Every summer Kaitlin joins her youth group on mission trips. One summer the group traveled to New Orleans to help with the Hurricane Katrina relief. Their job was to clean out houses that had not been open since the hurricane. “As I entered the first untouched home,” Kaitlin remembered, “the idea of caring and reaching to others really kicked in.” Her first thought was to complain about the conditions but she said, “I knew if this were my own home that would be the last thing thought crossing my mind. I could not imagine the difficulty and the pain of walking into my own house after such destruction.”

The experience of participating on mission trips has changed Kaitlin’s life. “I continue to reach out to people within my community,” she said. For Kaitlin helping other people provides an o…