Social services funding limited in Taiwan

Anna, the counselor for seminary students in Taiwan. Editor's note: Dr. Terry Kriesel of Puget Island will be teaching this school year in a Taiwanese seminary. We invited him to share his observations of life in Taiwan on an occasional basis. Here is his latest dispatch:

This picture is of a woman here in the seminary where I teach. She is currently the counselor for seminary students. Her name is Anna and she is from Norway. She was sent by a Norwegian Lutheran Mission Society to Taiwan over 30 years ago.

The picture was taken May 17 when she invited about 11 of us over to her house to celebrate Norwegian Constitution Day (I think kind of like our 4th of July). She is telling us about the history of her beloved Norway. Most of the time while in Taiwan she worked helping to start several congregations in Taipei and over on the east coast of Taiwan. She also spent a lot of time with kids who had no parents or were having difficulties. I have met a few of her “kids” and they call her “mom.” She is a good example of some very loving people who came here to serve others.

Many of the hospitals and social services in Taiwan were also started by missionaries who were physicians or nurses of social workers. For example, care for the mentally disabled was started by missionaries. Another famous nurse/missionary woman started the only care in Taiwan for leprosy. She recently died on the small island off the coast of Taiwan where she spent her whole life caring for others. They had a national day of remembrance for her and her work. She started out Norwegian and “became” Chinese.

Last fall I met the head of the Chaplaincy Department at a 250 bed Lutheran hospital south of here. He is Taiwanese and is a neurosurgeon. He did that for many years. Then he was the hospital CEO for many more years. After that he came to the seminary here and then became a minister and chaplain in the same hospital where he had been a surgeon and a CEO. He and his wife, in their late 60s, are leaving this year to become missionaries and medical workers in Thailand.

Four Koreans are students here at the seminary. Three are younger but one is 67. He was a university professor of agriculture in Korea. He is going to combine his agricultural skills to help the farmers in the interior of China while also starting a church there. He seems to be a quiet man but I guess he knows how he wants to spend the rest of his life. An American Chinese couple who own a farm in Hawaii are here training to do the same thing.

I am also classified as a missionary. Some of you know I am both a pastor and a psychologist. My Lutheran denomination in the states realized that there were growing stresses on the family with the urbanization of Taiwan and so sent me here. The seminary here has started an M.A. in counseling. So this year I taught classes on diagnosis and assessment in mental health, chemical dependency counseling, systems family counseling, and crisis counseling. Part of the problem in social services in Taiwan is that people are so family oriented that they do not think of others outside of their family. Government funding for social services is limited. Churches are the ones who do a lot of the social services and fill the gaps.

Of course if and when people ask about motivation we tell them what our faith means to us. But we do not push it. Jesus never twisted anyone’s arm! Anna thinks she is going home to Norway and retire in two years. I wonder. I don’t know anymore whether she is really more Norwegian or more Chinese. It will be interesting to see what happens. Sometimes we give up more than we think we are going to give up. My church body decided not to fund another year of my teaching here. So I am coming back as a volunteer in spring of 2009. Hmm. See you soon. I dream of the Columbia in my sleep.