My time with Tom and Jean Marie in Taiwan gave me a vivid sense that God was already moving in Taiwan long before we arrived, and that He allowed us to witness some of that work even as we planted more seeds and watered the plants of faith that were there. People listened with intensity. They were eager, thoughtful, and deeply receptive. In many places in the West, basic Christian truths are taken for granted. In Taiwan, I noticed, as I’ve seen in many places in Asia, many of those same truths pierced hearts with freshness and force.

It didn’t surprise me to also see how powerfully simple apologetics served people there. We walked through foundational Catholic truths in a way that was direct, biblical, and human. For some, this was a real point of conversion, especially since several of them had already heard Protestant objections to Catholicism and had had concerns about the biblical grounding of their faith for some time. When they saw the biblical and historical foundations for the papacy, Mary, the Resurrection, and the Eucharist, it opened their minds. And all the biblical preaching simply broke through their souls, especially Tom’s talks on forgiveness and healing. You could actually see the relief and realization in their faces. In several conversations and testimonies, people expressed that the Catholic faith and the Father’s love suddenly made sense to them as a living whole.

The Pro-Life talks also had a profound effect. When Jean Marie spoke about life in the womb, about the dignity of the human person, and about the biblical vision of man as created in the image of God, many received it with deep wonder and gratitude. For a great many of them, these ideas were almost entirely novel in their full Christian form. When they heard that every child in the womb is known by God, loved by the Father, and called to eternal communion with Him, the message touched something very deep within them. It became clear that this was far bigger than a moral argument. It was an invitation into the Father’s love and into life in the Spirit. Several testimonies reflected exactly that. People shared that they had never heard human life described with such sacred worth, and that hearing it awakened both grief and hope within them.

Our prayer ministry yielded powerful fruit every time we entered into it. This was one of the clearest signs of God’s action in our mission. People came forward carrying very heavy burdens. Some wounds were universal: family pain, loneliness, anxiety, rejection, fear, and spiritual exhaustion. Some wounds also had distinctly cultural roots. There was the pressure of performance, the weight of saving face and preserving honor, deep emotional reserve, fractured family expectations, decline of relationships and family and marriage, and a sense of worth tied to achievement and social usefulness. There was also pain due to demographic decline, isolation, and a declining confidence in the future. During prayer, many of them, in tears, expressed openness and genuine surrender. It was evident that the Holy Spirit was meeting people personally.

This article originally appeared in Renewal Ministries’ July 2026 newsletter.