Scientology Volunteer Ministers of Australia Outback Goodwill Tour

Scientology Volunteer Ministers Outback Goodwill Tour—Traveling through the Australia outback helping one person at a time

Scientology Volunteer Ministers, traveling through the Australia Northern Territory, are bringing help on a one-on-one basis, where help is needed.

Australian Aboriginal culture may well be the oldest continuous living culture on Earth, beginning an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 years ago. But over the past two centuries the culture and rights of the indigenous people have taken a tremendous toll.

Last year, the Australian government formally apologized for the past wrongs caused by successive governments to the indigenous Aboriginal population, acknowledging its laws and policies had “inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss”. And the government’s formal support for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples last April was acknowledged by the Australian Human Rights Commission, as a “giant step,” toward “embracing the fundamental guiding principles of mutual respect and partnership.”

To make a real difference at grassroots level, the issues that impact the lives of indigenous Australians need to be addressed. A team of Scientology Volunteer Ministers, traveling through the outback, are bringing help to the Aboriginal community, one person at a time.

They help people where they work and live, visiting them in their homes, on the streets and in the camps. They provide seminars in skills such as conflict resolution, communication and the basics of organization. They tackle literacy problems by training parents, teachers and civic leaders on the technology of study developed by Scientology founder, L. Ron Hubbard.

Addiction and substance abuse, particularly alcohol and inhalants, are serious problems in the community and the volunteers use technology from the Scientology Handbook to help people withdraw from drugs and alcohol. They accompany this with Scientology assists to overcome the pain and discomfort associated with withdrawal. Scientology assists are procedures that greatly increase the speed of healing by addressing the emotional and spiritual factors in illness and injuries.

“I have experienced a reinvigoration in my faith in humanity and my will to live,” wrote one man who was helped by the Tour. “I can now expand and achieve my intention in life,” he went on to say. “Being associated with you and the materials has given me a glow in life—it’s come back. I feel good. … I’m happy and grateful. There is nobody else in Alice Springs like you people.”

The Scientology Volunteer Ministers Outback Goodwill Tour has taken to heart the spirit in which Mr. Hubbard created the Scientology Volunteer Ministers program: “If one is going to find fault with something, it implies that he wishes to do something about it and would if he could. 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.”

Scientology Volunteers Help Victims of Sumatra Earthquake

Australian Scientology Volunteer Ministers bring spiritual first-aide to survivors of devastation in southern Sumatra.

Scientology Volunteer Ministers arrived in Indonesia the day after the September 30 earthquake left more than 1,000 dead and half a million homeless.

The Australian Scientology Volunteer Ministers who traveled to Padang, 28 miles from the epicenter of the magnitude 7.9 earthquake, are no strangers to disaster. They are veterans of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2007 Yogyakarta tornado and the 2007 Java quake. But even they were challenged by the enormity of the devastation they encountered.

Here is an account of their first day:

In Padang, 28 miles from the epicenter of the magnitude 7.9 earthquake, they started in Chinatown, left in shambles by the disaster. There, in a medical tent, the Scientology Volunteer Ministers showed the doctors and nurses how to provide Scientology Assists and gave them copies of an instruction booklet. Assists are procedures developed by L. Ron Hubbard that provide relief by addressing the emotional and spiritual factors in stress, trauma, illness and injuries.

A nurse said “So, you can give relief using no drugs and no medicine? This is really needed. We all need to know this!”

On to a Chinese temple serving as a shelter for those whose homes were destroyed. The volunteers met the head of the medical clinic who had relocated his operation to the temple’s basketball court when the earthquake destroyed his offices. He could not keep up with the flood of people who had come to the temple for help so the Volunteer Ministers went to work. They set up tables to provide Scientology Assists and chairs where others could sit while they waited their turns.

As lines of people received Assists and word of the physical and emotional relief spread, and the lines grew longer, the volunteers decided to train those waiting how to give Assists to each other. Their mission accomplished at that location, the Scientology Volunteer Ministers took their leave and moved on to a hospital where they could give assistance.

As they drove on through the city, they saw the eerie capriciousness of the earthquake. A three-story building leaned precariously over its neighbor’s home. Another building looked untouched until they saw that one wall was missing entirely. One house stood with every room exposed to view, a snapshot of a family no longer there.

The first hospital they found was completely destroyed. The next, a private hospital, was still operating despite damage. There, on the steps, a woman holding a baby was crying uncontrollably—her brother was inside dying because she didn’t have the 125,000 rupiah to buy what he needed from the blood bank. The Volunteer Ministers paid for the blood—$15 to save a life.

The volunteers moved into the wards and started giving Scientology Assists to injured patients while others explained the procedure to the nurses and taught them how to give Assists.

One man whose leg was completely numb received an Assist. When it was over, not only was the feeling in his leg restored, but his huge smile attested to the fact that the pain that had wracked the rest of his body was gone as well.

Concrete had crushed another man’s leg, breaking it in dozens of places from knee down to foot. The doctors had inserted metal rods into his leg. Blood was seeping out into the freshly bandaged wounds and he was writhing in pain. By the time his Assist was done he was calm and relaxed, and he smiled when he said, “I feel good… I feel good!”

Another man, whose entire body had been injured, was traumatized to the point of complete unresponsiveness—it appeared he could not hear or speak at all. The Scientology Volunteer Minister explained what she was doing with impromptu sign language and began the Assist. At first he didn’t appear to notice anything, but gradually he began to respond and in the end he was smiling.

As Day One in Padang drew to a close, the Scientology Volunteer Ministers met a team from the Indonesian Red Cross who had booked an extra hotel room where a bucket served as shower at the end of a long, hot and dirty day they will never forget.