Following about seven months without communication, the Missouri man’s family and friends celebrated his surprising rescue Thursday as a “Christmas miracle” after he was imprisoned in Syria after he claimed to have entered the country on a “pilgrimage” to Damascus.
“We’re very blessed that he is safe, that he is good, that he is protected,” Pixie Rogers said of her brother, Travis Timmerman. “And I saw on the news that he got fed.”
The 29-year-old Timmerman, who at first merely called himself “Travis,” was first spotted in a video that surfaced overnight, which caused some people to mistake him for 43-year-old missing American journalist Austin Tice.
Despite not knowing he was in Syria, Timmerman’s family claimed he had also gone missing.
Rogers remarked, “I’m not sure what his thinking was in that,” in reference to going into a war-torn nation. “I wouldn’t think he’d do something like that.”
According to her, his family was aware that he would visit Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, and subsequently Hungary. During his travels, he wanted to write and understand more about religion and God, according to his mother, Stacey Collins Gardiner.
However, contact stopped after a few phone calls and emails, and they began to worry that his laptop and phone might have been stolen.
According to Rogers, the family only found out that Timmerman was in Lebanon in the last several weeks, following Missouri law enforcement’s successful communication with U.S. Embassy representatives in Hungary.
Timmerman attends services at Preston Bible Baptist Church, whose pastor, Don Kelderhouse, said he was aware of his intentions to visit Eastern Europe but not the Middle East.
Kelderhouse added, “We thought the money would run out and he’d go home,” adding that it might be a month or two before he left. Whether he was living or dead was unknown to us.
A guy named Pete Timmerman was listed as missing by authorities in Missouri and Budapest, the capital of Hungary. Hungarian police identified him as “Travis” Pete Timmerman.
Timmerman vanished from Budapest on May 28, according to a public awareness notice from the Missouri State Highway Patrol.
Timmerman told reporters that he entered Syria on foot earlier this year and was halted by Syrian authorities.
He told NBC News, “I was on a pilgrimage to Damascus,” in a facility outside the capital. He said that before being discovered and taken into custody by a border guard, he had lived “without food and water” for three days in a mountainous region near the Syrian-Lebanese border.
According to Timmerman, he was imprisoned by the regime for months during which he was fed adequately and had access to water at all times; the only challenge was that he was unable to use the restroom on a regular basis.
Then, as rebel troops stormed regime prisons around the nation to liberate prisoners, he was set free.
Timmerman claimed that he had been sleeping outside and in an abandoned house while pacing the streets barefoot for the past few days. He was then found once again by a local he asked for water, subsequently appearing in the video that quickly spread across social media and drew the media s attention.
After being located by NBC News and other outlets in Dhiyabia, Timmerman said he had “been reading the scripture a lot” before deciding to cross the mountains from Lebanon into Syria.
Kelderhouse said that Timmerman became baptized in the church about a year and half ago and had been eager to share his faith. He said he also has a law degree and had been writing, and the idea of him traveling across Eastern Europe to share his beliefs and learn more about the world didn’t strike him as odd. But the risk he took by going to Syria was surprising, he added.
“God must have a plan for his life,” Kelderhouse said. “He kept him alive.”
Brianna Harris, a classmate of Timmerman’s at Skyline High School in Urbana, Missouri, a small town of about 400 people, said he played football and made “many lifelong friendships at our school.”
When friends learned he was missing, they prayed.
“It truly is a Christmas miracle,” Harris said. “We’ve been praying tirelessly for his safe return, and those prayers have been answered.”
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