Nancy Cartwright - Scientology Volunteer Minister

Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, wrote about her experience with the Scienotlogy Volunteer Ministers who went to help in Louisianna after Hurricane Katrina devastated the area.

While many of us were rivited by the images of loss, damage and humiliating conditions the residents of New Orleans had to suffer, others took this as a message that they need to do something about it.

Nancy was one such person as you can see in her article.


Some of you may already know this but I recently joined a group of Scientologist Volunteer Ministers and spent 5 days in Baton Rouge. It was both heart-wrenching and heart-warming. Without the help of so many good people, we would never have been able to handle the thousands of lost, displaced and desperate people. Here is more information to consider:

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This was by far the worst natural disaster in the U.S. in over 100 years so most of us have never seen anything like this in this lifetime... but something can be done about it and it is being done!

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The International Disaster Response Team (aka "Volunteer Minsters") worked at Ground Zero during 9-11, assisting the rescue workers by giving vitamins, Dianetic Assists*(see reference below) to help get their bodies in better shape to keep working the long hours and assisting with mental stress due to the losses

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Similar teams of hundreds of Volunteer Ministers went to Sri Lanka and other cities in the hard-hit area of the tusunami disaster last spring in Asia

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The Volunteer Ministers have been a major force of "help" at every hurricane to hit Florida in the last three years

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As of Sept. 1, the Volunteer Ministers were officially assigned the job of helping a government agency in the relocation of hundreds of people to new shelters. We have been given clearance to provide counseling and assistance to people through Scientology techniques

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The Volunteer Ministers have been operating in the State of Louisiana and as of Sept. 8th was THE ONLY organization allowed to cross into New Orleans to assist the army, sheriff's department, SWAT Teams, National Guard and local fire departments

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Through many phone calls and using all our contacts, the Volunteer Ministers provided 10,000 units of tetanus to make sure that the recovery teams were physically stable in order to go into the belly of the disaster without jeopardizing their own health. NO OTHER ORGANIZATION PROVIDED THIS INVALUABLE SERVICE.


After countless e-mails from friends across the country going into more and more detail of the need for help, I decided to just stop everything I was doing and GO! My assistant, Janelle, got on the internet and the only way we could arrive in Baton Rouge was via Houston. (No rental cars in the entire state of Louisiana!) So off we went to Houston. We picked up another Volunteer Minister, 16-year-old Chafee Graham- a free-spirited lad whose willingness to help others sets the bar for the rest of us (Plus, with all our "camping gear"--backpacks, food for 4-days consisting of protein bars, beef jerkey, trail mix, apples, bananas and peanut butter, we also lugged sleeping bags, change of underwear, flashlights, waterproof hiking boots and socks--having a buff 16-year-old was definitely helpful!)

Too excited to sleep, got up very early and caught our flight out on Sept. 3. We had a "pitstop" in Houston, just enough time to get the rental car and some food and head on our way to Lafayette, Louisiana. A dear friend of ours, Marie Pace, has a mission there and she was anxiously awaiting our arrival. We planned on dropping Chafee at the mission and then continue on our journey to Baton Rouge, but after the 4 hour drive to Lafayette, we decided not to drive into Baton Rouge in the middle of the night, so after getting briefed on all the “goings on”, we bunked down for the night and Janelle and I headed into Baton Rouge in the morning. (We planned on stopping by at the "back end" of our journey to visit the shelter in Lafayette.)

First stop: the Baton Rouge Mission of Scientology. When we arrived there were already hundreds of volunteers, scurrying here and there, getting signed in, filling out information forms and being handed a bright yellow t-shirt that identified us as a Volunteer Minister. One of the most amazing and admirable aspects to this particular group is that we really know how to organize. Everyone was assigned to a particular job, department or area. Those who are experts at organization ended up staying back at the mission in order to "run" the entire organization at this base. (Janelle is a real pro in this area and the Top Management snatched her up in a second to stay on base and put the organization there.) Others who are very good at personal interaction and delivering "Assists" (see below) were assigned to go to certain shelters to help in that area. It was being a part of a very productive scout troupe whose expertise is "assisting those in need, no matter what the problem." I was very proud to be a part of such a dedicated group. And if I every wondered who or what was going on, all I needed to do was look on the wall and there was posted a board that showed all the various areas and assignments. The phones were ringing off the hook with people wanting to know what they could do to help. It was really an amazing flurry of energy.>>more