Karen, USA - Midwife experiences - helping to give birth in complete darkness

A Story from the Official Volunteer Ministers Blog

Karen Farrell is a midwife and a Scientology Volunteer Minister who lives in New England. When she heard about the Haiti earthquake on January 12, her first thought was that she needed to help. Four days later she was in Port-au-Prince with the medical and disaster relief team of doctors and nurses from the Association of Haitian Physicians Abroad, paramedics and Volunteer Ministers who boarded a flight in New York on January 16, chartered by the Church of Scientology to take medical personnel and supplies to Haiti.

Karen was assigned to General Hospital, where the facilities were woefully inadequate for the doctors and nurses working desperately to do something for the worst of the enormous numbers of earthquake victims. Overwhelmed with casualties, the medical staff could scarcely tend to women having babies. The Norwegian Red Cross had set up a small makeshift obstetric and surgical unit and welcomed the midwife and doctors newly arrived from America.

Josh, USA - I wouldn't trade the time I have had here for millions of dollars.

(with permission of Blog.Volunteerministers.org)

Following his interview with NBC we asked Josh to tell us how he came to work in Haiti and his experiences in a field operating room that could compare war zone field hospital. Here is his response, straight from the Volunteer Ministers camp in Port-Au-Prince:

"I live my life with the motto ‘I am going to change the world’ and I try to live by this in everything I do.

"I love to work for organizations that help and to personally help as many people as I can.

"I had just moved from Los Angeles to Seattle two weeks earlier when my friend Yoshimi called me on Sunday, January 17, and told me that the Scientology Volunteer Ministers had been contacted by more than 100 doctors and nurses who want into to go to Haiti and needed Volunteer Ministers to go help them with anything needed. I immediately said I was in, dropped the job I was supposed to start two days later, told the manager of the apartment I was securing that I was going out of the country and with no money arranged a flight from Seattle to LA. I made it to LA, got my passport in one day and embarked for Haiti on Thursday Jan 21.

"Upon arriving here I was very excited about helping and wanted to get right into action. I accepted the first position offered at the first meeting I went to, not even knowing what it entailed. We started working at the Miami University Hospital organizing their very chaotic, unsorted, catastrophe of a supply tent. They were very skeptical of us working there at first–they would only allow four VMs to help them and we had to be cleared through their armed guards. Within two hours of us working there they loved us and they asked us to bring two extra guys. By the end of the day we had a crew of about 16 people working for them.

Darrell, USA - It was disaster beyond belief.

Upon arriving in Haiti two weeks ago I had no idea what to expect. It was disaster beyond belief. Being a medical professional I was assigned to General Hospital on the night shift and assumed there would be support. However the hospital personnel had been traumatized and would not show up inside the building, so my partner, an extremely competent EMT and Nurse, and I tackled the Critical Care Unit with no supplies, very unsanitary conditions, too many patients and very little time. I hate night shift since I left the military, however, the need took precedence. I can't believe that I did not get tired or hungry.

The first week we got about two to four hours sleep a night (day). Gradually the conditions improved with the untiring effort of my friend and Scientology Volunteer Minister Ayal, and when we showed up on the floor the patients would smile, because they knew they were genuinely being cared for by concerned people. When we finished there were supplies, the floors cleaned, the dead body smell was gone and I felt we had done a very worthwhile deed. Our hours were extremely long and several nights we were without lights. Even though the schedule caught up with my body, I would do it again in a minute.