Helping Hearts, Blog of Anne Sanders

Hey, folks. I have decided to revive the tradition of a Black Friday list of top ten gifts that give (3 ways!) So, here it is. Enjoy your shopping from the comfort of your home and God bless you.  1.        Vive la Revolution! These are the most gorgeous Revolution bracelets.  For $38 each (or 3 for $100), you can get a beautiful band and $10 goes to charities fighting Alzheimer’s. Find them at RivetRevolution . 2.        UNICEF has an immense market for goods from around the world and even tells you when you purchase one how many people you are helping. This beautiful wooden sculpture “Balanced Embrace” will provide enough polio vaccine to vaccinate 56 children. Find something beautiful from clothes to jewelry that meets your taste at market.Unicefusa.org . 3.        Hand knit gnome ornaments are sure to be the hit of your gift list, especially when they find out Melan...

I took a break from Relay for Life last year for the most part and I'll be honest, in some ways I've missed it. In other ways, I have enjoyed having more time. OK, I did raise $250 to keep myself out of the fake jail they put up at our Relay (try it if you haven't, you can raise lots of money by promising to put people in jail, or not, based on whether they raise money!) and I did write an article about the honorary chair at the Relay last year in my town for our local newspaper. And, gosh I can't miss one of the biggest events of the year, so I went. But, that was about it. I wasn't on the board and I didn't have a team of my own. In the meantime, some things changed. My husband and I both started new jobs on the same day for one. And, I found out that the new company supports Relay but they have never had a team at this location. So, I wondered. Should I say something about it? or not? Eventually, it came out that I had worked on Relay and when they ...

  “If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the lands that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother. Rather be openhanded and freely lend him whatever he needs.” Deuteronomy 15:7 I’m reading through the Old Testament of the bible and came across this passage. The Old Testament is rich with miracles, history, and stories, but it is also quite harsh. When the Israelites who were slaves came out of Egypt and were told by God they would be given a new land flowing with milk and honey, they were also told to kill all the people in the cities which they conquered. The Old Testament has lots of wars and killing in it, but right here in the middle of all of it, God reminds us to take care of the poor. Now, usually in this blog, I tell you lots of ways to help others. I’ve even given you data that shows that if you do help others, you will reap benefits of joy and gratefulness yourself, as well as...

Ever feel helpless? When a friend is very sick, you may feel like there’s nothing you can do. It’s not true. You can always pray for someone and prayer can change things. There’s another thing you can do. Get some help for your friend. Recently, a friend of mine was sick. She was self aware enough to know she’d have trouble cooking so she asked me to have some of our friends make her some meals. I did so gladly. Thank God it was just a temporary illness and she was back on her feet in a few weeks. Sometimes that’s not the case. In those cases, there’s a lot to do. Take your friend to the doctor, help with laundry and housecleaning, watch the kids while she rests or is at the doctor, give her primary caregiver a break. The list goes on. So, how do you coordinate what needs to be done with the people who can do it? You can spend all your time on the phone calling and setting things up. Or, you can use Lotsa Helping Hands . What is Lotsa Helping Hands? An online service...

How do you get thousands of students to raise $37 million and volunteer over nine and a half million hours to change the world? Ask Craig and Marc Kielburger. They’ve done it and it’s called We Day . We Day is a one day stadium-sized event that brings charities and inspiring speakers together for thousands of kids who have already spent a year making a difference. Craig and Marc have shared the We Day stage with change-makers such as Al Gore, Mikhail Gorbachev, Magic Johnson, Rev. Jesse Jackson and Larry King. This 2013-14 We Day season, there are 100,000 youth attending We Day events and 5.4 million people watching via broadcast. The Canadian brothers started the We Day movement that has done all of this six years ago but Craig founded their nonprofit Free the Children when he was 12. Free the Children “ has worked in over 45 countries since its inception, and has built more than 650 schools and school rooms in developing regions.” Along the way, Craig and Mark also star...

Photo from FreeDigitalPhotos.net This summer our life changed again. Our son has had ADHD his whole life and has been in therapy and received treatment for it for about six years. Two years ago, we had him tested again because his therapist said she thought there might be something more going on. Two years and many tests later, we found out she was right. Now as I see the hints of this new diagnosis all around, I wonder why it took so long to figure it out.   Part of it was that the person who tested him at first got him at a very low time in his life and she saw that instead of truly seeing him. When she came back to us with her results and said he didn’t even have ADHD, we were shocked. It didn’t make any sense. His teachers had pointed out his problems with concentration, control, and so on since kindergarten. It seemed impossible that everyone who had ever been around him for long was wrong.   We had to get a second opinion. Our son’s current doctor told ...

February is a short but love-filled month. It’s a month when we think of others for various reasons, be it the Random Acts of Kindness week or Valentine’s Day. It also needs to be a month that we think about our own hearts. As the proverb goes, “guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Selfish, you might say, but important and not just in a spiritual way. According to the Centers for Disease Control, cardiovascular disease—including heart disease, stroke, and high blood pressure—is the number 1 killer of women and men in the United States. It is a leading cause of disability, preventing Americans from working and enjoying family activities according to the American Heart Association. Million Hearts® is a national initiative to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes by 2017. If you’re not sure of the state of your heart, there are some ways to find out. Million Hearts ® has a Heart Attack Risk Calculator, A My Life Check and Heart 360 which helps you tr...

OK, out there, who’s heard about Thon? You may be thinking of a well known telethon or marathon but this is a special kind of thon—a danceathon that started 41 years ago. Penn State's THON is the longest dance marathon in the country lasting 46 hours and engaging more than 15,000 students each year. It starts tonight at 6 p.m. and will go until 4 p.m. on Sunday. After 46 hours of staying on their feet, the students get a taste of the daily hardships that children fighting pediatric cancer endure. Other students and families come support the dancers throughout the weekend. Attendees always look forward to "The Final 4 Hours," which includes Family Hour, when every family battling pediatric cancer is recognized and families give speeches about their battles with cancer To date , THON has raised more than $101 million   to benefit the Four Diamonds Fund providing money to offset the cost of treatment that insurance does not cover as well as other expenses of...

Today is Valentine’s Day. Yesterday I had to stop at the store and I saw a guy coming out as I went in with a big box of chocolates under his arm. Then I saw another perusing the red nighties and flowers looking for something his loved one might like. Big pink and red hearts are everywhere and usually filled with chocolate. That’s my kind of heart. Well, not really. My blog and website are called Helping Hearts. If you look under the title on my website, there’s a passage from the bible. Proverb 4:23. “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” It’s packed in a wisdom-giving part of the bible just before admonitions to Keep your mouth free of perversity;       keep corrupt talk far from your lips. 25  Let your eyes look straight ahead;      fix your gaze directly before you. 26  Give careful thought to the [ c ] paths for your feet      and be steadfast...