Helping Hearts, Blog of Anne Sanders

I  made it! This is my 100 th blog! I want more than anything to thank you, my readers, for coming back and reading my blogs each week and for sharing them with others. I also want to remember some of my first and favorite blogs today, along with remembering that this is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Saturday is Make a Difference Day. I’ll be volunteering at the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk on Saturday along with my husband. I hope you have plans to make a difference somehow, too! Now for a walk down memory lane. Here’s a quote from my very first blog which was entitled Me, Myself, and Why: “When you see or hear about someone in need, it should pull on your heart. That’s the way God wants us to feel.  When we get too hard to feel for others, we’ve lost something very dear.” The blog of mine that has gotten the most reads was just before Memorial Day and is called Remember. After I go on about my plans for Memorial Day weekend and the cookout I’...

What gets you out of bed in the morning? Work? School? Or the fun of helping others? For about 450 high school students in Pensacola, Florida, it’s helping others that gets them out of bed early on a Saturday morning, no less. That’s how many Catholic High School students will participate in this year’s Make a Difference Day on October 26. Why do they do it? Twelfth grader Zack Wyant remembers his first Make a Difference Day. “I just took a second and thought, ‘Look at all these kids out here. It’s early. It’s cold. Look at these people willing to give up and sacrifice.’ It exemplifies how much we want to help others.” Fellow Catholic High School Senior Tiarra Blackshear said, “My favorite part of being in high school is Make a Difference Day. I get a lot out of helping students and other people. It’s really fun to see students come together and help different people in our community, no matter who they are.” Both have done a variety of things over the past few Make a D...

Yesterday I was talking to my mother in law about my husband’s older brother. His birthday is about a week away and he LOVES birthday celebrations. My husband’s older brother has Down Syndrome and he is just one of those people who loves other people, especially women if you know what I mean! He will go hug a woman he’s just met and smile the whole time. As he has gotten older (he’s in his mid-fifties now), however, he’s gotten a little more set in his ways. He doesn’t like going places as much as he used to and he would generally just rather stay at home and watch television or play with the little people toys he has had for years. He’s also gotten where he doesn’t want to work as much. He refused to go to work a couple of days this week and we don’t know why. But my mother in law said something that stuck with me about my brother in law and why she and his father want him to keep working. They’re afraid that if he stops working, he might just stop altogether. As with many older...

It’s beginning. The season of holidays, family get togethers, gift buying and giving and much more. Today we were planning our next few holidays with the family. We were planning a big Thanksgiving get together with everyone, but it’s been put on hold and my husband’s sister is coming in at Halloween to see us instead. With all of this coming up, there’s two things of which we’ll be doing a lot—searching and staying. We can do them both and help raise money for needy charities at the same time. Googling has become part of our vernacular. A couple of weeks ago I told a friend to google how to do something because we couldn’t get together for me to show her how to do it. She said, “Oh yeah, I could do that.” My husband tells me to google and he doesn’t even like that particular search engine. We do searches every day but few people realize you can earn money for charities simply by using certain search engines. Lately, I have been using SearchKindly.org . I like it because y...