Director’s Words                                                                       Fr. Louis Aldrich S.J.

I want to thank each of you again for your great generosity in supporting the mission of our lay evangelists.  Through God's grace and your generosity each year we "just make" our budget.  I hope someday we may start to have a surplus; at least in management theory, a foundation like ours should have one years "back-up" funds to cover salaries and basic benefits in case of emergency.  I am grateful to God that so far we get "just enough" and see how God will "manage" things in the future.

St. Ignatius taught that, in apostolic work, we should pray as if all depended upon God, and work as if all depended upon ourselves.  The most common experience of our lay evangelists is that they must pray constantly, as if all depended upon God, otherwise there is no fruit from their evangelical work. So in our formation of the lay evangelists we require they pray together half an hour each morning before classes start, we provide them with a spiritual director who arranges yearly five to eight day retreats for them and counsels them how to grow in their life of prayer.

Because we must also work as if all depended upon ourselves, our foundation, from the beginning, has striven to find the best "methods" for evangelizing here in Taiwan.  We have tried many things: some did not work, some worked in some places with some groups, some seem to always work.  For example, we have found that once a catechumen class has started, if the parish will pray for each catechumen by name during the intercessory prayers of the Mass, the number of catechumens who persevere and ask for Baptism is significantly higher than if this is not done.

In this newsletter three of our lay evangelists will share some of the methods they have used in different places, for different kinds of people.  Grace Huang will share about her experience in Taichung, where a One-brings-one Evangelism Prayer Group she organized among the parish's Catholics has been a great help in her very fruitful evangelism work.  Mr. Jefu Chang  will share his methods and experiencing evangelizing in Homes for Aged in Hsinchu County (79 were baptized this January).  Hsuan Lwo  will share her work among the Hakka in Kwanghsi: among the Hakka, it is a much slower process of evangelism, but Hsuan Lwo , who is herself a Hakka, is slowly discovering an appropriate method.  Finally, one of  our new lay evangelists, Yujye Chang , will share her experience of the past year.

Since September 2015 our Foundation has been supporting three nuns from Mainland China who are now studying in the Evangelism Section of St. Bellarmine School of Theology; one of them is in the second year of the three year program and has done very well and the other two are in the first year.  According to the Church's teaching nuns are also belong to the "laity" so our foundation has been training and supporting nuns doing direct evangelism from the beginning.

Finally, because of your generosity, in addition to the many catechumens who have converted to Jesus, been baptized and entered the Church, our foundation, because it's one mission is direct evangelism, has had the time to make some progress in understanding how to pray and how to  work to accomplish this mission.  God continue to bless each of you.