My Testimony:

WOW!! Where do I begin? For the first 35 years, my life was all about one thing, and that one thing was myself. I started doing drugs in 5th grade, and by 7th grade i was selling them. Mostly weed, a little acid and speed. After my senior prom I bought my first 8 ball of cocaine, and didn’t slow down until I was 35 years old. In that time, I lied to, manipulated, and cheated everyone around me. During the last 3 years of my addiction I became a slave to opiates, pain killers, fentanylpatches, etc. I came to a point where my wife had left with my 4 kids, I lost my job, and almost lost my home. I had also lost any trust or respect that anyone had ever had for me. For a while my life seemed hopeless, but eventually I found a new hope!! I gave my sorry life to a risen savior, Jesus Christ!! In doing so he gave me back my wife, kids, home, etc. If you are at a point in your life where you feel like you have nothing left, and you would like to hear what God has for you, please contact me and let me tell you how Jesus Christ changed my life!! If you are struggling with addictions, don’t be fooled by the world’s lies that say you are “once an addict, always an addict” because that is simply not true!! Jesus came to heal the broken hearted and set the captives free!! John 8:36 says that if the Son sets you free, then you are free indeed!! I know this is true, because I am free, the old is gone and I am a new creation in Christ!!! (2 Corinthians 5:17) He promises us victory in all things through him!! So if you are in a similar situation to the one I was in, call on the name of Jesus and let him bring you peace beyond understanding!! My name is Rich, and if this is you, contact me and I would be glad to share the love of Jesus Christ with you!! Give me a call anytime at (585)-993-2810.

How Ride to Recovery got started:

Alot of people ask me how I came up withthe idea for Ride to Recovery. The truth is that I didn’t. It was something that just sort of came about through a series of events that, at the time seemed random and even discouraging at times. A short while after I got clean, I felt God calling me to help other drug addicts out of their addictions. When I was younger I had a passion for bicycles, but when I fell into drug addiction I lost that passion. So when God took me out of my addiction I was excited to get back into mountain biking. So I decided to use mountain biking to reach out to drug addicts. I collected a bunch of old bikes out of the garbage, fixed them up, and loaded them onto a trailer. I would take those bikes to a few local half-way houses, and invite the guys to get out of the house and come mountain biking with me. I would take them out riding, share the love of Christ with them, and tell them about my testimony and how God took me out of my addictions. The problem was that the next time I came back to the house most of the guys would run into their rooms and not come out because the “Jesus freak” was there again. It eventually reached a point where nobody would come out riding with me from the half-way houses anymore, and there were many times when I went out riding alone, and this eventually caused me to become discouraged.

Around that time I started mountain biking with my son who was 8 or 9 at the time. Seeing how much he enjoyed it, and how beneficial it was to him made me want to bless other kids in the same way, so I started bringing other kids out mountain biking with us. And guess what? They loved it!!! I never had a single problem getting kids to come out riding like I did with guys from the half-way houses, whenever I called them to see if they wanted to go riding they always wanted to, and they still do. Now the problem is that I don’t always have enough room in my truck!!! So for the last 6 years or so, Ride to Recovery has been taking kids out riding and racing, and sharing the love of Jesus Christ with them. We tell them about how God has a plan for their lives, and that they don’t have to follow the ways of this world that endorse drugs and alcohol because there is better way. Jeremiah 29:11 says “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” In the last 6 years God has expanded Ride to Recovery to something beyond what I ever could have dreamed of just a few years ago, and He is still expanding upon it!! For example, at our first camp 6 years ago we took less than 10 kids and lived off of hot pockets and hot dogs for the whole week!! Last year at camp was our 5th year and we took over 50 kids down ranging from age 7 to 19 we rented a whole camp facility with a pool, a rec hall, a gym, a pond, and the best part was, it was catered!! We ate steak one night!! That’s a big step up from 10 kids in a cabin eating hot pockets if you ask me!! And this year’s camp (our 6th one) is shaping up to be the biggest one yet!! We can’t wait to see what God has in store for this year, and the years to come!!