Timber Leech

Our Man in Japan

Timber Leech is a landscaper by occupation and a World Christian by avocation and passion. During his off-season (northern hemisphere winter), Timber enjoys traveling internationally to assist missions and missionaries with hands-on carpentry, repairs, and maintenance help. On January 30, 2012, Tim left for the Sendai area of Japan to be a much-needed volunteer with Samaritan’s Purse, in the reconstruction of the area devastated by the March 11, 2011 tsunami and earthquake. Following are his emails to us.

February 11, 2012

Hello from Kennesuma,

It has been a good week here of work and settling into the routine here. I have been working with a crew of about six of us –a crew leader who is paid Samaritan’s Purse staff and a translator and four volunteers. We finished sheet rocking a house that they had been working on for a couple of weeks by midweek and then we spent the last few days starting on the floors on a nice house right on the coast but up high enough that the wave only damaged the first level.

The lady in this home is a mother of three girls and also takes care of her mother. They are living in temporary housing provided by the Japanese government. From what we can understand, her husband just walked away from the family after the tsunami — overwhelmed by the loss and no one knows where he has gone. This lady is so appreciative of our work that we don’t get much work done. She sets out a big spread of coffee and treats at 10:00, a huge hot lunch buffet at noon and another afternoon tea spread of snacks and whatever we did not finish from lunch. She is a new Christian (since the tsunami) and seems to really be enjoying our company and joking with the very limited communication. We invited her to a service we held here at the base last night at 7 and she came at 6:30 and stayed talking with the Japanese staff until 10. When SP started working there with the mud out of the home she was said to be very withdrawn and expected the home would have to be demolished. We have been rebuilding the floor framework, insulating and putting plywood sub floor down. It is about a forty minute drive from our base so the actual work days seem short.

We get up around six, have breakfast, a group morning devotion, and then plan for the day. Loading up tools and out of town by 8. We work till 4:30 ish and head back for 6:00 dinner. Most of the other work crews are working in the neighborhood in which we are living.

Today, Saturday, a few of us took a ferry out from the town port here in Kennesuma to a small island and climbed the hill for a beautiful view of the town and the rugged coastline. Japan really is a beautiful country with a beautiful rugged landscape with lots of small little communities settled into every valley. It was a nice hike and quite a perspective leaving the town and seeing the damage from the waterside. If you have Google Earth and want to zoom into Kessunuma Japan you can see a lot of the damage as the image date for here was three weeks after the Tsunami.

The base is quite nice. Actually, since we have gotten here, we have been told how lucky we are to be at the nicest, best base camp SP has. Well, last night we were told next weekend we are being moved to Sisigama — an old church summer camp on the ocean –getting kicked out to make room for a large German group coming. We are told it is a beautiful spot, just that the cabins a very drafty and cold. Some of our team are really bothered or worried. I think it will be to sad to leave this place and those I’ve met here so soon, but look forward to the beautiful location and not too worried about the cold. It is a great group of staff and volunteers here from all over the US and the world, and neat to hear and see the impact God is making in people’s lives who are receiving this gift from God of rebuilding their lives. Some areas we have seen will never be the same. Whole towns, 90% obliterated, with nothing left but many barren foundations. Most of the large scale cleanup is done, but the rebuilding will truly take decades, and there are mountains of debris that is being sifted through to be recycled or ground up. The level of the ground all along this coast shifted and dropped by several feet. This means all the waterfront of these towns is now too low and must be raised if they are going to rebuild. Now there are sand bag barriers everywhere to keep the high tide from flooding the waterfront.

And the food has been really good. So much so that I have not even had any KFC yet

all for now

God Bless,
timber

February 4, 2012

Hey all,

I arrived safely here in Japan. It was a long 13 hour flight from Minneapolis to Tokyo, with a very full plane. Fortunately there were TV in the seat backs with lots of on demand movies. There were two Japanese ladies that met our group at the airport and helped us to the Hotel and then through the maze of train stations and connections we made the next day. Amazing how well organized everything is which I think reflects both on Samaritan’s Purse and on Japan. They gave each of the ten of us our own room in a nice hotel near the airport with two meal vouchers which was really nice.

After a full day of train ride, the next day, we arrived at our base in Northern Japan (a small town called Kessenuma) Friday night. It is a converted wharehouse, but is pretty nice accommodations, esp considering it is a temporary setup. Outside showers, but plenty of hot water. And you won’t have to worry, I’ll be just fine as there is a KFC and a BaskinRobbins within walking distance. -just in case I get tired of octopus. I just have to get used to sleeping in a dorm type setting and the jetlag so I can get a good nights sleep. I guess there are three other bases set up along the north coast here by SP and from what evyone says this is probably the nicest spot. It is quit cold here with snow on the ground and flurries flying the past day or two. We went down to the biggest base yesterday (Saturday) in Tome 45 mins south to attend a training event for all SP staff because Franklin Graham will be having a three day crusade in Sendai the beginning of March.

Much of the devastaion has been cleaned up, but along the waterfront there are many wide open areas of just foundations, and piles of debris being sorted– wood, metal, concrete, plastic, cars, ect. Further in many of the homes are livable on the second floor but the first floor was completely flooded and needs to be stripped to the studs. This sounds like what we will be doing— rebuilding a number of homes right here in this community. First floor flooring, insulation, and drywall. I took a walk around our area this morning to get a feel for where we are. We are in a neighborhood that is on a peninsula with two canal/rivers coming together into the bay. We are pretty much downtown and not too high from sea level. Because of the earthquake, the ground level along the coast dropped about 3-5ft. there is a walkway along one of these rivers.

Today, Sunday we will attend a local church for a service this morning and the afternoon is free time, but a couple of guys who have been here longer term will drive us to see some of the more devastated areas and the surrounding countyside. And then tommorrow would normally be a work day, but it is actually Superbowl Monday—- yeah that’s right it will start at 8:00 Monday morning and the guys already here have planned to take the morning off and project the game livecstreaming from a computer. The director, an American had all the stats on what a big event this is in US to justify to the Japanese why Monday morning needs to be a holiday for us.

all for now because you know what I say, this typing is too much like work

timber

Our Man in Mongolia

In recent years, Tim has volunteered at Youth With A Mission bases in the United Kingdom, Brazil (both in Recife and in the Amazon Basin), and in Mongolia.

In this section Timber shares what the Lord did through his ministry. Here are letters and pictures of Mongolia, and the city of Bayankhongor from Timber’s February 2007 trip:

February 7, 2007

Greetings from Bayankhongor!

Sorry, the camel is a bit slow in delivering the emails. My luggage finally arrived here on Sunday. I am now settling into my new “campsite.”

I am living in a little house by myself one street over from Jardel as an American missionary left yesterday on holiday and needs someone to house sit: to watch the dog and build a fire as that is the only heat source. I say “campsite” as there is not really any indoor plumbing.

What a different world it is here. The temperatures have not been that bad because the sun is so bright and the air so dry. Night temperature drops to around or below zero and the days get up into the low 20′s.

Bayankhongor is an airmag (state) and also a city, about 300 miles southwest of Ulaanbaatar (which is the more correct of the variations of spelling you mentioned). The population of the city is 30,000 with easily half living in Gers and even a much higher percentage without running water. Even Jardel said the town seems like one big favela. It is dry, barren and dusty as we sit not far from the edge of the Gobi desert though there are some beautiful mountains surrounding the city.

So, the last few days I have been building a platform for the front of the church here – yes, a large Ger, with a woodstove in the middle. The church here is really alive, active and growing. They are going to have to go to two services. Jardel said the church in Mongolia is one of – if not the fastest growing church in the world with Bayankhongor being the fastest growing in Mongolia. God is working.

Jardel is still doing the sports club here as it is required by his visa but is really active in the church and is anticipating the DTS to have to be his main work soon. There is such a need for training in this young church that is so excited to plant and evangelize this region.

Pray for the school purchase. It seems everything is in place except one lady holding the papers is still in Japan. She is supposed to be coming any day but… Pray for Inez as she came down with a lot of pain today, had to call a doctor and is now on antibiotics, either a kidney stone or infection.

Thank God for my luggage making it all the way here without being tampered with. I heard some stories of missing valuables.

I told Jardel of our decision to support Him. He is very grateful. He needs a home. Let us pray about this with him.

Wouldn’t it be neat if we could come up with a team of builders to help them? I told him I was praying about how this could happen. Right now he is house sitting for an American family that is in the US—they built their own home, a simple two story, but small post and beam house with indoor plumbing. You just have to call the horse or camel cart to deliver water to his tank.

Thank you for your prayers for myself and God’s work here.

February 9, 2007

Hey,

I didn’t realize that I was going to be on the edge of the Gobi desert. Actually, the Gobi is a ways south of here but in this same state. The landscape is dry and barren here. Something like 350 sunny days a year.

We are still waiting for the purchase of the building to be finalized. This past week we spent some days building a platform for the front of the church– like a stage to preach from and for the worship team. The church is a very large ger with a stove in the middle. Lots of people watching, helping, and bringing this board or that from there get to be cut because I had a skill saw. I think it came out pretty good considering the roughness of the lumber.

Over half of the pop of this town 30,000 live in gers. Way more than half live without indoor plumbing. And I want to say that if you came and sat in this outhouse you would say nothing romantic about it— you know like the solitude and peace. I share it with my neighbor Ger, there is no seat — they just squat as there is just a wide crack in the floor which
they may or may not hit… I am going to build a stool for me.

I think that we are going to go start making plans for this new building today because the lady has assured us that once the papers come through she will for sure be selling to us. We have to figure out everything we need for whatever projects and then make a trip into Ulaanbaatar to purchase. The market here is like one big flea market — they call it the black market. I don’t know that UB is much better but just maybe a bigger flea market.

Since the fall of communism there has been lots of missionaries coming to Mongolia, and even more recently. The church is really growing and the people are hungry. Jardel is quite a teacher and is really looked up to in the church here, and they call him pastor even though he is not the official pastor he is involved in lots of the teaching and groups.

Today is Saturday and I think this afternoon the church is going to have a outing down by the river just for fun. I think we will go and maybe climb the mountain behind. Jardel and I have been wagering all week on how long it will take to climb it.

February 11, 2007

Hi Ed,

So for your questions…. let’s see….

Yes, the pictures were of the Church Ger. I went to Sunday service there yesterday. It was a good service and a full house, though Jardel says it is often even more packed.

The wood: Well, it is more expensive than coal though most people use a combination of both. It is all trucked into Bayankhongor on log trucks. Some is used for heating and some used for lumber. The north of Mongolia is much more treed. One state in the northwest is even known as a little Switzerland because of the beauty of mountains, lakes, forests etc.

Aeroflot is a Russian airline, and I (along with others here) rank it pretty low; it’s one of the necessary evils of getting to Mongolia from Europe. The customer service was pretty poor on the flight and the communication about the late luggage was also bad. They kept promising tomorrow and some of the tomorrows did not even have a flight coming into UB from Moscow.

The food: Oh, not so good. You just hope for beef as the other options are mutton, horse, or camel. Their staple is boltz – pronounced bolts – which are ground meat wrapped in a thin bread covering and steamed or boiled.

They have a big festival coming this weekend, lasting four or five days. It is like a winter/lunar festival. It is as big as our Christmas, which by the way is not celebrated here at all except by Christians. I think the festival is called Sagnsha. It does not seem to be that bad. Every home prepares maybe a thousand boltz and people just go home to home visiting for several days.

The people here are very friendly. It is so funny how shy the kids are, but they really want to use their few English words they have learned. So, as I walk down the street they say ‘hi’ or ‘good-by,’ but usually only from a distance or just after they have passed by and when I say ‘Hi how are you’ they just giggle and look away.

On another note, here are a couple of prayer requests:
One request is for a girl (I’m not even sure of here name) whose brother attends the church. She was kidnapped, beaten, and raped a few days ago. Jardel and I went and prayed for her in the hospital yesterday.

The other request is the ongoing Building purchase saga. The latest developments really have Jardel down. The owner of this building has given the rights to complete the sale to a lady here in Bayankhongor. She gave us the keys, and a signed document saying she would sell to us and we could start renovations. We just were waiting for the documents from another lady in Japan. Well, this other lady just came today and says that she is not going to give up the papers unless we give her $6,000 for the furnace she put into the building. We are quite sure that this furnace — an oversized tin can – is not worth anywhere near that kind of price, but she is trying to hold us hostage and we will just have to see what we can work out. It is in God’s hands. We are going to Ulaanbaatar by plane tomorrow to see about this and were planning to buy a truckload of materials to start renovating with toilets, shower stalls, appliances, plumbing materials, wood, sheetrock, etc. But now we have this latest headache. Pray that any attempts of the enemy to thwart this school would not be able to stand. Actually, we have been to the airport twice today as the plane was supposed to fly today but the winds have been too strong to fly. The wind is miserable here as well – cold, and the dry dusty ground kicks up into a dust storm very quickly.

All for now.

Thanks.
God Bless
Timber

FEBRUARY 22, 2007

Hi Ed:

Well, this week has been Saghansah, Mongolia’s biggest holiday, as big as our Christmas, at least, and everything comes to a stop for it. The kids have two weeks off school, shops close for several days to a week etc. It is not a bad holiday, just a winter/lunar festival that mostly just consists of everyone visiting everyone, giving gifts, and most of all, eating, eating, and more eating. It has been quite a cultural experience visiting many different homes and eating and drinking some crazy stuff.

Everyone is dressed in their formal Mongolian clothes and the greetings are very formal. Holding your arms out to someone you are greeting, with the older putting his arms on top of the younger and say, “Sain-bai-ou. Hello.” Then, you lean in and touch cheeks both sides. If it is a man, he will then drape a blue scarf across his arms and produce his little bottle of aroma spice which is received by your right hand and opened and sniffed, then passed back. Then comes the hot salty milk tea. After that the food starts coming at you with a large roast in the middle of the table. Everyone is encouraged to cut pieces off of an eat –no utensils needed. Then some pickle salads and potato salads. Then out comes the staple of Boltz—-ground meat in a steamed flour shell. “Eat, Eat, Eat,” they say. They can become offended if you don’t take enough. Towards the end comes the worst –their beer— fermented mare’s milk. Actually, today I was told we had fermented Camel milk. It’s not good – very weak alcohol, and sour.

The funny part is that after they have stuffed you full and maybe had a bit of talking or traditional Mongolian song, they give you a little gift and then you are supposed to leave, walk down the road, and do the same thing all over again with just a few slight changes at the next friends house. They do this all day. We have felt obligated to do a few each day, but try to do as little a possible because they want to insist you eat so much and I must say I am not that crazy about the food.

So the little homes and the Gers can be quite warm if there is a hot fire, but the stoves are so small, often the fire is not going and it doesn’t take long to get cold… especially when the wind is blowing, which makes it down right bitter out. Last night, the wind really blew and it was hard to get the house much above fifty degrees. After stoking the fire with coal at 11 pm, I went to bed with lots of blankets and by morning it was 38 degrees inside my little house—- boy, its hard to get up and get the fire going then. So, yes, dressing warm is key.

And yes, Coke, Fanta and Sprite are easy to come by because there is a bottling plant in Ulaanbaatar. Too bad they don’t serve it at Saghansah.

So, Jardel and I went to Ulaan Baator last week and got the ministry’s lawyer started on the case of this building purchase that has been dragged out. Nothing is ever as it seems. We think the papers are in one person’s name and they turn out to be in another. She is the one that does not want Christians to have the building. The local pastor knows her and says, “Watch out.” We need to especially careful to be sure that there are no liens on the building. She said she would sell to us, but she was supposed to meet with the lawyer last week in Ulaan Baator, and she turned off her phone and never showed up. Everyone said she was probably going to be drunk for the next several days of Saghansah. The lawyer finally talked to her daughter and she said she is going to come in the next few days.

We are praying that this building will work out but also Jardel is at peace that if it does not that he will just put up a number of Gers and buy a piece of land and do the DTS out of there. We did buy a number of building supplies in Ulaan Baator and had them trucked here on faith that this will work out. We came back by van the eve of Saghansah. We were very lucky to find a ride on the only van in the lot. The man said he wasn’t going because he didn’t have any passengers, and he needed at least six. Then, they struck us a deal that we could pay several times more than normal and they would go—-a twelve-hour, 400 mile trip – some of which has no paved roads – just a crazy hodgepodge of crisscrossing bumpy tracks across the steppes. We left at 6:30 PM, and drove though the night. I am sorry that is was not in the daylight as the views would have been some reward to the bone-jarring, bumpy ride.

We are going to start building bunk beds for the school tomorrow. We will build them either in the church or, somebody from the church came by tonight and said we could use his place and tools if we would like. Jardel just forgot to ask if his shop is indoors or not, so we will see. I saw some carpenters building furniture with their tools all outside. BRRR.

I really would appreciate your prayers for this building. Also it seems that Jardel and his family could use your prayers as it is kind of difficult being here especially way out here in Byankhongor. This is quite isolated for a foreigner, and quite cold for a Brazilian. Inez is doing better from the kidney stone/infection. And they still are going to be in need of housing as they are going to lose their apartment at the end of March. Plans and ideas for building a house are being talked about but please pray that during the meantime they can find a place that is warm and has plumbing.

Thank you for your prayers and support.
God Bless!

Timber

March 1, 2007

Hi Ed,
I am doing well and thankfully have stayed relatively healthy except an incessant cough/cold. I am returning the 10th, so that’s not far off.

The building was set to close today but just one more delay got thrown into the mix as we woke up to the first snow storm I’ve seen since being here. The storm cancelled the flight that the lawyer was coming in on from Ulaan Baator. Hopefully, it is rescheduled for tomorrow. We got five inches or so of light snow. It had really warmed up the last couple of days and I notice a few clouds forming and had been joking with Jardel that we were going to get dumped on with snow because of the changes, then sure enough – we got it.

I told Jardel about the need for an address and he said he wants to see if you can just send to a church in Philadelphia that supports him and he can get it through an account set up with them. He just needs to check with them to see if it is OK. The banks here are really unorganized – worse than Brazil for sure. There is no such thing as a check. Jardel said whenever he receives a check, he sends it to someone he knows in England and then they deposit it into an account for him, taking several weeks for the whole process.

He’ll let you know soon, he said

See you soon

Timber