Hayley is 27. She's my 5th last child. She has a dog named Copper. She enjoys cooking, especially pasta. She has an obsession with cooking gadgets. She enjoys Healthy Choices class at TURN, as well as Toastmasters. Her all time favorite activity is talking. I joke with her that on my grave it will say, "Hayley talked me to death." This is funny because at one time, I worried that Hayley wouldn't be able to speak normally. 

Hayley inspires me when I think of all the hard things she has done in her life. The challenges she faces in life are helping her learn empathy. She cares about what happens to other people. A couple of years ago she said she wanted to help people with leprosy. I didn't even know she knew what leprosy was. Perhaps she had seen her sister crocheting a leprosy bandage almost 14 years previous to this conversation. 

We found an organization, and Hayley worked hard to raise funds through her cooking talents to sponsor the education of a young girl from the leprosy colonies in India. Since then she has been donating her checks so this girl she sponsors can keep going to school and have a better life. 

Everyday Hayley works on learning how to control her emotions by communicating her feelings through words. She has made huge improvements. Someday, I think expressing her feelings will be her greatest strength.

You should have heard her giving a lesson to Miss Salt Lake and the other queens during the pageant about leprosy and being shunned, having a micro business, going to school away from their families in the colonies. I remember when she was 5 sitting in the psychiatrist office and getting the diagnosis, not knowing what the future would be like for her or me. What a long way she has come and what happiness she brings!

Because of their experience volunteers want to become more deeply involved in Rising Star Outreach's programs. They return home with a commitment to further the mission of Rising Star Outreach. Sometimes they sponsor students or encourage members of their family and friends to sponsor students. Sometimes they bring their friends and families back to India to volunteer. Volunteers have raised money in a variety of ways, such as sponsoring cross-country bike rides, by selling baked goods, or hosting an event in their homes. Recently, an entire elementary school raised money for educational materials by having “Penny Wars.” The classes challenged each other to see which class could bring in the most pennies. These volunteers not only raised money for Rising Star Outreach's programs, but also spread awareness that leprosy still exists in the 21st century!

Some volunteers support our micro-grant program or the medical program. Others contribute to building programs, such as the new medical building and girls’ hostel. Others fund programs that help students learn basic life skills. It is thrilling for me when I receive a phone call from those who feel passionate about helping Rising Star Outreach's work go forward in meaningful and positive ways!

“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

Mother Teresa once said, "You can accomplish the extraordinary in the ordinary, one day at a time with love."