Jovanni and Grace Chang, 55 and 57, respectively, live in Hacienda Heights and belong to St. John Vianney Parish. An engineer, he worked on the Hubble space telescope mission at Caltech; she is a certified master catechist for the Los Angeles Archdiocese. They're going to the Diocese of Chiayi in Taiwan to serve as pastoral associates.

Earl Fong, 59, and Diane Prell, 57, another married couple, live in San Francisco. He's a mathematician and website developer, while she holds a master's degree in pastoral studies. They've been assigned to the Diocese of Mtwara in Tanzania, and will teach math/computers and English at a secondary school.

Debbie Noonan, 56, from Milan, Michigan, is a substitute teacher. She's also going to the Diocese of Chiayi in Taiwan, where she will teach English at a nursing school run by the Sisters of Our Lady of China.

New Englander Ned Smith, 56, has worked in radio broadcasting and also been a teacher. He's headed for the Diocese of Kumbo in Cameroon to teach at St. Peter Secondary School and be a member of the Radio Evengelium Team for a new Catholic radio station.

The six men and women, after an intense four-month, live-in formation program, were commissioned May 17 as Lay Mission-Helpers during the 10 a.m. Sunday Mass at St. John the Evangelist Church in Los Angeles.

"Our friends are going to the missions," said Divine Word Missionary Father Damian Kabot, pastor, turning to the group seated near the altar. "I hope you go as apostles of the missions. You are putting your interests aside for others."

For more than 100 days the candidates from across the United States had prayed and lived together at the inner-city parish's old convent, while attending classes and workshops on mission theology, Scripture, spirituality, mental health, communication skills, Third World cultures and other topics, and making three retreats - all in preparation for their three-year assignments to the missions.

And soon, after a break to visit family and friends, and take care of last-minute business, the half dozen lay missioners will leave for their far-flung assignments.

Feeling 'called'
"I am feeling at peace, but at the beginning I was not sure if this thing was really our call," Jovanni Chang told The Tidings. "But I am ready, and my wife, Grace, is too. We can't wait. The formation is a process. Like they give us the chance through all kinds of theological training, psychological analysis and retreats to think very deeply. So we feel that we are totally, totally ready."

Looking back, the electronics instrumentation engineer realized it's been a long journey to the Lay Mission-Helpers. Some 27 years ago he met a Sister of Social Service physician working in Taiwan, who told him about the lay mission organization a determined priest in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles had formed.

The idea intrigued him, but the young man put it aside as he steadily moved up the corporate ladder. And by the mid-1990s, Chang was making lots of money as a vice-president of international development in the computer industry.

"But I found that human intelligence is really beyond the material world - what God is really calling us to do," the father of two grown sons recalled. "In this imperialism that everybody's chasing fortunes, fortunes, fortunes, we forgot that life is more. And I saw that written on every entrepreneur's face I helped make money. The more they made, the greedier they became.

"In our lifetime, Our Lord loves every one of us so much," he said. "He is always trying to talk to us. And as long as we listen and answer his call, our life will be transformed. That's what has happened to us, and we can't wait to do mission work."

Beginnings in L.A.
After visiting Africa and being told by native bishops they desperately needed professional people with technical, medical, educational and administrative skills, Msgr. Anthony Brouwers, director of the Pontifical Mission Aid Societies in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, returned to Southern California and launched the Lay Mission-Helpers Association in 1955.

A year later, the first six Lay Mission-Helpers were commissioned by Cardinal James Francis McIntyre and sent to Sudan, Tanganyika and Uganda. Since then 700 men, women and families have served in 36 countries not only in Africa but also Micronesia, the Middle East, Central and South America, the Caribbean and the United States.

Although lay Catholics working in the missions - as well as in most church ministries - are taken for granted today, in those pre-Second Vatican Council days the idea was considered downright revolutionary. But the priest from Lincoln Heights believed that no religious missionary could offer the powerful and pervasive day-to-day example of ordinary Catholics living out their faith as the laity.

Mission visionary
Diane Prell believes that she and her husband, Earl Fong, will be carrying on Msgr. Brouwers' legacy as high school teachers in Tanzania.

"I think that he was definitely a visionary in recognizing the gifts of lay people long before Vatican II," she said. "And I think that's quite impressive, especially because I understand it wasn't all that easy to get this started. So, absolutely we feel we'll be carrying on his work or we wouldn't be here. It's even more impressive to recognize the opposition he was up against and how he pulled it off."

Prell, who calls herself a "Jersey girl" coming from the Garden State, and her husband volunteered at a Jesuit-run trade school in Micronesia during the early 2000s. The one-year experience broadened their world view so much, giving them a tremendous sense of gratitude for their privileged lives, they wanted to try it again.

After some Internet research, the San Francisco couple discovered the Lay Mission-Helpers. "I'm definitely excited, a little nervous about our leap of faith, really a leap across the world," she confided. "But I also do feel pretty competent that I am where I'm supposed to be.

"I'm just feeling really grateful to have this opportunity to serve. I think that both my husband and I just feel amazingly graced and blessed to live the Gospel and to serve."

A reverent group
Janice England, the seventh director of the Lay Mission-Helpers, is grateful not only for the three men and three women commissioned at St. John the Evangelist Church last Sunday, but also to two other couples who went through the four-month formation program and weren't commissioned. One was sponsored by the Columban Fathers, who no longer have their own lay missionary program, and the other was from Florida with a seven-month-old baby who decided to delay their mission work for awhile.

England, who served in Sierra Leone from 1989 to 1993, says every class has a different group personality and this one was especially reverential going through formation, especially about discernment and community life.

When asked what would Msgr. Brouwers think of the them, the smiling director didn't miss a beat.

"I think he'd be proud," she declared. "Because, one, he'd see they were very serious in their faith and sharing it. And also they have good skills that are really needed in the missions: English teachers, pastoral associates, computer people. I mean, each person that we're sending could go to a variety of different missions. If I could duplicate them, I could send them anywhere."