If My Gift Helps Just One Person, It's Worth It

Anne Edelhauser believes that we all make choices. "You want to leave a legacy that's going to have meaning, that will have a purpose. If you help somebody else out, you're leaving part of you."

After a long career as a high school educator, Anne now teaches adult Bible study classes at her Salvation Army Corps. Over the years, she's come to believe that many people are lost and that God has given her a responsibility to help. ("We're all missionaries in our own backyard.")

But how? "You want to leave a legacy that's going to have meaning, that will have a purpose. If you help somebody else out, you're leaving part of you."

Much thought and prayer led her to establish an endowment with The Salvation Army to help young people enter the ministry. "If my gift helps just one person, it's worth it. Because that person will help someone else," creating a "snowball of hope" for generations. Anne's goal was to give to an organization that matched her own Christian principles of unconditionally serving others and that's what she found in The Salvation Army - "a humble, selfless organization that makes every penny count."

She wholeheartedly supports the Army's mission of helping people to care for themselves through alcohol and drug addiction programs, job skills training and assistance with planning and money management. As a life-long teacher, Anne also knows the importance of the Army's after-school and summer camps, sports, music and youth missions that start young people on the right path.

"The only things we're going to take to heaven are the souls that we influence. We can't take our cars, or our houses, or all our other possessions. We can't take our bank accounts. So you might as well leave it here, to do some good."