Continuing Relief Efforts in Rockport, Texas
Trailers on top of trees. Telephone poles down for miles. Flooded roads. No power—the place is dark,” reported veteran Scientology Volunteer Minister Joava Good upon arriving in Rockport, Texas. The city had been flattened by Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, when it made landfall directly over the city as a Category 4.
In the days following Harvey’s touchdown, Good joined over 480 Volunteer Ministers who met at the Church of Scientology in Austin, Texas, establishing a makeshift Hurricane Disaster Response headquarters to start to provide Harvey victims with immediate relief. These volunteers filled vehicles with disaster relief supplies and then fired out to Rockport, Houston, Corpus Christi and other Texas cities and towns torn apart in Harvey’s path. Within a matter of hours after their arrival, the Volunteer Ministers worked alongside other first responders to help repair damaged homes.
While the Volunteer Ministers continued their disaster relief in the weeks after Hurricane Harvey, images of Houston submerged under floodwaters continued to dominate the news and Texas Governor Greg Abbott asked that all “don’t forget Rockport.” Rockport and the rest of Aransas County, where Harvey made landfall, still had as many as 80 percent of the homes left damaged or destroyed.
In response, VM Joava Good, who also serves as Communications Chair of National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD), coordinated using more than $1 million raised by KSL TV, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, and a coalition of religious groups and charities to provide building supplies to Rockport and surrounding areas affected by Harvey.
Shortly after, a “Something CAN Be Done About It” convoy, complete with eight big rigs and a police and fire truck escort, traveled three days and nights from Utah to the Aransas County Airport. Here, Volunteer Ministers delivered more than 200 tons of building supplies to the city of Rockport, still in dire need of supplies to rebuild their city’s infrastructure.
The Volunteer Minister convoy was welcomed by US Congressman Blake Farenthold, Rockport Mayor Charles “C.J.” Wax, Fulton Mayor Jimmy Kendrick, and Aransas County Judge C.H. “Burt” Mills Jr. in a brief ceremony thanking the truckers, the people of Utah, and the Scientology Volunteer Ministers for helping the people of the county recover—and for their continuing efforts to help rebuild Rockport.
TAKING ACTION
Calling all Volunteer Ministers!
Your neighbor might be calling the Scientology Volunteer Ministers Hotline right now looking for help—with a broken marriage, a kid on drugs, a recent accident or a struggling business. Unless you are registered with the Hotline as a VM, we won’t be able to connect you to assist.
The Hotline takes calls every day, and from everywhere, from people requesting a VM in their area, be it for one-on-one help with a personal situation, a request for a live on-site seminar on a Scientology basic tool such as the Study Technology, or an urgent appeal for emergency relief after a natural disaster.
If you are a VM or want to become one and want to help, please contact the Hotline and let us know your name, location, contact info, VM training level and which VM activities for which you are available.
DONATE
Volunteer Ministers are on call across the globe and around the clock to respond to any and every disaster. Your contribution will fund volunteer travel as well as food, water, tents and medical supplies for disaster victims.
