Recently, Burnett and about 16 other BCM members traveled to New Orleans to help those whose homes were devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

“We went down there preparing to gut houses, but we found ourselves doing paint prep and sheetrock and putting siding on the back side of houses,” says Burnett, of Rock Spring.

“We cleared brush and did other manual labor during the day, and then we spent time interacting and playing games with the children who lived around there at night.”

Before he made the trip to New Orleans, Burnett said, he didn’t understand why the “Big Easy” was still such a big mess. He saw plenty of devastation during the four-day mission trip, but he also discovered that much work, by both paid professionals and volunteers, has been done to repair the damaged houses and churches that border the 9th Ward.

“Many of the houses didn’t have roofs and there was a lot of debris, but some were not damaged at all. In the 9th Ward, a lot of properties have been bulldozed.”

His trip to New Orleans showed him that even in America, where we are basically “comfortable,” there are numerous opportunities to serve one’s fellow man.

“My goal is to be a foreign missionary one day,” says Burnett, who is a Business Administration major at Dalton State who plans to earn a graduate degree in theology in the future.

His interest in foreign missionary work has been spurred by experiences overseas, particularly in the Ukraine, where he says received the call to do ministry last summer while working in a Day Camp for children. He plans to do mission work there again this year.

“In the Ukraine, the countryside was very poor. There were pigs and chickens in the streets, and the roads weren’t well paved. There was no plumbing, just outhouses. Not all of the houses had electricity.”
And there was the challenge of the food.

“The show Fear Factor has nothing on us,” says Burnett, jokingly, of the cuisine, which, he says, took some getting used to. “We would tell each other, ‘Just eat it.’”

Reaction from the Ukrainians to their presence as mission workers was initially mixed, he says.
“Some people in the Orthodox Church there told the children who were planning to attend the Day Camp that we would fatten them up and then eat them,” Burnett says, explaining why some of the children were initially hesitant to attend the camp.

“When the children learned that we were there to teach and play and we weren’t going to eat them, they loosened up considerably.”

Burnett discovered that having “unfortunate circumstances” comes in all different forms.

“In the Ukraine, most of the people have never experienced the kinds of comfort that we have in America where we eat and drink whatever we want and don’t think about it. They have cows in the yard, no running water, sometimes no electricity. They’ve never known life to be any different.

“In New Orleans, people used to have something, and now they don’t. They’ve lost their homes, their neighborhoods, their jobs, and many of them are realizing that their friends aren’t coming back.”

Burnett is certain that giving back to others, whether it’s overseas or in this country, will be his mission in life.

“I enjoy working with my hands and working with people. Helping those who need help is what Christians are called to do.”