Mission Will Aid ‘Poorest of the Poor’

NEWPORT BEACH —  Norma Vander Molen, a former school board member and community services commissioner in Huntington Beach, and 10 other members of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church of Newport Beach, are scheduled to take part next month in a mission to work with the poor in the Philippines.

The group is expected to concentrate on helping “the poorest of the urban poor” who live in a crowded and impoverished squatters’ community in Quezon City, a municipality that adjoins Manila, Vander Molen said.

Vander Molen, 58, said she was asked to “go into the bush” to help people living in primitive conditions in the backcountry. She will probably wind up teaching basic sanitation skills to young mothers or teaching English to preschoolers, or perhaps both, she said.

People there who are lucky to work toil for about $2.50 a day, Vander Molen said.

The trip is a short-term mission for the church, which is working closely on the project with the religious and nonprofit organization called CARE Philippines (Christian Action for Reconciliation and Evangelism). When Vander Molen, a mother of six grown children, retired last summer after serving 16 years on the Community Services Commission, she said she hoped to put more energy into her religious commitments.

Next month’s trip follows through on that commitment, she said. “I’m no Mother Teresa. But I am so excited to be able to practice my beliefs in a tangible way with the poor,” she said.

Most of the group in the mission, which will include St. Andrew’s Associate Pastor Richard A. Todd and his wife, Beverly, are scheduled to return from the Philippines Feb. 5.

Vander Molen, along with Jack and Maurine Grimshaw, also of Huntington Beach, plan to stay an additional six days, which Vander Molen acknowledges is still too short a time. The church members plan to start their work on Jan. 27.

“Our purpose is to help others,” Vander Molen said. “Just to help one person would be a very worthwhile thing. It’s a hands-on, grass-roots approach to Christianity.”

The mission is a combined effort by St. Andrew’s and CARE, which is headed by Rose and Ermelo Biron, natives of the Philippines who are dedicated to helping out their less-fortunate former countrymen, Vander Molen said. The Birons, who now live in Garden Grove, also attend St. Andrew’s.

Vander Molen serves as a member of the board of directors of C.A.R.E.

The group’s mission will have a number of goals, Vander Molen said, including Bible teaching and preaching, providing basic health eduction, teaching literacy and job skills and performing family and youth counseling.

Vander Molen served as trustee on the Huntington Beach City School District from 1975 to 1984. She and her husband, Milton, an attorney, have lived in Huntington Beach since 1965.