When my wife Laura Saeger and I were asked to become part of the World Monuments Fund team working to restore Shwe-nandaw Kyaung, Mandalay’s most prized monastery, we knew we would face some challenges, including understanding the ancient way of timber frame building in Myanmar, working with teak, a wood we were unfamiliar with, and working in an environment nearly 2000 miles closer to the equator than we have ever been before. What we hadn’t anticipated was just how difficult finding the tools of our trade, in this recently opened country, would be.