By day, he works the three garages spread across Sunflower County filled with repair and maintenance work for the 200-plus engined vehicles in use as Sunflower County’s fleet maintenance director.
By night and weekends, he’s preaching and spreading the gospel of Jesus as pastor of God’s Harvest Church in Indianola.
Oh, and he finds time to fish and hunt and raise quarter horses as well. The Flora native and USM Golden Eagles alum (criminal justice) came to the Delta back in 2006.
“I was recruited out of college and was in law enforcement for about a decade. During that time, my dad and brother always had businesses repairing cars and tire shops, fleet maintenance and even restaurant equipment. In 2001, I started in ministry after a lengthy running from it. In 2006, we left Yazoo City and came to Indianola to pastor a church.”
His day job as Sunflower County’s fleet maintenance director keeps him quite busy. He started that job two years ago.
“I take care of, well, if you count vehicles and any of the trailers – anything with an engine, we take care of it. And we've got about 200 assets that we take care of. And we've got five mechanics, including myself, six. But we have situations where we can't buy the software to program certain things and have to use outside mechanics,” he explained. “I get to the shop before 7:00 in the morning and get the day lined out for the mechanics. If we need any parts, I’ll order those. I go through the daily inspections done by employees that either drive registered vehicles or operate equipment. We schedule the preventative maintenance and then there’s lots of office work for me – scheduling guys and keeping everything going and then getting reports ready to present to the board. If the County's buying vehicles, a lot of times I'm the one that has to find the quotes and locate the vehicles they're wanting and turn in and get us the best prices and do that process and work with all our vendors.”
The former policeman doesn’t get to turn a wrench that often, but does help out from time to time when there’s a need in the shop.
“I leave the mechanics to the mechanics, but I will grab a wrench if I need to, or a broom, or whatever it takes,” he said.
When he’s in the pulpit, his church membership runs between 75-100 people and he enjoys the Delta life as a pastor.
“The Delta has some good people in it. Indianola is a good community. We raised our family here, still raising our family here. We've got two daughters that graduated from IA, and we've got a son and a daughter that are in IA now. We’ve put down roots and we're proud and grateful to be a part of this community. We want the best for our community,” he said.
With his wife, Donna – a cosmetologist – and their four kids – Taylor, Isabella, Judah and Helen – the Howells enjoy raising quarter horses, hunting and spending time with family.
“We spend a lot of time together as a family. We ride horses a lot as a family. We’ve always liked horses and it was something to do with our kids. We started them in 4-H and started showing. We have some that we train as show horses and show and we sell them,” he said. “We just shipped one to Maryland. We also grow hay or the fancy word, forage, for horses.”
Howell and his son Judah enjoy hunting and they both work in the hayfield together as well. The Howells keep four horses at the moment but have had a stable filled with up to 16 horses.
“It’s hard to find pastureland in this area and we were fortunate to find this,” he said. “We promised to keep it pastureland and not turn it into row crops.”
Keeping the County’s vehicles in shape as well as the souls of his church, Tim Howell enjoys being a Sunflower County resident.
