“In traveling to India our family has crossed many borders.  But stamped passports don't tell the tale. The real journey, the one that has made this experience so trans-formative for us, has been the move outwards, the reaching beyond the borders of our family's own self-interest to what Einstein termed ever-widening "circles of compassion." As parents when we have witnessed our children gently peeling bandages off oozing sores or massaging oil into cracked skin; when we have watched them being jostled along bumpy roads in sweltering heat for the privilege of digging a latrine for a far-flung villager; when we have seen them teaching a child to read who would otherwise be begging in the streets, or leading them in choir, or teaching them piano or violin or lathering de-lousing gel into their scalp on a Sunday night—then we know it was worth it.  Asking them to leave good friends and french fries, giving up a spot on the basketball team, deferring scholarships. Asking them to leave their individual islands of self-concern to become citizens of the wider world. They left old boundaries behind and widened their circles of compassion.  And it was all worth it. Even for the daughter who locked herself in her room a few months ago and slid us a note under the door that said, 'COME GET ME WHEN WE'RE GOING BACK TO AMERICA!!!'

And now we are going back to America. 

How much will stick? If we have come to find Jesus in the faces of the leprosy-affected, will we recognize Him back home in the face of the grimy man holding a cardboard sign, the obnoxious neighbor, the surly skateboarder loitering in the school parking lot? As the Volunteer Program Director, I've told departing volunteers that after their experiences here in India, they'll probably want to keep helping Rising Star Outreach in its mission to serve leprosy-affected communities, but that from our standpoint, we will have been just as successful if their deepened compassion finds expression by reaching out to the hungry, the homeless, the heartbroken in their own communities. And I think after nearly a year, our own family has come to understand that reaching out doesn't require traveling to some exotic place. Yes, India is the fabled land of altruists—we get to walk in the footsteps of Gandhi and Mother Teresa and the Buddha—but it really doesn't matter where we live or where we serve. Someone beautiful is always within reach, someone who needs exactly what we can share.” 
—Lon Young