uncertain financial rewards.

For more than 1,000 years, the Atayals have acquired wisdom on how to live together with nature. Tabitha wanted to learn that wisdom.

Tabitha’s organic garden is a visible and practical expression of that mystery. Simply living in the mountains—with its scenic beauty, cleaner air, peace and quiet—is not enough for Tabitha. Growing vegetables brings her closer to nature and the local people. Nourishing and caring for the vegetables is a step toward closer communication with the natural world and educating herself and others about the value of safe food and humans’ relationship to nature.

Better Food & Paying Jobs
To compete with imported food and products from the Taiwan lowlands, the Atayal people have become accustomed to using pesticides and growth hormones to grow vegetables and fruits. Tabitha said her vegetable garden is not so much about organics, but rather about the safety of our food and the unnatural effects pesticides have on food and soil. As soil slowly grows sick with the addition of unnatural additives, we humans, too, slowly get sick.

The message is especially relevant to a small group of Catholic women in the village. They operate a local restaurant that offers aboriginal cuisine to tourists and visitors to the area. The restaurant creates paying jobs for local people, using local products and supporting local cultural crafts, such as weaving.

From the beginning, the restaurant was eco-friendly and raised all its own vegetables in nearby gardens. These gardens are not organic, but the ladies are aware of environmental issues and actively experiment with local remedies for pest control. For example, they spray cabbages regularly with a water/chili mix to prevent caterpillar damage.

Tabitha is clear about the connection between her garden and her ministry as a Columban lay missionary. Humans and nature are both from God, and our lives are interrelated with God and creation. God gave us consciousness, Tabitha says, to recognize who we are, where we are from, why we are on Earth and what we have to fulfill.

Our sin is that we do not live up to this calling. Jesus came to recover and reconcile our relationship with God. Through the cross and resurrection, Jesus offered His life for all creation, so we have the Christian obligation to understand the full dimensions of our new relationship with God and the natural world.

Tabitha sees this obligation in personal terms: “Our journey to understand our relationship to creation in Christ is also a journey to understand more clearly who I am. As a lay missionary, I am committed to that journey.”

Tabitha is also clear that her presence in DaGuan bears witness to the truth that, through our baptism, we are all missionaries. She wants local people to know and live out this truth. Tabitha was baptized as an adult, and her reflection on her baptism has led her to see that our relationship to nature is part of our common call to be disciples.

An organic vegetable garden in DaGuan is an important sign of how we can live in the world through new life in Jesus Christ. Having fresh, healthful vegetables for dinner is reason enough to give daily thanks for God’s grace. They also taste better!

Columban Father Larry Barnett has been a missionary in Taiwan since 1982. He holds a doctorate degree in anthropology.

On a chilly November morning, fellow Columban Father Pat McMullan and I made our way to the Beijing West Railway Station. Earlier that morning, we attended Mass at the South Cathedral, famous as the location of the first church built in Beijing by the greatest Jesuit missionary, Fr. Matteo Ricci.

This was our first visit to China and a break from our Columban missionary work in Korea.

Meeting with the bishop. Columban Fathers Kelvin Barrett (left) and Pat McMullan traveled with Sr. Clara Liu and met Bishop Huo Cheng of the Fenyong Diocese.

At the railway station, we located Sr. Clara Liu, our host for the next four days. She is in charge of the Shanxi Formation Center situated in Taiyuan, the major city in Shanxi Province,  an eight-hour train ride from Beijing.

After clearing the suburbs of Beijing, we passed through flat and uninteresting countryside. In contrast, our conversation with Sr. Clara was far from uninteresting. She talked of the traditional Catholic villages where Catholics can trace their faith back many generations. These Catholics continued the practice of the faith basically unhindered, even during troubled times like the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s.

We visited two of these cities on our way to the ancient city of Pingyao. Pingyao is one of the few cities to have survived the chaos of the Cultural Revolution intact.

It is now being restored as a tourist city where people can come and experience China as it was. For me, it was a quiet step into Old China, which is very different from modern China.

Sources Of Energy
Sr. Clara pointed out sources of new energy in the Chinese Catholic Church. She delighted in the fact that there are many new religious orders starting in China. Because the new orders have small numbers, however, they don’t have the resources for the adequate educational formation of their new members.

In addition, much more formation education is needed for China’s Catholic laity and the continuing education of priests, Sr. Clara said. In response, the Shanxi Bishop’s Conference had the vision to start the Shanxi Formation Center.
The first students at the Center, founded in 2004, graduated in July 2006. Sr. Clara spoke with justified pride at this achievement, but emphasized much needs to be done to achieve the program she desires.

Upon our arrival in Taiyuan, we were greeted by Fr. Wang Dingyuan, the quiet and sincere vice director of the Formation Center. In addition to teaching at the Center, he was instrumental in making the buildings and grounds suitable for the program. His and Sr. Clara’s dynamism and enthusiasm for their work are inspirational.

Map of China

We met similar zeal throughout our days in Taiyuan, where we were greeted warmly by several bishops as well as by the rector and students of the Formation Center’s seminary.

They all communicated the same enthusiasm about the bright future for the Catholic Church in China. The bishops, particularly, spoke of the need for exchange with other churches to enhance the education of priests, Religious and laity of China. They asked us to help, and we readily agreed, so moved we were by their commitment.

Such an exchange also adds to our commitment, as Columban missionaries, to the Chinese Church, which is at the heart of our Columban origins. It’s a good opportunity to further establish closer relations between the neighboring churches of Korea and China. In recent years, this contact has been growing steadily, but it’s encouraging to be part of this growth.

Now back in Seoul, Fr. Pat and I look forward to the times when we and other Columban missionaries can return to Taiyuan to help continue the exciting growth of the Church in China.

Columban Father Kelvin Barrett was ordained in 1969 and has served his mission life in South Korea, Rome and his native Australia.