Scientology Disaster Response: Help to Victims in Towns Destroyed by Last Week’s Tornadoes

A truck filled with generators and heaters drove up to the tent for help getting them into the hands of those in need.

A U-Haul filled with 100 generators, heaters and propane tanks pulled up to the bright yellow tent at the corner of 8th and Walnut in Mayfield, Kentucky. Volunteer Ministers helped unload the truck’s precious contents, all of which found homes that day along with the 2,900 hot meals the volunteers handed out.

Volunteer Ministers (VMs) have arrived from the Scientology Churches in Nashville, Tennessee; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Twin Cities, Minnesota. And VMs pulled into Mayfield from Austin, Texas, on Saturday with 4,000 donated items.

Volunteer Ministers helped unload the truck and get these precious gifts into the hands of families.

Joava Good of Draper, Utah, came out from the Church of Scientology in Salt Lake City. Good, who represents the Church of Scientology with VOAD (National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster), has been an active Volunteer Minister responding to disasters since 1978.

A break in the nearly constant rain gives Scientology Volunteer Ministers providing relief in Mayfield, Kentucky, the time to tarp the roof of a home that was damaged but not destroyed.

The bright yellow tent in Mayfield, Kentucky, where Scientology Volunteer Ministers hand out food and supplies, hot coffee and cocoa, and where they coordinate the activities of their disaster response.

Volunteer Ministers help clean up the yard around a church destroyed by the tornado so the pastor can provide a safe place for displaced parishioners to set up tents.

The rain that brought the tornado outbreak has continued for most of the past week. To lift people’s spirits, Good decided to make hot coffee and cocoa available, and when she arrived at the checkout to pay for two coffee pots, 13 pounds of coffee and hot chocolate, Walmart paid the tab.

“It’s been like that since we arrived,” she says. “The generosity and outpouring of help is heartwarming.”

One of the Volunteer Ministers helped a woman who was devastated that the town she has lived in for 30 years had just been destroyed. Using a simple Scientology assist, a technique developed by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard to relieve distress through addressing the emotional and spiritual factors in stress and trauma, he was able to bring her from grief to laughter in just a few minutes.

At the request of a pastor whose church was destroyed by the tornado, VMs cleared out the yard around the church so he could put up tents for parishioners in need of shelter. And whenever there is a lull in the rain, volunteers rush out to lay tarps on the roofs of houses that were damaged but not destroyed.

In addition to their work in Mayfield, Kentucky, the town hardest hit by the outbreak, Volunteer Ministers are also serving 70 miles away in Dawson Springs and in Bowling Green.

Trained Volunteer Ministers who can join the disaster response should contact the Volunteer Minister hotline at (800) HELP-4-YU or (323) 960-1949.

The Church of Scientology Volunteer Ministers program is a religious social service created in the mid-1970s by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard.

A Volunteer Minister’s mandate is to be “a person who helps his fellow man on a volunteer basis by restoring purpose, truth and spiritual values to the lives of others.” Their creed: “A Volunteer Minister does not shut his eyes to the pain, evil and injustice of existence. Rather, he is trained to handle these things and help others achieve relief from them and new personal strength as well.”