How does one transform a childhood steeped in the values of justice and storytelling into a life committed to shining light on the unseen? Join us as we welcome the inspiring DeAnna Sanders, author of the forthcoming book Unseen People: Sharing Light and Your Life with Neighbors and Nations, set to release on August 2, 2024. DeAnna shares her remarkable journey from being a pastor’s daughter in the American South to becoming a passionate advocate for justice, offering a rich tapestry of personal stories and invaluable insights.

As a missionary and writer, DeAnna opens up about her experiences working with anti-trafficking nonprofits and writing her heartfelt Substack newsletter, A Good Word Wednesday. Discover the driving forces behind her advocacy and how her upbringing during the tumultuous 1960s shaped her commitment to making a difference. We explore DeAnna’s vision for her new book, The Unseen People, aiming to awaken readers to the invisible individuals in their lives and inspire impactful connections.

This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom on valuing relationships and living a life of service and purpose. DeAnna speaks passionately about the importance of not taking relationships for granted and the lasting legacy of love and kindness. From her aspirations for future writing projects to the joys of grandparenting and embracing retirement, DeAnna’s story is a testament to the power of divine guidance and the fulfillment found in answering life’s higher callings. Tune in for a conversation filled with heart, inspiration, and a call to see and serve the unseen around us.

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Well, good morning. How you doing today, Deanne?

I am doing great. Thanks so much, Keith. How are you? Good. Thanks. Yeah.

I'm great. It's good to talk to you this morning. Just fine, sunny morning here. I love to ask my guests this question. I kind of get to know you a little bit better. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Oh, best piece of advice I've ever received is everybody has a story. So listen to everybody. God put everybody on earth differently and unique and take time to hear everybody's story. I think so.

Mmm.

That is very, very true. I like that. Good advice because it also makes sure that you don't lose track of the fact that everybody is unique and they're human. And if you lose sight of the fact that we're all human and we're all created by God with unique stories, we learn to appreciate not only ourselves, but also what God has done in and through people around us.

Absolutely.

Yeah, right, absolutely. So true. I love that about people though. Everybody's so unique, different backgrounds, different things that have shaped them. And part of it helps me do what I do to know that people are unique and valuable.

Yes, definitely. I'm always curious for people like yourself. As we get up there in age, I know myself, I can think about people who have been important in my life, but who are some role models and mentors for you along your journey?

Absolutely, my dad. He's past several years ago, but he was a pastor in mostly in rural churches in the South, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama. Anyway, I talk about him quite a bit because he is the guy who helped me see the value of people as a pastor. As his daughter, I tag along with him sometimes

watched him do what he did to help people and then as well as what he preached in the pulpit and all that sort of thing but he was the real deal. He was the guy, he was the same guy in the pulpit as he was helping somebody with a funeral or with a wedding or whatever. He was just the same and consistent and kind and compassionate caring. He was my hero.

that. You never know sometimes how important you are as a father and a parent in your kids' lives and when your kids can think about you as having such a great impact, this kind of validates all the hard work and all the sometimes sleepless nights you have as a parent with when you're raising kids.

Hmm.

So true. So true. Yes.

So tell us your personal story. It's always interesting. You talk about a lot of unseen people, but tell us your particular story.

Well, as I said, I was a pastor's daughter. And so I, and my mom played a big role in all of this too, because she was not only a wonderful pastor's wife, but she also would host like mission meetings for women in our home. And so I'd listen into those stories as she would host them in our home.

then pair that up with what my dad was doing. And that just kind of shaped me as a young child to understand our place in the world and that we all have a job to do. And they gave me opportunity to explore different, you know, what is my talents and skills were, helped me go on to school and that sort of thing, college and get my degrees in communication. And though

they were just so supportive in doing all that for me and for my brother and my sister. But I learned kind of early on that I was a little different. I didn't know that my place was to stay in South Arkansas. I kind of had a vision of the bigger part of the world and I wanted to be a place in that. And so I felt a calling to kind of go into all the world and see people and help them at the

with their needs. I wanted to be a traveling journalist where I could gather all that information and then report it back home. So I felt a calling probably late in my teenage years to go and do that sort of thing. So I got myself ready to go and I did that. I felt like my calling was going to be a international missionary is what I thought. And, but,

met my husband in seminary and things quickly changed when children came along and I found myself in all places in southwest Oklahoma. I thought what in the world this is not an international mission field by far, but then I remember that the that where I am is where God put me is my mission field and so I started writing and my words would go out in different publications of all kinds and

That's how I started feeling like this is what I was supposed to do with my words. I also spent some time in a church doing some minister admissions work, traveling internationally and learned how to do that well and take people with me. And then I worked for an international nonprofit, anti-trafficking, anti-abuse for women and girls did that for a lot of years. And so

My calling took different shapes and different seasons of life. And now in this season, I'm kind of bringing that all together into book form. So that's what I do. That's where I'm at.

That's amazing. You speak about your book. What, I'm always curious as a writer myself, what influenced you to be a writer?

Mm-hmm.

That's a good question. My mom, once again, back to my roots, and one of the stories I share in this book is about, I was the youngest of three, and I, when my brother and sister would go off to school, I remember my sitting in my mom's lap with a Dr. Seuss book or another book, and we would, she would read that book to me over and over and over, and I just, it ingrained in me the love for

And as I became learned that I could write, writers should be good readers because that gives you understanding of how other people write and have different views of the world and how that affects you. So I think that helped me more than anything is to have that foundation in reading. And both my brother and sister to this day are.

ferocious readers. We just can't get enough of it. So I think that was probably it. Just being a reader and how that has affected my own words. So I think that's it.

I noticed from your bio that you seem to be passionate about justice issues. What kind of, what was the foundation for that passion? Because we all have certain things that either we see the brokenness and it's just like our God puts it on our heart to say, I want you to go work in that field. What drives your passion for justice?

Hmm.

Hmm, another good question, making me think. Well, I, like I say, I feel like that I was maybe born differently to not just to sit and be comfortable. But as I was reading, as I grew up reading scripture and to see that God cares for all people and made them in his image, all people.

treating people the same and sharing life in light with all peoples, not just around the world, but locally. My heart was to go international, but the problems of our country tugged on me and continued to tug on me about treating people with kindness and compassion. That's just how, this is part of who I am as a person that God made me, wired that into me.

And I feel like we need to see, have those eyes to see people and the struggles that they have, not that we can solve all their issues, we cannot, but I do feel like we need to have opportunity through churches, through nonprofits, through all kinds of ways and individually even to help set things right for people and give them an opportunity to be seen and to be heard.

Sometimes they need a mouthpiece. That was true in my work with the anti-trafficking nonprofit. I was in, women around the world who were being trafficked didn't have a voice, they couldn't be heard. And so in the place where God had put me, I got to be that person for them. And that's just one situation. There's so many others, opportunities of people that we can walk alongside and help to be seen and heard.

That's great. I know you have a weekly substack newsletter called A Good Word Wednesday. Tell us a little bit about that.

I do, yes. So this is my opportunity to keep my writing skills sharp weekly and as I was thinking about how I wanted to get my words out into the world, I've had a blog for many years and it was on another platform but when Substack came along, I thought this probably was an easier fit for me and so I repurposed what I had done and retitled it

to concentrate on one good word per week. And so that gives me an opportunity to keep not only keep my writing fresh but to keep my spiritual hearing fresh to see what that good word is going to be every week. Sometimes I pick that up in my reading or sometimes it's just something that's on my heart the situations have brought to the forefront. Sometimes it's in church. It just depends.

And then I develop that word through the week and start thinking about it and how I want to share that through my personal experiences as well as what I'm learning in scripture and through reading and share that with people. And it's a lot of fun. I enjoy that. I'd say it keeps my writing sharp, but it also, my readers can stay up to date on the progress of the book too. So that's part of it as well.

nice segue into your new book. So tell us about your new book, The Unseen People.

Hehehe

Thank you. Yeah, I've been a writer for a lot of years and this is really my first, I've contributed to some other books, but this is my first book of my own. So to me, it's a compilation of lots of things through the years. I wanted to be able to share what God had been doing in my life through the years and all these different places.

that I've already shared with you through my growing up years, through working in a church, through non-profit, through being a writer, all those things. And I had already written about a lot of that in my previous blog. And so I started reading through these things and I thought this has got a common thread through it. And it is about where God had put me in different places in the world to be able to see people that aren't

or I, I did, not all my stories were about that, but a lot of them were. So I started pulling things together and rewrote some new stuff and, but the thread was all the way through about seeing people that are normally overlooked. And so I started putting that together and found publisher, Ambassador International, that took me on as a newbie author.

and have helped me shape this into the book form that it is. The interesting thing about all this is as I was writing I thought it was going to be a book about international opportunities and what happened was is I was reading what I had already done and some new things that I had been writing for Good Words, some of those things. I thought I, there are unseen people right next door to me.

as well as around the world. And it's not an either or, it's a both and. And so a lot of people will never travel around the world, but they have next-door neighbors. And so I had opportunity to share some of the stories that I had already experienced and put them into this book form. So my purpose in all of this is to encourage readers to see through some of my own experiences and start thinking about their own, where they are placed in the world today.

and how they can be on a personal mission to see unseen people, to see them, develop relationship with them, give them a voice if they need it, and to share the love of Christ with them. That's the purpose of this book. And it's been definitely a labor, long labor of love, and ready to launch it out into the world for sure.

In your experience, why is it you think people struggle to see other people?

You know, I think it's a multi-layered answer to that, but the main thing is, well, we're busy people, for one thing. We just, we get in our cars and we go and we go do all check off things off of our list. And not that those things are bad things. A lot of them are probably good, but we just over have an overcrowded schedule. And so we just tend to forget about other people that come in and out of our lives. I'm a believer in starting the day with.

God help me to see people that you put in my path today because I think they're already there. Sometimes it's our eyes that need to be open to see them. But I think another part of the answer to that question is we can hide behind our computers. We can hide behind our phones. And we've lived in such a world and COVID had something to do with that. The issue was already there, but it made it more...

a common experience for everybody to hide behind their doors or their computers or wherever they were. And so to have that personal connection with people, I think we're having to relearn that in the post-COVID years about how to connect with people. I would say a lot of this, my stuff was already in process before COVID came along, but it's like, oh, wow, here we are trying to learn to connect with people again.

And I think that's, I think we've already, we're making a lot of progress. It's been, you know, a few years in the making with all of that, but it's something we need to always keep in the forefront about, it's not just about us. I mean, we all tend to be taking care of me, mine and ours. You know, it's, and we do have responsibility to our own families for sure, but we also need to be caring for people who are straight outside our doors. And...

the people that we read about in the headlines, we have a responsibility for them too. And it's our job to be able to see. Sometimes the danger in that though, Keith, is that we get overwhelmed. There's just so much, you can't do it all. There's no way to do it all. And so part of the process personally is to learn who it is you need to see, how it is you can help, and to do that thing. Maybe just one thing a day, one thing a week, at least it's something.

to help people to be seen to, you know, we all like that. And one of my stories is about just using people's names. You know, we like to be seen and heard. And I challenge people to, like, if you're going out to eat or you're at the grocery store or whatever, whoever your server is or whoever it is that's helping you, sometimes they have a name tag, you know, sometimes they don't, you just have to ask them what's your name?

I have a terrible memory. I have to write it down to help me remember somebody's name because we like the sound of our own name. That makes us unique. That's who we are. And it gives us a personal connection. I am by nature an introvert of way off far on the scale of being an introvert. So it's hard for me sometimes to break out of my comfort zone and get connected with one other person, but I'm doing that. And this...

Hehehe

Thanks for watching!

this season of my life, I think it's important to just not get comfortable with what it is that I do day in and day out, but to step over the line and connect with another human being just by asking their name. So that was a long answer to your questions. Yeah.

something you said, no, it's good, but something you said stuck out to me because I remember hearing another pastor talk about, he would pray every day, Lord, send someone into my life that I can witness the gospel, share the gospel with. And he's like, he never had a single day when it happened. I'm thinking when you prayed that prayer, Lord, help me see people that, it's one of those prayers, I was just kind of a dangerous prayer because it does mean all of a sudden now I have to be compassionate and I'm gonna see these people.

Yeah.

it.

that I probably didn't see before? And how do I make sure that not only do I see them, but something else that's important that I make space in my time for them? Not just to say, oh, I noticed that you're there, but how do I then begin to make space in my time to make an impact in their life as well?

Yeah. Yep.

Absolutely, that's it is a dangerous prayer and don't pray it until you're ready to be serious about it because he will make you very uncomfortable. Sometimes it's like you've prayed that prayer put somebody in my path that I can that needs to be seen today God is what I pray and a lot of times I don't even have to go outside my neighborhood but on my daily walks I can do that I can be praying for those people in those houses and

He'll bring other people out along to talk and he's done that multiple times. But it's that being ready for it, you know? It's like, uh-oh, this is the answer to my prayer, now what do I do? So I think early in your day, whenever that is, to personally, if you're a person of prayer, then to do that, to pray for, to God to help you.

know what to say and sometimes it's not so much your words it's your ears it's your listening people just want to i had a neighbor not too long ago whose husband had cancer i had no idea and she started just telling me all the stuff and this was just out on my daily walk and we just happened to connect at her mailbox one morning and uh she didn't need me to i couldn't fix her problem there really not much i could do but she needs somebody to listen and so sometimes that's what it is

and then follow up again with that when God gives you another opportunity and to remember, let them know that you remember about them, that you're thinking about them. Is there anything that they you could do to help them specifically asking those questions? But yeah, you got to be ready to follow through on what you're asking for and the we have to start is making it a priority. You know, is this important to you to connect with other people?

It may not, you may not be ready for that yet, but that and that's okay. But the time will come when somebody's gonna, you're gonna want somebody to listen to you. So you need to be that person first to connect with somebody else and just make this a little bit more of a human experience for everybody around the world and it doesn't matter if it's somebody you already know most likely it's not going to be.

but that gives you opportunity to forge a new friendship with someone. So that's my that's my encouragement to myself daily as well as to others who read this book. So I hope that I hope that's what will happen.

That's awesome.

Yeah, me too. Thinking about the people in your book, the unseen people, is there a story in that book or a person you met that just really stands out of how they impacted you from your writing about them?

Hmm

Yeah, and you know, I didn't have to go far. I've thought about this question before and there's a lot and there's a lot of people, but one of them is just he was just right next door to me. And this was years ago, but a single man who had a divorced guy whose family didn't live in town, but we shared a fence. We shared our driveways. We're right next to each other in our neighborhood.

So I didn't know him well, but I knew his name. And one day our dogs were barking at each other and he'd gotten a new puppy and we got connected over this dog. And he would come by every so often, let us know he was traveling with his work out of town. I could keep an eye on his house, that sort of thing. So not a deep relationship, but just neighbors. And one day I was going out to my car and he was there and he had a big patch over his eye. And I was asking him,

if he was okay and he said he had to have surgery and on his eye and he's about to drive to Oklahoma City and he have another surgery. And a few, I didn't think much more about it, but a few days later, a week or so later, I saw his obituary in our local newspaper. And I thought, oh my goodness. I had no idea it was that serious of an incident. I think all that to say, it challenged me.

to not take it for granted, to not take those relationships that are either nearby or far away for granted. I just expected him to be out there the next day, off on a trip or telling me about his dog or about his grandkids that live nearby, but then he wasn't there anymore. So I don't know that what else I could have done, but the relationship could have gone deeper, invited him over to our house, my husband and I to host him for dinner.

just to ask the question more often what it is like we could do to help him engage in conversation more that sort of thing. The message to me was life is short, we all know that, so don't forget to take advantage of opportunities and relationships when you have the opportunity to do that.

That's a really impactful story, yeah, because there are a lot of people sometimes you don't notice until it's too late and you think about, wow, I wish I had taken more time to see that person more, interact that person more. And sometimes you'll discover at the funeral how deep and impactful their life was from just the ceremonies of the celebration of their life.

Right.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah, I do that sometimes. I read those obituaries just to see what it is. Who are these people? You know, and what, because it makes you think about your legacy. What is it going to say when it comes my time? What are people are going to think? And so our time is right now to be the shapers of the legacy that we leave. And, you know, part of that, that I want to hand off to my children and grandchildren is that I was a person who cared about others, who listened to others, who

love the way that God would have me love and to see people the way that Jesus does. I have an idea for another book. I don't know if I'm going to do one, but you're getting the scoop on this. It's if I do another one, it will be Unseen People of the Bible. And part of that is the way the way that God sees people like, I don't know, if you there's lots of examples like Hagar, you know, had seen her. She was an outcast and

Mmm.

a woman at that and he saw her and she proclaimed that he is the God who sees. In the New Testament there's so many stories about Jesus looking up at the tree and seeing Zacchaeus. Who would have thought Zacchaeus would have been up there, you know, or all the women who were outcast and that sort of thing. So there's lots of examples in Scripture about seeing the unseen, and that will be this book that's coming out soon.

is definitely a lot of my stories, but there's so many other stories to tell through scriptures, and then maybe even later on another one about unseen people today. There's so many groups of people in our country and around the world who need a voice, who need to be seen. So it's just endless about how to leave an impact in the world.

today and to make a difference can't change at all but you can learn somebody's name today and you can do something.

That's really great. That's an interesting thing too, and think about those unseen people of the Bible and the role they played, you know, how important that part of the story is to the salvation story.

Yeah.

Absolutely, absolutely. You know, Jesus just had a way of making people feel like they were important. You know, you think Matthew, the tax collector, nobody liked him. Jesus saw him and saw his potential, you know. I think my problem with this upcoming, this next one would be, goodness, there's so many stories of that, how do you narrow it down? But just to learn and see through the eyes of

I'm sorry.

of Jesus who the people are, it makes you feel so important. You know, everybody is equally valuable to him. And that's the lesson to learn, that we're no more important than anybody else. He just puts us in a different place in a different time with different opportunities. And learning how to seize the moment and take advantage of those opportunities is...

I guess my encouragement to all of us.

We have to do unseen people of Old Testament and then New Testament to kind of divide it up.

Yeah, I guess. I guess so. I don't know, or group some of them together. I don't know. That's the part I hadn't thought. I've got to get this book out into the world first and then think about that one a little more thoroughly. But it is in my, it is turning in my head a little bit as we're talking about it. So that'll be a journey to get through that. I'll let you know if it happens.

I'm sorry.

Right.

Yeah, let me know and you'll come back and talk about it.

Sure, absolutely.

So what are you excited about in this season of your life?

Oh, well, you know, I always remember people saying that having grandkids is better than having your own kids. And my husband and I are starting, we have five grandchildren now. So that part of life is just fun to watch my children raise their children and having to breathe into that process with them is just.

icing on the cake after raising your own family and be involved in the lives of your children. I we love that my husband's just recently retired so he's given me this opportunity to do my writing as he's been retired. It's a totally different season. It's a good one though and it's good to have that freedom to go and do some things and or stay at home. They say like I'm such an

But we both have traveled extensively in our own, my husband and I in our own separate work through the years. So traveling is not an allure like it used to be, but maybe a few things here and there. But just being settled in our community, in our church, and with our family, it's a it's a wonderful season of life that we're in that's given me space.

to write and to share my words. I'm grateful for that.

That's amazing. As we kind of wrap things up for our conversation today, what takeaways do you want the audience to gain from our conversation?

Well, obviously I want them to get access to this book and it's already up on Amazon for pre-order as we speak. But there's that and I would love to connect with them with my Substack newsletter every week. Just to, you know, there's so much stuff that comes in your inbox every day and I don't want to be another thing. But I do think it's an, I don't.

But I do think it's an opportunity to forge a new friendship with people. So I would love for that to happen. But I think the main thing from this conversation is whether you read the book or not, is to find opportunity sometime very soon to look at people through new lenses, to be able to see people that you might have just overlooked on a daily basis and to reach out.

to listen, to learn a name, and just help them know that they are seen. There was one opportunity in a local restaurant that I frequent with my discipleship group. And there was a lady that saw us reading our Bibles, and she'd see us praying together. And one day she was watching us, and the two young ladies had already left, and it was just me sitting at the table, and she approached me, and she said,

Can you pray for me about something? And so she gave me a very detailed bit of information. And so I thought, this wasn't just an opportunity for her to serve me, this was an opportunity for us to bond as human beings, as women sharing a very difficult situation in her life and she could trust me with this. So.

You know, it's not something that she might have distrusted me automatically for the first time, but she saw us repeatedly being those people. So I think it's important for you to be the kind of person that's approachable, to not always be so busy with your list, to take time to breathe, enjoy the moment and look around and see the people around you. That's my encouragement from this conversation as well as from my book. So thank you for asking that question, Keith. I appreciate that.

That's great. I guess what I took away from it was, it made me think about this, and maybe it's my next book, is praying dangerous prayers. Because what you just talked about just made me think of that. Do you have the courage to pray dangerous prayers? And I mean by dangerous prayers, are those prayers where you either see people or you put yourself out there where you're now looking for opportunities to share the gospel with people or you're looking for ways to make impact every day. To me, those are the kind of prayers that are in line with God's heart.

Mmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

but they also push us outside of our comfort zone. So that idea of, are we willing to make space in our life to be used by God for the way God created us to be, to me is an interesting thing from our conversation today as well.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm. Right. I remember like in the book of Isaiah when he says, here am I, send me, you know, that was a prayer, that was an offering that, but that's a bold, dangerous prayer. Where are you willing to go? And it has to be open ending, you know, if you say, I'm willing to go, I'm willing to be used, I'm willing to see, and see people get ready, because you'll be, you'll be used by him to do that.

Right.

Right. So be careful what you pray for.

Yeah, yeah, but it's exciting, you know, it's dangerous, but it's also, you know, it's a life that you wouldn't trade for anything else because you're willing to be used and go and just say whatever the whatever you send my way, God, the answer is yes. So I'll go do that, but you got to be ready.

Yeah.

So where can people find your book, The Unseen People Again, and where can they learn more about you, your website?

Yeah, dian And I've got all the information on there. There's a page for about the book, particularly there's a contact page. There's some freebies that I give away to get the good stuff. There's that page. So there's just come to diannalynsanders.com and you can connect with me there. I'd love that very much.

Well, thank you so much for being on. Blessings are on your book. And let me know how it comes out, how I can assist to make sure we get it out there to everybody.

Thank you.

I would let you know for sure. I'm excited to hold it in my hands. So I'll share that with you for sure. Thanks.

That's good.

All right, thank you so much.