February 24, 2006

Recently, Denise and I were honored to be guests on King 5 TV and a talk show on PTTV hosted by Glen Gately who represented the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Port Townsend. I wish to welcome all bloggers who saw the shows and have logged in.

As you read the news and feature stories documenting the Kashmir Relief Effort by ADRA Pakistan, I trust you will come to the conclusion that God did a great work through the team effort of many. And about all we did was simply to show up.

Our team effort is certainly not over. Phase one, of three phases has been completed successfully. The second phase has already begun, with regards to funding. In a few weeks it will be time to plant. By then, ADRA Pakistan will be doing need assessments, distributing seeds and other agricultural products to enable Kashmiris to start making their own living again.

If you wish to donate, you can send a check to:

World Medics
PO Box 1606
Loma Linda, CA 92354

or logon to their website
www.worldmedicsinc.org

Thanks so much for your interest, prayers, and gifts.

Dr. John and Denise McGhee

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

Update #17 - The Shepherd of Trucks

Pakistani trucks come in two sizes: large, fat trucks carrying a maximum of 6 tons; and small, scrappy "mountain" trucks carrying a maximum of 12 tons. Confused? Now you are beginning to understand why a "truck shepherd's" life is never dull.

Meet Radek Spinka, ADRA Pakistan's logistics officer, on special assignment from the Czech Republic. He is our primary truck shepherd.


Today he will manage millions of rupees, analyze thousands of details, make hundreds of decisions, and dial up scores of phone calls. All this just to put 23 trucks -- carrying a total of 147 tons of relief supplies -- on the road to Bagh.

At this moment he is trying to find a truck that has disappeared since it left the steel sheet factory near Peshawar, and has taken 30 hours to make a 7-hour trip.



Stacked all over our Rawalpindi office lawns are 500 winterized tents that will take 10 trucks to deliver today. Additionally, he'll send 39 huge custom-built wood-burning heaters on another truck. These were converted into two-burner cooking stoves specially designed for the sixty 1,000-pound miracle school tents we mentioned last week -- 35 of which were delivered and erected by our ADRA team in the past three days.



Then there are the three trucks filled with steel sheets, hammers, nails, saws and shovels, which left Rawalpindi at 3:00 a.m., 5:l5 a.m., and 6:40 a.m. this morning. They should be arriving at the Bagh town of Deerkot within a few minutes. There are six more trucks filled with 2,700 quilts that will be loaded this evening, and two additional trucks filled with steel sheets from Mardan.



Radek is on the phone right now with Ismah, his counterpart in Kashmir. She is a competent 22-year-old with her BA in commerce and speaks English fluently. Recently promoted, she manages to keep about 50 ADRA employees busy off-loading trucks, putting up tents, helping people erect shelters, and coordinating estimated arrival times of the trucks with Radek's help.

Pakistani truck drivers are famous for being tough, diligent, honest, spiritual, and gracious. They are also infamous for being drug addicts, slothful, extortionists, radical fundamentalists, and exacting. You can't tell by looking at the outward appearance. Besides, Radek doesn't hire the drivers. He simply "inherits" them.



It works like this. We have three NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in Pakistan which do nothing but provide free trucks, jeeps, mules, and helicopters to those NGOs --such as ADRA -- that are registered with the United Nations consortium. When we have NFIs (non food items) to deliver to Kashmir, Radek calls up one of those three "transportation" NGOs, giving them 24 hours advance notice. They will want answers to the questions:
What will be loaded?
How much will it weigh? What is the volume?
When will it be loaded? Where will it be loaded?
Who is the contact person?
Where will it be unloaded?
Who is the contact person?

Radek uses ATLAS, a French NGO, most of the time. He gives the information, and they hire the trucks. Then Radek goes the extra mile, getting names of truck drivers, license plate numbers, and mobile phone numbers if possible, so he can help Ismah trace them if and when they get lost -- which happens about 40% of the time!

I'm not ashamed to tell you that our ADRA staff often stops to pray for these trucks, their loads, and their drivers. So far, Radek hasn't lost one of the 118 trucks carrying 812 tons of lifesaving items you have donated with love for the Kashmiri earthquake survivors.

Good news! Radek just informed me that Ismah called and said that the one lost truck has been found, and it is now unloaded.

The shepherd of trucks has done his job today. So has the Divine Shepherd.

Your donations of $3,000,000 during the next nine days will be received with joy so that Radek can faithfully keep on filling, sending, and shepherding trucks filled with shelter kits and quilts to save another 63,000 lives before Christmas.

Reported by Dr. John K. McGhee
ADRA Pakistan

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.

WINTER IS COMING!

Reported Friday, November 25, 2005, by John McGhee, Emergency NGO director, Pakistan

I am not a weatherman. But having spent the last nine nights in a tent here in Rawalpindi, I can testify that winter is coming to Pakistan. At this time last year,10 feet of snow blanketed the rugged mountains of the Bagh district where 58, 275 households with 7 people per family lived, in temperatures ranging from 20 degrees F down to -30 degrees F. As of tonight, there is miraculously no snow on the ground.

Bagh is a mountainous district where the non governmental relief organization I direct has been assigned to work by the United Nations-led consortium of of 42 NGOs and faith-based agencies.

WINTER IS COMING
Kashmiri mountain people from Bagh live in cave-like dwellings made of wood and stones which are carefully carried or rolled down precipitous mountain heights to the building site. There they cook over wood fires and kerosene stoves.

This year, these wirey, tough shepherds grazed their sheep, planted small terraced gardens, handmade their rough clothes and quilts, and dried food. All of this to prepare for the brutal winter, when they stay inside, snuggling up to their sheep, goats, donkeys, and cattle to keep warm.

And then one of the world's largest earthquakes on record hit Pakistan, posting an official death toll of 72,385. Now, more than a month later, another 64,290 are still missing. Tonight, in the Bagh district alone, there are 12,486 less people. They did not migrate. They died or are missing. And there are another 10,000 walking wounded.

I saw some of them two days ago in Islamabad, Pakistan's capitol, at a 1500-bed hospital jammed with more than 6000 patients! They were being treated in tents, entryways and broom closets. In some wards, I counted 20 beds jammed together, filled predominantly with women and children whose faces and limbs were squashed from falling rocks.

If this disaster were not bad enough, WINTER HAS COME TO KASHMIR. According to statistics compiled today by my staff, working on their day off, people in the Bagh district have lost 88% of their cave-like houses.



Tonight 51, 282 families are sleeping outside with no shelter or blankets. If you do the math you'll find that 380,512 mountain people are shivering in sub-freezing tempartures, with very few animals left to generate warmth. This is just in Bagh, one of three Kashmir districts hit by the mega-quake.

From the first day of the quake, I have carried a heavy load in my heart for the survivors. I was moved by the text in 2 Timothy 4:21, "Come before winter." I volunteered and was later invited to lead an outstanding NGO that is providing non-food items (NFIs) like medicine, hygiene kits, lanterns, stoves, blankets, and tents to the Bagh district.

Since arriving, nine days ago, our staff in Europe and Pakistan has distributed 20,000 blankets, and 497 tents based on funded proposals from generous donors in Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Sweden. Another 15,000 blankets, 60 large tents for schools, 120 wood burning stoves for the schools, and 6000 hygiene kits, will be distributed by helicopter within 5 days.

But I can't sleep tonight because WINTER HAS COME TO KASHMIR and the United Nations logisticians comprised of veteran military commanders, statisticians, scientists, and computer wizards with whom I have met every other day since arriving, told me today that by December 10, we won't have to worry about transporting tents and blankets any more. There just won't be a need for them. At that time 14 of the 23 helicopters which now transport over 200 tons, making 180 trips per day, will be going to back to the UK and Iraq.

Yesterday, the president of Pakistan spoke on TV, detailing the three most urgent priorities:
1. tents
2. quilts
3. psycho-social services for survivors

As of this moment, all ten of the NGOs working the Bagh district have distributed a total of 9,000 tents (20% of the needed tents) and 124,192 blankets (35% of the needed blankets), during the past 5 weeks. At this rate, 250,000 human beings from Bagh will freeze to death by December 10, 2005.

WINTER HAS COME TO KASHMIR TONIGHT
This reality is simply unacceptable. It is crunch time.
It's time to face the fact that the combined might of Pakistan and US military, UN forces, and more than 40 NGOs cannot deal with the impending mega-disaster.

So Denise and I are prayerfully proposing to raise 8 million dollars of private tax-exempt donations within two weeks in order to provide enough tents to for everyone to be warm, if two families pack themselves together (14 people in a winterized tent that is 12' by 12") and enough warm quilts for everyone.

I have arranged, by faith,for the first installment of 1000 of the needed 35,710 tents to be delivered on Monday.

1. I have arranged for a loan to pay for this first load which will take 10 trucks and 10 helicopter drops to deliver. This order must be paid within 48 hours.
2. I have arranged for 1500 tents costing $225,000 to be delivered every day after that until it's too late.
3. I have arranged for 10,000 quilts costing $75,000 to be delivered every day until there are no more needed, starting on Sunday.

It will take $7,375,005 to do it. Denise and I are anxious to begin this drive with a donation based on 10% of our net worth. Thanks for partnering. Please send your tax-deductible donation ASAP by a 24 hour mail service to:

Pak Quake Fund
Central California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
P. O. Box 770
Clovis, CA 93613