Update #30 - Shelters provided for 70,000 people, quilts for 115,000, the snow has finally arrived.

Dear Friends

Sunday morning it started to rain in Bagh. Our team on site there kept calling us in Rawalpindi with updates -- telling us that the snow line was creeping down to their camp. By afternoon, big flakes were starting to accumulate. By bedtime, Ellen's tent almost collapsed due to the weight of the snow.

The three trucks bearing our last shipment of shelter kits took more than 33 hours to make what should have been a 10-hour trip. They arrived in Bagh yesterday just prior to the snow storm.

Last Friday, we placed our final order for 8,500 more quilts. The quilts are ready to go. But for now, we are storing them, waiting for another window of opportunity to send them to Kashmir as soon as the roads open up.

It is now time for me to admit that WINTER HAS COME to Bagh. Our first phase of the Kashmir Relief effort is virtually over. Please pray that we can smoothly phase out our staff and "close up shop" until our second phase begins in March. [John is due to leave Pakistan on January 17. Between now and then, he and his team will try to deliver the last relief supplies, but they will be working primarily on preparing closing reports, finalizing financial records, and turning over operations to the new interim director when he arrives in the next week or two.]

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH for your prayers. Just because it's snowing, don't stop praying for the survivors. Now is the time that cold reality hits me in the face. Now is the time that I must ask myself, "Have I done whatever was in my power to do, through ADRA Pakistan -- and especially through God's blessings and His power -- to effectively provide shelters and warm quilts to our Kashmiri mountain brothers and sisters?" The answer to that question may never be fully known.

But I do know this. Without your love, prayers, and Spirit-driven initiative, our ADRA team in Pakistan could never have provided quilts and shelters for about 70,000 people, plus quilts to another 45,000 people.

You and your compassionate friends and family members virtually came along with me to Kashmir before winter. With ADRA donors from at least 20 countries, we all worked as a team. I am sure we here in Pakistan could have done better. However, I am convinced that your donations have been carefully multiplied by God to save thousands of fathers, mothers, and children who would otherwise have begun to freeze tonight.

On behalf of ADRA Pakistan, thank you for trusting us. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for interceding with us. Thank you for sharing your birthday gifts and Christmas presents with us. Thank you for allowing yourselves to be touched, compassionately pouring out your lives with us as an offering to God.

Indeed, what we have been doing was not fundraising. It was not emergency management. It was not even a relief effort. It was, it is, and it will continue to be worship of our Creator - treating the Kashmiri mountain people as if each desperate survivor were Jesus himself!

With Love and Prayers,
John McGhee