Carrying the message

In March 2004 Timm traveled to Khazakstan to provide witness to recovering alchoholics about the power of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Jane Wolf provides the following overview:

I invited Timm to go on the trip to Khazakstan in the spring of 2004. I direct Life Path Ministries, at Salem Alliance Church and have done so since 1991. It is a recovery, rebuilding, and restoration ministry….. In 1999 we were invited to Russia, by the former director of Co-Mission (the banner under which churches went in to the former Soviet Union in the early 1990’s) and to explore the possibility of opening a church sponsored program similar to what we have here. That program has grown and flourished and thus we were invited to Kazakhstan also. This time we were invited by another fledgling program that was directed by Americans living in Alma Ata, who had heard of our Russian program .. I am not a recovering addict myself, but the mother of an addict… when I go on a trip to explore possibilities I like to take a recovering alcoholic/addict with me because his/her recovery story gives real hope in desperate situation.

Thus my invitation to Timm. We took copies of the Big Book in Russian because Kazakhs all know Russian and the book was not then available in Kazakh.

We did many seminars at the home base of the organization that invited us and visited in the residential treatment centers in the area. I think we went to all but one of them.

Timm told his story in each place. His ability to relate to the people was truly amazing. His ability to give them the clear message of the 12 Steps was a gift.

Kazach treatment centers are basically fenced and locked centers where the residents can not use or drink simply because they have no access to the outside world. The residents knew almost nothing about a process for getting, and staying, clean and sober…. They only knew how to be locked away so they could not use or drink. Timm’s story of a process and a God that changed him and gave him a new life – even though given through an interpreter to men and women who were emaciated and desperate – was spell binding. They loved him.

For a while it appeared that Timm might go back to a larger conference sponsored by a government related organization but that didn’t come through. We did not establish AA groups – that was not our purpose, although we certainly encourage cooperation with AA when it is available. The purpose was to help treatment centers learn to use the 12 Steps, which they had not known, and to introduce them to the Big Book



This is from one of Timm’s journals, dated 3/8/04:

A blanket of white nestled onto the city last night – the kind that sticks to the tree limbs making them look white and round. It could be any number of cities that I’ve lived in, but its Almety (sp?) Khazakstan.

Riding in a taxi through the streets tonight I was struck by how I could be on the complete opposite side of the globe and still see something that seems so like home.

I spent the evening with about 20 Russian & Khazak believers who are all recovering alcoholics. They played Charades, spread a meal and then asked me to share. I was terrified – I had no idea what to say. I’m just a sober man who has 12 years in recovery. I could hear Ken’s prompting – just share what has worked for you.

I handed out Russian-language Big Books (the book Alcoholics Anonymous) and we read Chapter Five. I shared about working the Steps -- my struggles with (Step) Four, and then they shared. They want so much from me but they mostly need confidence. They’re doing so well!


At Timm’s memorial service, many from AA spoke of his quiet wisdom and generosity of spirit. Those voices remind me of the following passage from the AA book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (p. 124) which, I think, best describes what Timm was evolving into by God’s grace and the fellowship of AA:

"Today, in well-matured A.A.'s, these distorted drives have been restored to something like their true purpose and direction. We no longer strive to dominate or rule those about us in order to gain self-importance. We no longer seek fame and honor in order to be praised. When by devoted service to family, friends, business, or community we attract widespread affection and are sometimes singled out for posts of greater responsibility and trust, we try to be humbly grateful and exert ourselves the more in a spirit of love and service. True leadership, we find, depends upon able example and not upon vain displays of power or glory.

"Still more wonderful is the feeling that we do not have to be specially distinguished among our fellows in order to be useful and profoundly happy. Not many of us can be leaders of prominence, nor do we wish to be. Service, gladly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles well accepted or solved with God's help, the knowledge that at home or in the world outside we are partners in a common effort, the well-understood fact that in God's sight all human beings are important, the proof that love freely given surely brings a full return, the certainty that we are no longer isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons, the surety that we need no longer be square pegs in round holes but can fit and belong in God's scheme of things--these are the permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living for which no amount of pomp and circumstance, no heap of material possessions, could possibly be substitutes.

"True ambition is not what we thought it was. True ambition is the deep desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God."