Josephine Wong labored a month and a half on the jigsaw puzzle. When she finished the elaborate, 2,000-plus piece reproduction of The Last Supper, she came up one piece short. The next morning Josephine marched down to the department store in Taiwan where she had bought the puzzle and requested they order the missing piece.

"We can do it, Dr. Wong," said the sales clerk, "but it will take months. The company is in Japan."

"Order it, please," replied Josephine. "I will wait."

Josephine Wong is not a woman who gives up easily. Nor does she like to waste time. "Had I not finished the puzzle," she explains quietly, "it would have been the same as if I had done nothing at all. I would have been so disappointed." Four months later the piece arrived. Josephine finished the puzzle, framed it, then put it on her wall, where it now hangs as tribute to her perseverance.

Josephine's life is just as focused as her approach to puzzles. Called from her native Hong Kong to be a tent-making missionary in Taiwan, she makes every spare minute serve her quest to make disciples and launch them out to reach others.

As acting chief of the neurology department at a municipal hospital in Taipei, it would seem the 38-year-old doctor has little time for extensive ministry, even taking into account her singleness. And it would seem that few would respond, for most Taiwanese follow a mixture of Buddhism and Taoism. Patients, and doctors as well, often pause at the shrine in the hospital parking lot to offer incense to their ancestors.

Yet Josephine introduces two or three people a week to Christ at the hospital. She doesn't witness directly to patients, for she would not want to take advantage of their illness, but at night, when the patient feels most uncomfortable, compassion leads her to ask if she can pray for the person. Many later ask about her faith and become Christians.

Outside the hospital, Josephine leads three "Great Commission Action Groups," designed to launch women into the harvest. "Most of these women are very busy in their fields," she says. "We have no time to waste. I request that everyone be a mover, with no exception. Therefore everyone is in action. Most have their first or second generation of disciples."

Josephine also participates in the Women's Rotary Club of Taipei, where she organizes service projects such as rehabilitating drug addicts, steering youth away from crime, preserving the environment and providing medical service to remote areas. "When people say they are too busy to be in my Great Commission Group," she says, "I say I will teach them time management. Then I ask, 'Are you more busy than a doctor?' No one will say another word, because they know they are not busier than a doctor."

Busy or not, Josephine genuinely cares about the people in her life. At the Rotary Club, Josephine met Yuli Yang, a prominent architect. Yuli, known by her friends as Archi, never seemed to be happy. "I tried to make friends with her," says Josephine, "but she never responded." Unknown to Josephine, Archi had recently divorced.

Archi invited Josephine to hold Great Commission Group meetings in her 10th-floor apartment. Sometimes, during a meeting, Josephine's beeper signals an emergency (in Taiwan, even a specialist like a neurologist is on 24-hour call). No problem-Josephine has carefully trained her women such that if she must leave suddenly, any one of them can step in and lead.

There's a downside to this highly focused lifestyle, of course, which she tries to keep invisible. Josephine hates to be late. She despises it in herself and detests it in others. "When someone is late," says Josephine, "I get upset and can hardly control my anger. I do not let others see this."

But real-estate agent Ellen Kao, Josephine's friend and roommate, does see. Josephine moved in with Ellen six months ago in order to better disciple her, but the process goes both ways. Ellen sees all sides of Josephine, which challenges the doctor to grow in patience. "I want to see if I can take this challenge," says Josephine quietly.

Another challenge Josephine has faced down is singleness. The 38-year-old doctor would like to get married but doesn't know if God has prepared that for her. "There are not many Christians in my field," she explains softly. "I need to marry a Christian, and I am dedicated to be a missionary."

The young student began thinking that only religion could help her. "I began studying Taoism," she says, "because it has a history of 5,000 years and is the traditional Chinese religion. I thought it was the best. But the more I read the more I felt guilty, for it let me know I have many sins."

Then Josephine turned to Buddhism, the religion of her father, a former Hong Kong banker. "Buddhism told me what to do and what not to do," she says, "but gave no power to do it. The more I read the more I felt I was nothing."

Then one day Josephine was in the library, tutoring a dental student from Macao who barely spoke English. Josephine asked the girl how she could be so at peace, and so happy, when she did so poorly in school. The young woman, a member of Campus Crusade's medical ministry, said it was Jesus Christ.

"I didn't know if this God was real," Josephine says, "but I had tried Taoism and Buddhism, and they didn't help. If I invited Christ into my heart, I thought, and found out that this God, too, was not real, I'd kick Him out. So I prayed, God, if you are real, fill the emptiness. If I experience fullness, then I will know you are the real God.

In time Josephine felt called to be a medical missionary. Upon graduation from medical school she received an invitation to work at a hospital in Taiwan. "I didn't know anything about Taiwan," she says. "I didn't want to go. But I prayed about it and God said, Go and make disciples. I will be with you."

Josephine knew it would be a miracle if she passed the board exams, for she did not speak pure Chinese, the language of Taiwan, but English and some Cantonese, the language of Hong Kong.

To her amazement, she passed the exams with flying colors. "This was impossible," she says flatly. "I didn't even understand the questions. How can I pass the exam? God worked it out."

Today Josephine speaks fluent Mandarin. She reaches out to other medical personnel and beyond. Her status has given her entree into other segments of society and has helped her reach out to women of influence in the business and professional world.

"Jo told me that every day she prays that the Lord would lead her to witness to someone influential," says May Lee, whose husband, James, leads Campus Crusade's ministry in Taiwan.

"If I have to work with somebody," explains Josephine earnestly, as she maneuvers her car through narrow, twisting back streets in search of yet another shortcut, "it might as well be someone who can influence others."

No matter whom she influences, she expects them to launch themselves into the harvest field. One windy day, for example, while witnessing with her disciples in front of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial, Josephine met Lai-May. The mother of two invited Christ into her life. Then Lai-May went home and helped lead first her husband to Christ, then her children, then her in-laws, a Buddhist couple in their 70s. Last year the whole clan-parents, children, grandparents - moved to Belize as tent-making missionaries.

Josephine wants her disciples to "reproduce" themselves, in part because she believes God may want her to serve in another country in the future. Also, there's her health. Five knee operations have left the former volleyball star with a limp and a handicapped sticker on her car. And when her car dropped into a pothole one rainy night, a disk in her back slipped and put her in a wheelchair for three months. She's walking again, but with constant pain.

"I am very independent and don't like to give trouble to others," says Josephine. "But my disciples and some women from my church took care of me 24 hours a day. I learned to let others help me and to give them more responsibility."

Dr. Josephine Wong's life is not a puzzle. Everything this medical missionary does is focused on making disciples; everything has a purpose.

Even her vacations. Last year, on an expedition to help begin a Rotary Club in Mongolia, she invited several disciples and turned it into a vision trip. "In Mongolia," says Archi, then a baby Christian, "where it's all mountains and sheep and horses, I saw the simplicity of God and what He made. It was more natural to believe."

To believe, and to reflect her leader. "When I came back, I shared with a group in my church what I was learning. They asked me to teach them the same things.

"Jo is like Jesus," concludes the architect, "in that she is growing in favor with God and man. Now I'm becoming like that too."