Two sets of parents with five children and two single women were commissioned as Lay Mission-Helpers Dec. 18, during a morning Mass at St. John the Evangelist Church in South Los Angeles.

"Having screened each one and having journeyed with them on four months of formation, I can testify that they are worthy for mission service," declared Janice England, executive director of the Lay Mission-Helpers Association.

Other members of the formation team testified that the candidates were "worthy and well-prepared" to serve in the mission fields, wishing them good luck on their overseas three-year assignments. Finally, faculty members, who taught classes in theology, Church history, scripture, missiology, cultural differences and other subjects to this year's group, attested that the two men and four women were people of deep faith who will serve the people of God with great passion and humility.

"Having heard the request of the candidates, and having been informed by those responsible for their formation," they declared, "we now commission with the words of Our Lord who sent his disciples with their command: 'Go forth and tell the Good News.'"

That will be the essence of Kathy Sheppard's ministry in the Marshall Islands and Rachel Sybor's in Cameroon. It will be the focus of the essential work in Uganda by Jeff and Courtney Caiola (along with their children, Ellis, Marie and Gabriella), as well as that of Aaron and Tara Condon and their sons, Ocean and Cana, in the Marshall Islands.

England told The Tidings that this year's class was very diverse: families plus an older woman and recent college graduate. But all had worked before with the poor or on social justice issues. So England, herself a former Lay Mission-Helper in Sierra Leone, believed it was a "natural flow" for members of the 2005 class to progress to the intensive three-year program of journeying with the marginalize overseas.

"We're all called to mission by our baptism," she said. "And for some, that call is just to do it overseas. Maybe it's because we see, even more now than when Msgr. [Anthony] Browers founded the Lay Mission-Helpers in 1955, what is happening all around the world.

"He tapped into the fact even before the Second Vatican Council that lay people have something to give the church as missionaries," she pointed out. "It wasn't just for priests and religious. That was a vision long before its time. And I think it's still a surprise for people today that 'Hey, I can be a missionary overseas.'"

For Rachel Sybor, a 22-year-old college graduate from Baltimore, at first it was a call to do something "big" with her life while she had the opportunity. But during the four-month, live-in formation experience at the mission house in South Los Angeles, her whole worldview changed.

"It's not that I'm going to help these people, but that I'm walking in solidarity with them," she explained. "So I need to find out what they want. It's letting God work through me and letting God work through them for me.

"A lot of our teachers here have said that God is already in these places we're going to, and that was definitely a big epiphany moment for me," she acknowledged. "We learned a lot about what it means to be American wanting to 'go in there and change things to make things right.' But that's not necessarily the best way to change things."

Jeff and Courtney Caiola, both 35, said it is definitely a jump for them to leave their home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for a small town in Uganda. She will use her RN skills to teach in a nursing school. He will apply his talents at a U.S. nonprofit to do administrative work at the local hospital.

Both had reached a stage in life where they wanted to do something different ---something that would connect them more directly to the social teachings of their Catholic faith. When the Caiolas discovered (on the Internet) the Lay Mission-Helpers, and how the organization accepted whole families, they decided to make that jump and become lay missionaries.

"I think having the children is probably one of our greatest motivators, and one of our biggest sources of doubt, particularly in relation to their health," Courtney explained. "But Jeff and I have come to terms that we're responsible not only for their physical development, but for their emotional and spiritual development, too. And this will help them grow in those ways."

After returning to their homes for a vacation, members of the class of 2005 Lay Mission-Helpers will fly off to their mission posts in Uganda, Cameroon and the Marshall Islands --- joining the ranks of more than 700 men and women who have heard and heeded Msgr. Browers' call to be "God's helpers."