Rembering 9/11

“This isn’t really happening,” Samuel House thought as he watched a plane fly into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, live on the news. “It was like watching a horrible movie, but the feeling in my stomach reflected the reality of what was occurring.”

As Samuel and his wife, Ann, watched the shocking events of 9/11 play out on the news, fear and anxiety set in. “We were worried about our friends that live and work in that area, and we wondered if more attacks were coming,” Ann said. Sitting in their Milford, Connecticut home, they never would have imagined that just two days later, Samuel would be in the midst of the destruction at Ground Zero.

Now living in Camden, Arkansas, Samuel was one of several volunteers that found relief from the fear and anxiety of the attacks by helping others.

Jehovah’s Witnesses set up teams that spent hours each day in Lower Manhattan, Bible in hand, consoling everyone from the families of victims to first responders battling physical and emotional exhaustion. It was a work that changed how the Witnesses approach disasters, with an organized comfort ministry now being an integral part of their response to natural disasters and even the pandemic.

“It brought me comfort to be able to share something from the Bible that comforted others,” Samuel recalls about his three weeks at Ground Zero.

The ministry that he had shared in for years as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses took on a new role for him and many others. “Focusing on helping others took my mind off my own anxieties. What I was sharing with them was reminding my heart of my own hope for the future and helping me deal with my feelings,” he said.

Helping others has long been linked to better emotional well-being in psychology research. The book “The Healing Power of Doing Good: The Health and Spiritual Benefits of Helping Others” describes “powerful” effects, even for helpers who’ve experienced trauma themselves.

Two decades later, House continues to find comfort from reaching out — this time in talking with pandemic-stressed neighbors while coping with the loss of his own family members and friends who died of COVID-19.

“The ministry is the best therapy for me; mentally, emotionally, and spiritually,” he said, “although now doing so through letters and telephone calls instead of going door to door.” Jehovah’s Witnesses paused their in-person preaching in response to the pandemic in March 2020 and instead focused on writing comforting letters to their neighbors.

“Encouraging others to look to the future helps me to do the same,” he said.