Update #3 - It's NOT too late to help!

If you have watched CNN's recent report on the earthquake in northern Pakistan, you may feel that it is too late to help the survivors. But that is not true. We must press forward ASAP. Whatever we can purchase and deliver in the way of tents and quilts, we will do until December 15, when the window for surviving the intensely cold weather is basically closed. At that point I will throw all remaining and on-going donations into food to keep the survivors alive.

Today there were no shipments. But that was because of misty, cloudy weather--not really related to the snowfall, which has started now. But every day is a new day in the Karakoram mountain range. Due to high winds--often over 100 miles per hour--terrific storms blow in and blow out in a matter of a few hours.

Snow will not affect the helicopters' deliveries too much because they are using nets which cradle the payload underneath. Thus the heli doesn't have to land, but simply hovers while the nets are unhooked, the material is rapidly off-loaded, and the nets are handed back to the crews.

This saves a lot of time and allows for winter deliveries without needing a place to land.

A friend of mine has expressed something you, too, may have wondered. "Looks like it would be wiser and cheaper," she says, "to transport those survivors to lower elevations where it's not so cold in the winter. With the tents and all, to live on the plains where it's warmer, animals and all. Before they freeze to death!!" This friend's solution sounds logical. But human beings are not always logical. These people have lived in the remote mountain areas for generations. Their tiny postage-stamp terraced farms dot steep mountainsides, with often just a stream or river flowing through the lowest point, like the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. Even if there were plains with warmer temperatures within walking distance of their homes--which there are not!--these people would not leave their animals and their property. They fear that when (and if) they got back, someone would have taken away everything they had worked for since most of them are not owners but simply squatters.

Mernie Johnson and Don Roth have volunteered to become the primary reporters who will send frequent updates regarding the situation in Pakistan. They will receive information from me and craft it into short news briefs. I am simply stretched to the limit and cannot manage to answer the showers of email I am receiving. So, soon you may be receiving answers from Mernie and Don directly. You may also contact them you're your questions.

Thanks so much for your prayerful interest.

John McGhee

Update #2 - 2,500 quilts delivered, 5,000 more arriving soon

Praise the Lord. 2,500 ADRA quilts were delivered through the night. We have repacked them in bundles of 7, for one bundle per family. Now 10 trucks are waiting on the street to be filled.

It snowed last night and blocked the road. But these truckers are willing to go.

Tomorrow, I have 5000 more ADRA quilts coming and we will do 5000 a day until our money runs out. Day after tomorrow, the tents and quilts which you lovingly sponsor through the Central California Conference of SDA will begin traveling to Kashmir.