Team Dianetics Takes Another One

Team Dianetics Takes Another One
Originally uploaded by jetteroheller.

Well, this didn't just happen - but was one of my Maryland photos that I decided to blog on today. Why? Because I can. Flickr rocks.

My friend, my wife and I, when living in D.C., had a Team Dianetics relay team, and would go around racing at various area bike/run/swim type races.

This one was some type of fat-tire fiasco, with around 1000 people there all geared up to go.

My wife was a pro backstroker, but hadn't done any racing in years, and so was a bit flipped out about even making it around the lake. It was a good half-mile she had to swim, flat-out -- and the other heats had their swimmers starting out, doing the first 1/3 of the race in FLY. Nuts. So, she finished her heat in something like 115th place, tagging me to do the mountain bike thing.

I took off on the bike, and luckily I had been riding from our house to the Church of Scientology D.C. each day, and was a bit more in shape. I passed about 100 people on the trail, and by the time I tagged our runner, we were in 10th place. John then cleaned up on the 5k trail run, and we ended up winning the thing.

Anyhow, one of my funner runs, and another thing where I try to keep myself from being a total computer geek. :)

Scientology Volunteer Ministers in Mozambique

Scientology Volunteer Ministers in Mozambique
Originally uploaded by jetteroheller.

This will be my first post using the Flickr integration into the Blogger beta. I'm definitely finding this to be a useful app - especially when one has a photo story to share.

This particular photo is one that a guy from South Africa sent me. He has Scientologist friends who just left for Mozambique to assist the Scientology Volunteer ministers there with organizing clean-up efforts. It really is quite a disaster there, with hurricanes and flooding providing all manner of issues. Destroyed houses, mowed-over towns, theres a few hundred thousand people displaced. Not a lot of fun. So, I know his friends are there working their tails off to try to get people back into their homes and get the place rebuilt.

Volunteers needed to go to Mozambique

There's a time to code and tinker around with little networking gadgets, and there's a time to get one's hands dirty. Well, unfortunately for me right now, I'm stuck doing network engineering tasks. But if I were slightly more mobile, I'd be heading to Mozambique.

The Church of Scientology International and the Church of Scientology of Johannesburg in South Africa are putting out a call to all Scientology Volunteer Ministers and people who have wanted to train to be Volunteer Ministers, to saddle up and get to the Zambezi river in Mozambique to help with the massive flooding they're having there.

Following is the release on this from ScientologyToday:

The Church of Scientology of Johannesburg urges all Scientology Volunteer Ministers in Southern Africa to join the Scientology Disaster Relief Team, preparing to move into Mozambique in the wake of Cyclone Favio.

With estimates of more than 120,000 homeless from this and earlier flooding, and possibilities of a second cyclone hitting this weekend, supplies, funds and emergency relief personnel are urgently needed.

Scientology Volunteer Ministers are needed to lead the teams and train others who want to help. With hundreds of thousands needing assistance, the VM team will follow the pattern developed over recent years, of training local residents and other volunteers and emergency relief personnel in the techniques from the Scientology Handbook. This maximizes their ability to provide help, and was effective in their work after the South East Asian tsunami of December 2004, the 2005 hurricanes in the US, cyclones in Australia and typhoons and earthquakes in Indonesia and the Philippines.

The team is funded in the field entirely by donations, and anyone who can do so is urged to help. You can give your donation online at the Volunteer Ministers web site.

If you can participate in the relief effort, contact the Scientology Volunteer Ministers Coordinator at the Church of Scientology of Johannesburg, or visit www.volunteerministers.org.

References:

• ScientologyToday news article on Mozambique
• Mr. David Miscavige briefing on Scientology Volunteer Ministers
• Scientology Volunteer Ministers Blog
  

Kansas City Planning to be one of the next Ideal Scientology Organizations

Back in mid-January, I wrote about the new Church of Scientology in Berlin -- a brand-new, state of the art Scientology Church which has some of the most high-tech systems you can shake a stick at to make it easy as falling off a log to walk in to a Church of Scientology and find out all about what Scientology is.

Well, that same concept is going to shortly be making its way to the heart of the midwest, where the Church of Scientology Kansas City will soon be the next Ideal Scientology Organization. Or one of them, anyhow.

They're looking to purchase a gigantic new building in downtown Kansas City, MO -- to keep pace with their rapid growth. A few years back they were actually honored with an award as having the fastest-growing Scientology parishionership in the world. Well, that growth hasn't abated and the Church continues to need to find a space that's large enough for all of the people currently training to be Scientology Volunteer ministers.

I hope to have some photos of the place soon!

Volunteer Work

Volunteer Work

This is a cute blog I found about Youth Scientology Volunteer ministers. Just found it when I was browsing Yahoo! Groups, looking for any other Scientology Volunteer ministers out there. It hasn't been updated in a little bit, but still - is cute and has some good info on what Scientology Volunteer Ministers were doing around the time of hurricane Katrina.

Delicious Library

I found this one when going through my Ambient Findability book, looking at how to properly design user interfaces:

Delicious Library

They had a "blog this" icon, so I couldn't resist.

London: Beautiful Panorama Photo

Jason Hawkes: September 2006 Archives: "Image_2184.jpg"

I just saw this one on Reddit.com, referred from today's top user. This is probably one of the nicest city panoramas of London I've yet seen. Unfortunately, my familiarity with London stops at the data I had when blogging about the new Church of Scientology of London that Mr. David Miscavige gave his grand opening speech at last fall on Queen Victoria St. Honestly, I don't know if that's even in the frame, but the photo sure looks cool.