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.

Scientology Today: New Program Launched by Foundation for a Drug Free World in Honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, 'Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.'

On the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, the Foundation for a Drug Free World announced a new program to help parents learn how to communicate to their children about drugs. Since so much of the crime that plagues our cities is drug-related, helping children and teens decide to live drug-free lives can help our communities enormously.

And with the sheer amount of devastation drug abuse causes, what could matter more to parents than helping their children make the right decisions about drugs?

Take that Press: Scientology Berlin Opening

If you check any of my last posts, I wasn't too impressed by the media coverage granted to the Scientology Grand Opening in in Berlin. The media (obviously under someone's influence) kept trying to downplay the thing, saying that there were only 150 people there, that it wasn't really happening, that it was all just protesters, that the public weren't invited, etc. All utter, complete, total fabrications.

A friend of mine just had his wife return from the Grand Opening there, as she was representing her Scientology Church in Florida. The final count of Scientologists there ended up being something like 5,035 or something like this. Perhaps I'm off by thirty or something, but it was in that range. Another friend of mine told me that even hours after the Grand Opening, it would take 20 minutes just to walk from one office in the buiding to another, because of the mobs of people one had to walk through.

2 days after the opening, there were still mobs of Scientologists and non-Scientologists alike hanging around the place.

So, in any case, I just see it fitting and funny to point out the fact that when you're a reporter, and you come to an event like this Church of Scientology Grand opening with your story already written for you, completely abandoning any journalistic integrity, you'll end up getting burnt. Unfortunately, this is now the case -- as the Grand Opening in Berlin was a huge success.

Ever since I heard Mr. David Miscavige announce the new Berlin church at my Church's Scientology New Year celebration, I knew this was going to be big. Well, all the press controversy turned out to create is to make it bigger. So, I guess their lying did some good for once!