Scientology relieved the natural disasters came to them this time
While you were trick-or-treating yesterday, Scientology put out a new press release patting itself on the back for getting photo opportunities out of the two hurricanes that hit Florida recently, Helene in late September and Milton in early October.
The best part? For once the yellow-jacketed “Volunteer Ministers” had no travel costs, as they normally have to book flights to arrange for photos in front of disaster scenes.
Here’s the press release in its entirety. After reading this, how can you doubt the awesome power for good that Scientology is for the world?
It had been more than a century since Florida’s Pinellas County sustained a direct hit from a hurricane, but that changed on September 26, when Hurricane Helene tore through the area. Two weeks later, Hurricane Milton slammed through the county. Scientology Volunteer Ministers responded to help their community cope and recover from the impact of these unprecedented storms.
The hurricanes damaged some 40,000 Pinellas County homes. Hundreds of thousands of households lost power. Winds up to 140 mph drove rain and debris through cracks in windows, tore off roofs, flooded basements, downed hundreds of trees and drove sand inland from the beach, slamming it against houses and into roadways.
Hundreds of volunteers, organized in teams by the Clearwater Volunteer Ministers headquarters, responded to calls to the group’s helpline or moved through the county to check on local residents, deliver ice and fresh water, clear roads, and remove mud, debris, damaged furniture, rain- or flood-damaged rugs, and wallboard from homes to prevent mold contamination.
The volunteers in their bright yellow T-shirts, canvassing neighborhoods to help, were a welcome sight—particularly to seniors, with nearly a quarter of the county’s population aged 65 or older.
Some residents felt so overwhelmed they had simply given up.
At one home, when the Volunteer Ministers approached, the woman who lived there was despondent: everything was ruined, she said. One of the volunteers gained her permission to clean up the house. They removed the trash, cleaned up the kitchen, and took out damaged furniture, leaving the home clean and safe. “I had lost hope,” she told the team. “I am OK now. I’ll take it from here.”
The Volunteer Ministers used Scientology assists —techniques developed by author and Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard to help people overcome the emotional and spiritual aspects of stress and trauma.
“I felt so alone,” said an elderly man. “I am so relieved you came to help me. I was completely overwhelmed. You just showed up and got to work.”
“I could never have handled this without you,” said another. “I feel truly blessed.”
The Church of Scientology Volunteer Ministers program is a religious social service created in the mid-1970s by L. Ron Hubbard. It constitutes one of the world’s largest independent relief forces.
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.”
Their motto is no matter the circumstances, “Something can be done about it.”
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Look carefully at the photo of myriad yellow t-shirts. They are all high school students gathered together, most definitely a staged photo shoot. The students may have gone out for a day or two and cleaned up some trash in damaged homes. More propaganda. Scientology only helps if they get something out of it. In this case promotion that makes them look good and that’s bad.
The clampire lives and dies by the testimonial. And nothing in the testimonial need be true. So 2 or maybe 3 people got help clearing out their destroyed possessions. What about the other 39,997 wrecked homes?
I really doubt that the picture of the VM 'army' was actually real. Did they really have all of those yellow tee-shirts handy and enough people to wear them at one time? If they did actually give real help to more than 3 people, where are those pictures? And where are the dirty tee-shirts from those who worked on clean up?