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 in to
Mayfield from Austin, Texas, on Saturday with 4,000 donated items.  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. 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 can 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. 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 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.”