L. Ron Hubbard Day

I think March 13 should be designated L. Ron Hubbard Day.

The wealth of what he left behind as his legacy, he has done to help humankind, certainly merits this and much more.

Peter Dunn: All in the Name of Help

Australian Scientologist Peter Dunn has served as a Scientology Volunteer Minister in Haiti, Queensland, and Japan.

At 4 a.m. on March 11, 2011, the shock wave from the magnitude 9 earthquake that triggered a 30-foot tsunami off the northeast coast of Japan reached Australia—not as a physical blast but rather as a summons for Scientologist Peter Dunn to return to Japan and help in her time of need.

Dunn, a native of Adelaide who lives in Sydney, had spent the last few months volunteering in the December 2010 Queensland floods, helping residents of Grantham, the town hardest hit, clean up their homes and neighborhoods.

Having lived in Japan for several years when he served as a staff member at the Church of Scientology of Tokyo, Dunn’s strong affinity for the Japanese people and his sense of duty prompted his departure for Japan.

Described by Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan as “the biggest crisis Japan has encountered in the 65 years since the end of World War II," the earthquake and tsunami left more than 20,000 dead or missing, causing an estimated 16.9 trillion yen ($220 billion) in damage and triggering the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

Dunn, who also served for several months in Haiti following the January 2010 earthquake, described the scene he encountered in Japan as very different from what he experienced in Port-au-Prince. Although the destruction was worse and more widespread than in Haiti, Japan rebounded, able to quickly leverage far more resources in the relief effort.

As is the custom of the Scientology Volunteer Ministers, on arriving in Japan they asked what was needed and wanted and set about providing what was asked. They distributed food and water, worked on the search and rescue operation, and manned shelters. They even arranged bicycle donations so junior high school students could travel over roads still closed to cars and trucks to deliver food and supplies to ill, injured, and elderly residents in and around the city of Kesennuma.

While he was prepared to take on any task needed, Dunn is a Scientology spiritual counselor or auditor—“one who listens,” from the Latin audire, “to hear or listen.” So his main function in Japan was to provide Scientology assists. These are techniques developed by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard that relieve stress and emotional trauma and can speed physical recovery by addressing the spiritual factors in illness and injuries.

“At one shelter, a lady who couldn’t walk when we started rose after a five-minute assist feeling like she wanted to run,” says Dunn. “Another elderly woman was deeply disturbed and told me she expected to die soon. A week later, after daily assists, she had regained her will to live and her enthusiasm and she was bringing life and optimism back to the entire room of 30 survivors in the shelter where she was staying.”

Dunn is proud that in each disaster where he has served, the Scientology Volunteer Ministers have addressed the task at hand with industry, willingness and persistence.

“It has been my honor to help hospital-bound amputees in Haiti, polite and gentle Japanese pensioners in homeless shelters, and rough, tough Aussie farmers,” says Dunn. “And each of them know by our actions that we have simply come to help.”

Introduced to Scientology in 1974 when a friend gave him a copy of Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought by L. Ron Hubbard, Dunn, now 61, found answers he’d long sought about the meaning and purpose of life. What he appreciates most from what he has gained in four decades as a Scientologist is the ability and opportunity to help.

The Scientology Volunteer Minister program was initiated by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard in 1976. There are now hundreds of thousands of people trained in the skills of a Volunteer Minister across 185 nations.

News about the Scientology Volunteer Minister at Blog.VolunteerMinisters.Org!

Scientology Volunteer Ministers

The Scientology Volunteer Ministers Corps is an embracive program of the Church of Scientology to provide community service, disaster relief and emergency response. Created more than 30 years ago by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard, the program has expanded to over 200,000 Volunteer Ministers worldwide who have served at 187 disaster sites, including Ground Zero after 9/11, the Southeast Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and Haiti.

Volunteer Ministers have trained and partnered with more than 1,000 different groups, organizations and agencies including the Red Cross, FEMA, the National Guard, and police and fire departments. The Volunteer Ministers Corps motto is “Something can be done about it.”

SCIENTOLOGY VOLUNTEER MINISTERS PROVIDE AID WORLD OVER IN THE WAKE OF DISASTER

In 2010, hundreds of thousands trained in the skills of the Scientology Volunteer Minister reached out and helped others in times of disaster. Their actions embodied the words of Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard: “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.”>>

“If one does not like the crime, cruelty, injustice and violence of this society, he can do something about it. He can become a VOLUNTEER MINISTER and help civilize it, bring it conscience
and kindness and love and freedom from travail by instilling into it trust, decency, honesty and tolerance.”

— L. Ron Hubbard
RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE IN SOCIETY
Role of the Volunteer Minister

Conflict Resolution

Ever wonder what lies behind conflicts? Why some people always seem to be at each other's throats? Why you can't patch up a ridiculous quarrel?

The video here makes a lot of sense.>>

2010: SCIENTOLOGY VOLUNTEER MINISTERS PROVIDE AID

WORLD OVER IN THE WAKE OF DISASTER

Over the course of the past twelve months, hundreds of thousands trained in the skills of the Scientology Volunteer Minister reached out and helped others in times of disaster. Their actions embodied the words of Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard: “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.”

There are over 200,000 Scientology Volunteer Ministers, making it one of the largest relief organizations in the world. And in the last ten years alone they have helped over ten million people.

They are trained to respond in times of major disaster and personal crisis. They are proficient Tech of L. Ron Hubbard and have solutions for 19 areas, from marriage counseling and conflict resolution to alleviating emotional trauma. Whether providing immediate and effective assistance to the victims and the emergency workers in the aftermath of an earthquake or helping a failing student learn to read, the Volunteer Ministers’ only reward is knowing that they helped.

There are eighteen continental Volunteer Ministers traveling centers, (marquee yellow tents), that have toured through over 100 countries cover hundreds of thousands of miles, including a Volunteer Minister's barge traveling up the Amazon River, to centers traveling throughout West and Central Africa, and a traveling center in the outback of Australia.

Our 135 regional Volunteer Ministers traveling centers, (yellow tents), managed by every central Church of Scientology in the world, have toured throughout their city or town helping hundreds of thousands yearly."

VOLUNTEER MINISTERS

In answer to escalating crime and violence through the latter 1960s and early 1970s, L. Ron Hubbard founded the Volunteer Minister program. It was designed to provide practical tools for engendering understanding and compassion. Moreover, those tools were expressly conceived for use by Scientologists and non-Scientologists alike. Thus was born a broad-based movement of individuals from all walks of life dedicated to providing on-site assistance to communities around the world.

Scientology Video: Why we help

Church of Scientology sends another charter with medical personnel and Volunteer Ministers to Haiti. Media reports:

Scientology Volunteer Ministers Help Samoa Recover from Tsunami

A team of Scientology Volunteer Ministers is helping Samoa recover from the tsunami that hit the island early Tuesday, September 29. The tidal waves carried entire villages out to sea and killed at least 140.

An 8.0 earthquake 120 miles off the coast jolted people awake in Samoa at 6:48 that morning. Ten minutes later the first of four 15- to 20-foot-high waves pounded the shore and surged inland, destroying everything in their path.

Alerted to the disaster, Scientologists from Sydney, Australia, flew to the devastated island. There, they joined a team of Samoans who trained to be Volunteer Ministers in 2008 when the Scientology Volunteer Ministers South Pacific Goodwill Tour was in that country. They are working together to help local officials provide basic services for several thousand survivors living in emergency shelters since the disaster occurred.

The Scientology Volunteer Ministers have set up their bright yellow tent as a headquarters for their relief activities. There, at shelters and in villages throughout the island, they provide Scientology Assists—simple procedures developed by Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard that help people recover from the emotional and spiritual effects of trauma, illness and injury.

“Our Scientology Assists are the ’spiritual first-aid’ people need in a disaster,” said Mathew Andrews, leader of the Scientology Volunteer Ministers South Pacific Goodwill Tour who is coordinating the Volunteer Ministers disaster relief in Samoa. “People who are grieving, in pain or fixated on the tragedy become extroverted and bright and start planning again for the future. We helped a man who was in pain, struggling to walk. Today we saw him in town. He was smiling and walking easily and came up to me to shake my hand.”

For more information or to join the relief effort in Samoa contact the Volunteer Ministers Consultant at vm@volunteerministers.org. To learn more about the Scientology Volunteer Ministers program visit their web site at www.volunteerministers.org or the Scientology site.

Scientology Handbook Helps with Painless Withdrawal from Drugs

The Scientology Handbook is the text book Scientology Volunteer Ministers are trained on and use in their work. It's a compilation of various works of L. Ron Hubbard that are geared to be able to help people with the most common problems people

It's a pretty remarkable book.

Here's just one example.

One of the "hardest" things to do is to withdraw from a bad drug habit, right? I've worked with junkies and alcoholics and it is a pretty awful problem. They go through so much pain. But one of the chapters of the Scientology Handbook has a very simple description of how to help someone with a nearly painless withdrawal. I've used it. It's like magic. (It's not in the online version but you can order the book online or get it from most libraries).

There are so many ways Scientology helps people live better lives, and that's just the start of it, (because Scientology offers so much more spiritually.)

One of the things I like best about being a Scientology Volunteer Ministers is having so may tools at my fingertips to be able to help people with whatever their problems are. I always wanted to be able to help. Now I can.