SpeakLifeAZ
The testimony of Jesus in, with, and through everyday people like us. A father and son who were addicts for over 20 yrs. You name it, WE DID IT, TOGETHER!!!! we used to use drugs together now we share about what God Has done for us to encourage the body of Christ and anyone else who may listen to this that is feeling hopeless and empty. LISTEN TO OUR STORY...and the testimony of others who feel led to share with you.... GOD BLESS YOU....TODAY WE CHOOSE TO SPEAK LIFE AZ!!!!!!!!!!
SpeakLifeAZ
Rich H. Testimony
Our hosts Eddie and Rowdy, invite you to join us on a journey of brotherhood and faith, inspired by the recent Man Camp rally event. We were deeply moved by the powerful message of being our brother's keeper and the significance of community bonds. This episode is particularly special as we welcome our guest, Rich, whose personal story of resilience and courage brings to light the importance of fellowship within the Celebrate Recovery community. Through Rich's experiences, we are reminded of the strength found in sharing our journeys and the impact of Jesus's testimony in everyday lives.
As we continue, we reflect on our own family histories, exploring the emotional landscapes and unexpected turns of childhood in the Chicago suburbs. Memories of settling in Oak Lawn and the lasting impressions left by our father's sudden departure uncover the complex dynamics of family life. These recollections are intertwined with spiritual experiences and community connections, offering insights into the struggles and support systems that shape us. Our conversation uncovers the profound emotions tied to family bonds and the guidance that faith provides during challenging times.
We also delve into tales of high school mischief and the chaotic world of addiction, where Rich shares a candid account of his struggles. From navigating cross-border drug trades to surprising cultural shocks, Rich's journey is a testament to the resilience and strength found in community and faith. Join us as we explore these narratives, aiming to inspire and uplift listeners with stories of redemption and the realization of a higher power, JESUS, guiding one's path. Let these conversations remind you of the transformative power of connection and the hope that lies in every individual's unique journey.
all right man.
Speaker 2:Thank you god yeah, man yeah, boy all right, dude, you guys ready you got to be in it, dog yep yeah, am I in it you're in it we're going live in three?
Speaker 1:nope, don't hit that one. It's already recording bud. Oh, is it Okay my bad. Red is record, we're gone.
Speaker 2:All right, everybody. Welcome back to the Speak Life AZ podcast testimony of Jesus and everyday people. I'm your host, eddie, and always with me is my son Rowdy.
Speaker 1:Jesus. What up dude? Yeah, man, how was your day Busy Yours? It was awesome. Man, how was the man camp Rowdy? Dude, it was great, bro. We had a word on Isaiah 61 andesis 4, about cain and abel. Bro, about talking about how I am my brother's keeper. Man, pastor chris brought it this morning, bro. He's talking about how we can get caught up in our own issues in our own life and our own stuff that we literally forget about our brothers that are beside us, man, and that's good, we just yeah, we're just so focused on ourselves.
Speaker 1:It was just like man, I am my brother's keeper and I couldn't help but think of you, dude. I'm like I love this guy, man. I love you, dad. I'm so glad you're in my life, buddy.
Speaker 2:Oh jesus now, you frustrate me sometimes, but I love the.
Speaker 1:I'm a work in progress man. We all brother Progress over perfection.
Speaker 2:Man, I'm excited about this one bro.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is going to be really good dude.
Speaker 2:Who'd you bring with you?
Speaker 1:Man, we got our boy man from Rich Dude. What's up, dude?
Speaker 3:How you guys doing, how you doing, brother. I am highly blessed and sometimes motivated.
Speaker 2:Come on man, we, we just want to say thank you, man. God made it clear to us to honor his kids every time we get an opportunity to sit down with them and they share their story, because, uh, it's an honor, bro, it really is. You know, some people are private and don't want to share their stories like we talked about earlier. Some people have shame and guilt and they don't want to talk about the things that they've been through. You know what I?
Speaker 1:mean still hurt.
Speaker 2:So for us to come on here and for you to share, man. Thank you, brother, it's, it's an honor for us, man.
Speaker 1:We appreciate that it's an honor that you even asked me come on now, dang dude, for me, rich um, it's, it's a the fact that we're in forever family and celebrate recovery me. Me and your wife were talking about how um we're, we're all together. Man, it's not your cr and rcr, it's just we're a forever family man and we serve god's people in different, different areas. But I just love to see our family and how we do things together. I'm getting ready to come out to your CR next month and share on the lesson and relapse and how we all we get testimonies from each other and it's just. I love how we, how we do life together, cause that's that's one thing that we say here at LifeLink Church is just, we do life together and at CR and in the CR ministry it really feels like a family.
Speaker 1:If we're struggling or we need help, I know I can reach out to any of my broken chain brothers, any of the state reps, any of the other CRs. Hey, I need help and you guys would be there. So it's just, it's an honor. Need help and you guys would be there. So it's just it's an honor, um, but then for you to see what me and dad, what god's called us to in this ministry, and for you to say yes, it's, it's, it shows a support yeah it shows that that you believe in what god's called us to do.
Speaker 1:Man and um, that that's what I think really touches my heart. Yeah, um, because a lot of man, when God first told us to do this, we totally didn't do what he told us to do bro, we tried to make it our own. Make it our own and preaching videos and online and all that and it didn't do nothing bro.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:God laughed at us.
Speaker 1:Once we started to do what he told us to do this thing. Just now, we're almost 60 episodes in bro. It's crazy, yeah, um. So have you ever listened to one of these podcasts before?
Speaker 2:I have not.
Speaker 1:No, don't do it, don't do it.
Speaker 2:You need to repent boy, we had our head pastor on and we asked her she listened to an episode?
Speaker 1:she said no, I think I need to, so every time someone says, no, we're like you need to repent, boy. No, but it's totally good, bro. So, basically, man, when God gave this to us, it is the Speak Life, az, the testimony of Jesus in everyday people. It doesn't matter if you're like dad, bro, and you're down at the muffler shop and cutting on cars and welding and doing man stuff all day myself facilities, maintenance, cleaning toilets and washing windows or yourself, man, out there working at the church helping the homeless and doing what you're doing. We're all everyday people. We've all got a story, we've all. We've all come from somewhere. We've all come from something.
Speaker 1:Um, and when you encounter god, man, you realize that he's the one that brought you through it all. He's the one that's been carrying you this whole time. And so, basically, what it is man is, it's just we want to know who Rich is. We want to know where you were born, bro. We want to know what your mom and dad were like, what the home was like growing up, your brothers and sisters, church, part of the home. Yeah, you know what was school like. What was school like? Was it good, the grades, sports, bullied? Were you the bully?
Speaker 1:You know, man working in recovery, a lot of the hurts, habits and hang-ups and stuff that we're trying to heal from and deal in our life now. A lot of those offenses and the hurts they come back in the childhood and stuff, yeah, um. So if you want to get into any of that stuff that kind of veered you off the wrong, wrong lane, man, um, whatever the holy spirit leads you into. But I think the most important thing we want to encounter today, rich, is your encounter with jesus, bro um, because when god encountered you, the way that he met you face to face it was different than the way that he got me. He met me in team challenge at a blue altar at 1515 West grand Avenue. He met my dad in a prison cell, locked away. Man, we're some of the worst people you'd ever know, um. So he, he, he meets us all right where he knows he can.
Speaker 2:It's unique to you, brother. It's unique to you. You knew in that moment what it was going to take to get your attention. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1:But then I think the coolest thing is, after we meet God, we realize that God is real, that God loves us and he forgives us, and we start walking with him in relationship. The life change, the evidence of Jesus, the evidence of an encounter in one's life, is how their life changes after they meet Jesus. Transformation, that's God man, the transforming power of Jesus. So how your life changed after your encounter. And then, like dad was kind of explaining to you in the beginning, at the very end, we want to get what you're hoping for in the future, because you got life. You're still young, bro, you got a lot of life left ahead of you. Man, god's calling you into ministry and into doing some things for the kingdom. Man, you ain't dead, he's not done. Come on, there's more. So we want to come into agreement and pray for you and what you're hoping for.
Speaker 1:And then, as well as our listeners, we've got faithful listeners, bro, that pray for every single person that comes on this podcast and they share their hopes and their dreams. So so, yeah, man, it's going to be good, yeah, it's gonna be really good. Let me pray real quick. Let's go. Jesus, man, holy Spirit, I pray you just use this podcast. God, this story, this testimony, lord, to just glorify you, god. Podcast. God, this story, this testimony, lord, to just glorify you, god, if you can bring Rich through what you brought him through God, you can do it for any one of the listeners or any one of the watchers. So I pray God, just the Holy Spirit, have your way in Jesus' name, amen, amen.
Speaker 2:Amen. So what was it like growing up, rich brother?
Speaker 3:Well, I grew up in illinois. You know a couple different suburbs right outside chicago. Uh, first place I remember was a place we lived in called westmont and my actual first memory was puking in a purple pampers box because I got into some hard liquor. Oh wow oh, wow in my parents house. You know, it was the stuff that my mom couldn't even open okay somehow or another my little butt was able to get into it, and that was my memory sitting on her lap, puking in that box wow I don't remember the hospital, I don't remember doing nothing at the house, just that memory itself dang that's your earliest memory and that was like wow, or I think I was four.
Speaker 3:Okay, my sister, she's like, uh, four years younger than me, okay, so that would have been her diaper box, yeah, okay, um are you the oldest? I am. I am the oldest. I have two younger sisters. Okay, uh, one's four years younger, the other one's 10 years younger okay, so you were like the big brother that protected the little.
Speaker 1:I love that dude love that.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, got to teach them both how to throw punches that's right, man you know it was, uh, we had a, we had a good life. Um, from there, we moved to a place called chicago ridge and another suburb of Chicago. Yep, all within like 30 minutes of the actual city.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so how far away from Gary, indiana, from where you're growing up at?
Speaker 3:Probably about 45. Oh wow man.
Speaker 1:My great-grandma lived in Gary, indiana, until she passed away, man, and went to be with the Lord. She was in her 80s, bro. Bro, she'd come fly across the country and visit us and this was 90s and early 2000s. I'm like grandma gary's, like the murder capital of the world. I'm safe and go back and fly back there you know I mean, but it's just okay, all right. So because it ain't that, ain't the easiest hood, man, that is rough.
Speaker 3:So what it is now is not, it's not like it used to be. Yeah, it doesn't mean it's any better or any worse. Okay, but it's just a new madness less respect yeah you know, back then when, after chicago ridge moved to oakwn and that's where we got stabilized. You know, my dad was in the picture and we actually took over my grandfather's house after he passed and it was amazing. It was like the biggest house on the block, two-story house.
Speaker 4:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:Five garages on the property.
Speaker 4:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:Huge yard, you know it was a place for 22 grandkids.
Speaker 4:Wow.
Speaker 3:With my aunts and uncles. They all come to visit. But we ended up taking that house over and it was just. It was a trip man. It just had one of the steepest stairs that you'd go up to the second floor, but it also had one of these electric chairs that rode a rail.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah it was like a mystery mansion. Yeah, yeah it was a trip, but uh, yeah, that's where we grew up and that's, uh that's where life took a twist.
Speaker 1:Yeah so before, before that, how would you say your childhood was? How would you describe your childhood before, when it took a turn?
Speaker 3:It was good, it was real good. Mom and dad had their issues, but they tried not to show it in front of us, but you can hear voices.
Speaker 4:You can hear words behind the wall.
Speaker 3:Maybe not see it, but we still heard it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Mom and dad, any drinking or drugging that you know of.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 1:Okay Church.
Speaker 3:No, but we went to church, my sisters and I.
Speaker 2:Oh wow.
Speaker 3:I'll get to that story. Oh, wow, okay.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like this guy man. I think he went one time with his family to church. I'm a family Never went with my family. After that. They were were like if you want to go, you can get on the jesus bus, neighbor kids and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:I mean my parents. I don't think my parents ever walked through a church door. Wow, yeah, not when I was around, anyways, I mean so it's interesting.
Speaker 3:You say about a church bus um, there's a bunch of us kids in the neighborhood that would get picked up by a church bus joy bus, not the little
Speaker 4:one but a full I love you, bro.
Speaker 1:That's for the special people. Be good, rowdy, jesus.
Speaker 3:God, forgive me, lord yeah, but they would pick us up every sunday and, uh, we would go to that church and then, you know, I just remember doing a lot of coloring you know, at the younger years and uh, probably a baptist church.
Speaker 1:Oh no, it's actually a lutheran really oh, okay, okay, uh yeah, stony lutheran church yeah that's with the bells and the little seat thing and you kneel and it's got the whole thing it was all kinds of weird.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah it. Yeah, it's a little different man.
Speaker 1:I got my family up in North Phoenix in the Anthem area, new River. Up there they go to NVCA. It's a Lutheran academy for the kids. So they're all growing up in that Lutheran thing. Yeah, teach their own man. Whatever works for you, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Interesting, all right.
Speaker 1:So you go to what was the name of the city where Grandpa's house was.
Speaker 3:Oakland, oakland Okay yeah, is that a subdivision?
Speaker 2:of Chicago too, oakland, oakland.
Speaker 3:Oakland, 30 minutes from home.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So growing up in that house the relationships were good. I actually used to go in the garage with my dad a lot and we'd work on cars and you know I was at a young age. I could tape things off, I could start sanding and stuff like that. He would do the hard stuff because I was at the time, I think, between the ages of 9 and 13.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Okay so.
Speaker 4:I was learning how to do all that stuff and it was just great. Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know we had a tight bond.
Speaker 1:That's cool.
Speaker 3:But then one day, in the age of 13, he decided to just transplant. He just up and left, he went to work, never came home that night, wow. So what he ended up doing was he transplanted from us, from my mother and us three kids, to our best friend's wife and three kids. So I mean what? Yeah, I was 13 years old.
Speaker 4:I didn't know any better.
Speaker 3:I used to go over there all the time with my dad hang out. Didn't know that. You know, 13-year-olds ain't supposed to know that kind of stuff, dang dude but but yeah, he just up and left and then uh for another lady and kids.
Speaker 1:That. But that you guys knew we grew up with, you grew up with them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, wow, dude, it was, it was. Uh, yeah, we grew up with them. You know, we were all like best friends, tight, and everything at the time. I look back and it's like man, okay, I see the real picture, yeah being that you don't know, when you're that you don't know, man yeah, no, I know. So I started to. In the next year I started doing some drinking and smoking. Yeah, uh, a lot of smoking actually how old were you?
Speaker 1:13? No, I mean like, when were you born, bro? 1971 okay, so mid, mid 80s, all right, all right. Yeah, rock and roll and drugs.
Speaker 3:Man, it was your right in the right in it as a teenager, bro it was, uh, I mean in the neighborhood I was in you know the family and all that there was a heavy drinker. Yeah, they were bikers working on cars. You know did all the fun stuff in life where we live was actually right behind a bar and, uh, some of the people come whipping out of the bar drunk and spitting rocks everywhere my uncle's throwing stuff at their cars one time one of my uncles had a 55 gallon drum that he put through someone's windshield.
Speaker 3:Really, I mean, it was that kind of neighborhood.
Speaker 1:A little rough Rough around here.
Speaker 3:But it was just like part of life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:But after my dad left, about a year later, my mom and my uncles had a party, because above that same garage I was talking about doing automotive work we had a pool room, so they had a party and stuff and they brought over this guy and I guess my mom and him sparked an interest and so he asked me he's like, hey, mind if I date your mom and I'm 14 years old. And it's like, well, I guess.
Speaker 3:So I didn't want my mom to be alone yeah, that's really cool that he asked you bro uh, it's not really that cool no, oh, wow okay because his next sentence was uh well, it didn't matter, I was going to do it anyway oh, wow see how, that's how that twisted dude yeah god.
Speaker 1:So from that moment forward, anger dude yeah god, so from that moment forward anger, excuse me, anger, hate, um resentment, just the rage.
Speaker 3:oh yeah, that was built up, building up inside, yeah, so long story short on that, my mom ended up staying with the guy for about 30 some years, wow, wow. So that story progresses too, wow. But at 14 years old, after she started dating this guy, my dad decided he wanted me back in his life. I didn't want to go. Yeah, I didn't want nothing to do with it. I hated him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for what he did to Mom.
Speaker 3:I hated him for that. Yeah, what he did? He left us high and dry like that and then left with our friends, didn't reach out, nothing, but I hated him. I hated my mom's boyfriend. I just had a lot of hate. And that's when all the drinking and drugging started. But let me back up in this story From the ages of and this ain't simple, but I'm going to say maybe from three or four until about the age of nine or ten being molested, and I'm not going to go into great detail- on that, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:But, dang dude, it was another one of them. Things that the people that are close to you I couldn't trust. Yeah. So, dang man, another one of them things that the people that are close to you I couldn't trust. Yeah, so, dang man, as I was growing up and just that was like as I get older, it starts settling in more. That's when the drugs and stuff got heavier.
Speaker 1:yeah, so I went to live with my dad for about a year so you, you, you said that from around three to eight, you said, you said that you went over to your grandpa's house at nine. About nine to 13 was over there for those years it was actually good. So there was a time from earlier, before you went to Oak Lawn, where it wasn't so good, okay.
Speaker 3:It was a blended of them years yeah. But you know, I look back now and it's like hey, I was a kid. You know that wasn't my fault. But growing up. I felt it was.
Speaker 1:It was your fault.
Speaker 3:So that's where the drugs and all that came in. So going to live with my dad tried everything I could to get kicked out. Finally I, just you know, hurt my brother, stepbrother and finally oh, so you went over to that house, you went over there. Oh wow, so also being forced to go live there?
Speaker 1:That's even more hate, more mad.
Speaker 3:I felt abandonment from my mom, Wow, you know, and it was like what the heck? What did I do wrong? But me and her boyfriend just couldn't see eye to eye. And again, that hatred the way he talked to people, the way he talked to me.
Speaker 2:So you're already dealing with abandonment from your dad. Now you're forced to go live with your dad. Now you're already dealing with abandonment from your dad. Now you're forced to go live with your dad. Now you're feeling this abandonment from your mom yeah and probably people that were close to you that you can't trust at such a young age I was supposed to be looking up to people yeah, bro, that's rough dude and uh, that's crazy, there's nobody right now.
Speaker 1:No, there's nobody dude.
Speaker 3:So that's when I turned to the streets as your family, yeah your brothers yeah, I mean my mom. She was still always my mom, she'll always be my mom. She's always been there for me in my corner um but it's just like it was hard. Yeah, you know, I look back and it's like she did everything she could, but you know it was only so much she could do she got a rough deck of cards herself. Man, it sounds like bro yeah, so where was I at, oh man 13 15 years old.
Speaker 3:Um, you know a bunch of us neighborhood kids and where I lived it was segregated yeah, oh, wow, okay, I kids, and where I lived it was segregated.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, I was going to ask you about that, okay, it was all white so.
Speaker 1:Oak Lawn is more high society, more money area. No, no.
Speaker 4:Just segregated, just segregated, okay, all right yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, we're talking Chicago in the 80s man.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, it was probably black neighborhoods white neighborhoods, so the most prominent was the black and the white. If you went deep in the city you could find like Oriental or maybe some Spanish yeah. But the black and whites was the predominant.
Speaker 1:Predominant races.
Speaker 3:There were streets that if you crossed over one street you were getting jumped, yeah. Or if they crossed over that one street to our side.
Speaker 1:They're getting jumped, they're getting jumped, wow Okay.
Speaker 3:And that's just how it was.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, I'm not going to say that I whooped everybody's tail. I got my butt whooped enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man yeah.
Speaker 3:But it toughened me up to where that didn't happen no more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so for me growing up here in mesa, it was us and the mexicans. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4:We hate they, we're fighting all the time, dude yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So we would. Uh, you know, us neighborhood kids. We would take the trains, not the uh, the l train or nothing like that, but we would jump on boxcars and ride down to the city the actual railroad, actual railroad, wow, okay they would go slow enough to where we could just run beside grab that jump up in there so you see it on the movies, man, but you guys are actually doing that down to the city.
Speaker 3:That's awesome but there's a lot of times we would go through and we would have to cut through these neighborhoods and you got like three to fifteen white guys and girls coming through and you're not in the right neighborhood, things pop up. Oh yeah, it's yeah, turf wars baby.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's real man.
Speaker 3:It's quite interesting, been down to a lot of Blues Fest and Taste of Chicago and police officers on horses and stuff like that yeah it was, uh, it was quite interesting I hear there's areas there that are actually pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Like you said, you got blues and jazz bands and oh, the architect.
Speaker 1:I want to go there to see the architecture, bro, I've heard the buildings there are just amazing, beautiful yeah, it is.
Speaker 3:It can be breathtaking. Yeah, dart, make sure you're.
Speaker 1:Get in your hotel.
Speaker 2:So like downtown Chicago, where all this is at, is that different than like the suburbs?
Speaker 3:Yes, I mean Downtown is safer, but as you get, out of downtown like Cicero area. You know surrounding areas like that.
Speaker 4:That's where it's bad.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah yeah, they don't have the product. I think they tore down the projects and rebuilt it somewhere else. They took down cabrini green, uh, they also. I believe they took down, uh, the railroad yard. They had it which was like one of the largest in the world yeah man it was.
Speaker 3:It was just. It was so much fun. I bet it was fun to grow up in. But as life went on, my little sisters, it made me so mad that they had to deal with this guy. Yeah, you know he would treat one of them nice or, you know, talk to them nice sometimes, but then talk to me like trash, yeah, and it's just more hatred, more hatred. And it turned out to where me and him had a lot of bloody fights. My mom would bandage him up. Were you always a big boy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause you're. You're a bigger dude man.
Speaker 3:No, actually at the time.
Speaker 2:I mean.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't want to square off with you right now. You're a pretty big dude, you know what I mean. You got your hands full, dad, so I was, uh, probably up until the age of 25. Um, I would run anywhere about 200, 175 to 200, and just pretty solid yeah you know I did a lot of working out and stuff back then, but this didn't happen until I got sober. Okay, when I got sober, I replaced all the drugs. Hello, somebody.
Speaker 4:With food Chocolate Chocolate.
Speaker 1:I love you, dude. Hey, at least you chose a good one.
Speaker 3:Hey man, you can't miss out on them. Zingers, Balance bro.
Speaker 1:Everything in moderation, dude.
Speaker 2:Raspberry chocolate or the yellow one, raspberry Raspberry. That's my dude right there, bro.
Speaker 1:I went to Teen.
Speaker 2:Challenge this weekend. I smashed those things bro.
Speaker 1:They were deep-frying chocolate Twinkies. I was like, oh, let me have one dude. Ooh, deep-fried raspberry.
Speaker 2:We had this man thing the other day. They had breakfast and burritos and I'm asking him how many dudes were there? And he's like, oh, I had two. No, you didn't ask me that.
Speaker 1:You said how many did you have? Or something like that. I was like two. No, how many dudes were here? He's like, oh, Always talking about food. Food is on my mind, bro. It's a struggle.
Speaker 4:The struggle's real. We have a group for that.
Speaker 1:All right, dude. Sorry, man, we get sidetracked sometimes. We rabbit trail bud, that's all right.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to jump into high school now, hold on.
Speaker 3:Before you do up until this point, how was school for you? Look, I'll tell you a quick story.
Speaker 4:Yeah, from fourth let me see fourth, fifth, sixth seventh, fourth, fifth, sixth and no.
Speaker 3:Third, fourth, fifth and sixth. I had four years of perfect attendance oh when you have perfect attendance. You got uh white socks.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, I was going to White Sox.
Speaker 3:I'm a White Sox fan.
Speaker 2:Yes, not a Cubs fan, thank you.
Speaker 1:South Sider bro Cubs fans are weird.
Speaker 2:They're like Packer fans.
Speaker 3:They're just weird. Oh man, Now you're speaking my language.
Speaker 2:My boss is a Packers fan and, oh my God, this dude drives me nuts.
Speaker 1:They're annoying Packers fans. They're annoying Cowboys fans, they're just, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Anybody who runs around with a piece of cheese on their head, dude.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I got to tell you my boss has the cheese head, he has a sausage cheese lathe and he has a cheese brick that's foam that he can throw at the TV. So he doesn't break his TV, but he decks out every Sunday. He dresses out in a jersey and I'm like what is wrong with you, dude?
Speaker 1:He's a fan who wears a cheese and sausage lathe.
Speaker 4:You literally have a group for that too.
Speaker 3:He's a strange cat bro.
Speaker 2:He takes good care of me, so I love the dude but he's a strange cat bro. He takes good care of me, so I love the dude.
Speaker 1:But, he's a strange cat. Keep praying for him.
Speaker 3:Good man, sorry man.
Speaker 2:See, we do that. We get lost and dragged All the time, brother. So high school. Now you know why these things take Three, four hours.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's our fault, bud you can blame? Me.
Speaker 3:So high school I did. I never really had good grades.
Speaker 1:But you went.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I went, that's half the battle man. Up till 6th grade I guess I had decent enough to keep passing. 7th and 8th I did alright. High school okay, but I had a lot of D's and C's Not F's, not B's, not A's, c's and D's it's passing.
Speaker 3:My second year, or my sophomore year, I ended up getting kicked out of school. So I don't know if I still hold the record or not, but I did for the most time out of school. I got in-school suspension, external suspension, all that stuff. I would get called in. I'd come in for one day for a couple hours. I'd get called into the dean's office just to suspend me again.
Speaker 2:Fighting drugs. What?
Speaker 3:Just everything Behavior. Doing stuff you shouldn't do, not showing up, you know. Yeah, and when I did show up, get like a pass to the bathroom and just take off, yeah.
Speaker 1:Rich was doing what rich wanted to do. Man, nobody's gonna tell him what to do but yeah, it was uh.
Speaker 3:But I do recall when my sister came behind me the dean asked her.
Speaker 1:He's like wait a minute oh no, you're mean, you know it's rich. Your brother it was r and it was like does Ricky hate your brother?
Speaker 3:And she's like, yeah, he's like, oh okay, his name was Dean Craig. He was an awesome guy.
Speaker 2:So you were the one See for me. I had older brothers, and my closest sibling is five years older than me and they're all a year apart.
Speaker 1:He would show up in the class.
Speaker 2:So I would get to like junior high school and it was like Are you related to Fred and I'm like yeah, and they're like oh man, I'm like what?
Speaker 1:He's like I didn't do anything, so they left a good trail for me too, so you did that for your sisters.
Speaker 3:I did.
Speaker 2:That's.
Speaker 3:But being kicked out. I finally got an opportunity to go to a school. It was called Pride Alternative. Oh nice and it was for people like myself. Yeah, and with the drugs couldn't stay focused in school.
Speaker 1:More work at your own pace. Alternative kind of school.
Speaker 3:Kind of like Mesa Vista was. Oh no, it was not work at your own pace. It still had a curriculum that you had to follow, but they had these little charts and if you did good, vista was oh no, it was not work at your own pace. It still had a curriculum that you had to follow, okay, but they had these little charts and if you did good, they signed off on it and you know you'd be able to go to this little store and get some snacks and all that.
Speaker 3:Oh nice, but it was actually you had to do the actual work you had to work. If you didn't get to work there and watched others eat.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Other than what you brought for your own lunch.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But it was cool because that's smart. I finally made an honor roll. Once in my life, once in a semester or something, or one quarter, I made an honor roll.
Speaker 4:Wow.
Speaker 3:And it just blew my mom away, yeah, so.
Speaker 2:Were you living with your mama this time.
Speaker 3:No, I was living with my grandfather.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So the only reason I'm still continuing to do any of this is that my grandma and grandpa, my mom's parents- yeah. Allowed me to come stay with them. Wow, and grandpa and my mom weren't giving up on me.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, society did, I did.
Speaker 1:Come on, buddy.
Speaker 3:You know all the stupid things that.
Speaker 4:I was doing Come on.
Speaker 3:Everybody just gave up.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:And it was just. Did you feel that?
Speaker 2:Did you feel that they were just giving up on you? Did you feel that?
Speaker 3:I did. I felt like an outcast in my mom's home and stuff like that In your own family.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but Un but Unwanted.
Speaker 3:Yeah, unwanted, and you know.
Speaker 2:Were you still drinking and getting high?
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Trying to numb the pain.
Speaker 3:It started with drinking, smoking, weed and then it went to cocaine. Yeah, yep, my senior year. So before I get to the, you know the cool stuff. So I did that pride alternative school and I got the opportunity to go back to my high school half days. So I was half day at the alternative, half day at the high school.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I even played football for the team.
Speaker 2:Nice bro.
Speaker 3:So I was the only burnt out jock on the team. Come on, you know I was doing all my stuff and you know the preppy boys in school they would drink or whatnot but wouldn't do nothing else else. Yeah, but it was like, as I was going through all this, I finally graduated high school. Damn, I got suspended for the whole first half the uh, the whole first half of a sophomore year, yeah, and was doing enough with the summer school and everything that. I graduated high school on time.
Speaker 2:Come on man, come on school. And everything that I graduated high school on time.
Speaker 3:Come on man, come on Rich. So that senior year in high school, something came over me. I liked money, so I was working. I would work from 9 pm till 3 am and I would get up at 7 am to go to school. Wow, dang dude, and I did that for your whole senior year. And I would get up at 7 am to go to school. Wow, dang dude, and I did that for your whole senior year. Almost the whole year. Wow, you know making some bank and then all of a sudden, what?
Speaker 1:were you doing for work? What's the job? 9 to 3?
Speaker 3:I was cleaning a mall, chicago Ridge Mall. Yeah, it was only a couple miles from my house.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Not even a full mouth, but I would uh clean that at night. You know a friend of mine.
Speaker 4:His dad had the contract, so he put some of us to work.
Speaker 3:That's nice, yeah it was nice, but I spent more time stealing from the stores.
Speaker 4:Oh my god rich let me tell you what not to do. You're supposed to be cleaning them.
Speaker 1:Get that Get that out of your pocket.
Speaker 3:This is Back in the days when you know You'd clean it with a mop and everything, and it's like they weren't into the cameras yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 89, yeah, everything's unlocked.
Speaker 3:So my mop handle Was going through the you know the fences.
Speaker 4:Getting whatever I could Off them racks.
Speaker 3:And I'd pull it through. And then what I would do is everything I would snag I'd put into the locker. I'd come the next day, you know, because the lockers were by the entrances I'd come in the next day, come and get all that stuff out, and then I would just go straight out the you know.
Speaker 1:Right by the door. Yeah, right out, no one saw it yeah.
Speaker 3:And that was like a second form of income for me. Come on leather, jackets, jeans, clothing, whatever, yeah, yeah, so it's. I was twisted yeah and that's when I started, uh, doing a lot of cocaine and acid. Between my senior year in 1990 I went to six grateful dead Dead concerts. Nice, dude, yeah, I was, by the way, the bassist just recently passed away from Grateful Dead. That's right.
Speaker 1:Wow, you saw him live. That's cool.
Speaker 3:Six times in one year. Wow, at least I was there yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know how much I saw. I don't know if I was in my right mind I don't really remember it, dude but I was there, oh man in that year, if I was honestly to calculate, I did well over a thousand hits acid. Yeah you know they say, if you do more than seven you're clinically insane I did too, buddy.
Speaker 4:I did seven in one night just to test that theory.
Speaker 2:I don't need doctors to tell me that I I mean each concert, the first one picked up six sheets. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Actually, you know, just picked up a bunch you know, sold a bunch, did a bunch.
Speaker 3:Sold a bunch, did a bunch. I couldn't even tell you exactly how much. Yeah, so the fact that I'm even sitting here talking to you guys, A miracle Walking, miracle buddy and I had no idea that it's all because of god that I'm even here yeah, that's right back then I had no idea, yeah you know, and that's far the way, farther in life, but uh you're just you're.
Speaker 1:You're just, you're young man, you're in your late teens, early 20s, and you, just you, think you're invincible. You think ain't, nobody could tell me what to do. I know what I'm, I got this and you just do what you do, man, and that's why the buy. It's great, there's a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death or destruction. It just when we, when we rely on our own reasoning and our own thinking, man, it's that stinking thinking and it leads us into stuff like this. It does, it's just it's.
Speaker 1:It's what happens when you don't have god at the center of your life and you're submitted and being obedient to him. Because you can have god at the center of your life and still be doing all your stupid stuff that you want to do and know that he's there. Because I had my season of that man, even after salvation and after knowing jesus and after knowing Jesus and after teen challenge and after the men's home, and still going back to it. So I mean it really. It comes down to us really humbling ourselves and putting God in his right place in our lives. Man, yeah, so up to this point in in your life, I haven't heard much church.
Speaker 3:I haven't no when my dad split, we stopped going to church. Church, no, when my dad split, we stopped going to church. That was the end of that.
Speaker 1:That's okay, you know, I just so dad was the one that was taking you guys.
Speaker 3:Oh no, we had that big old bus pick us up right in front of our house. Wow. Pick us up there take us to church. You know, mom and dad didn't go. Okay, it was actually me and my sister Starla. She's four years younger than me. Okay, shannon was way too small, I think, but yeah.
Speaker 4:Once dad left, it was done.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, it was like.
Speaker 2:Life became kind of chaotic after that. It did.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So even in all this time, me and my mom's boyfriend, we would fight and argue just constantly, constantly, constantly. One day after I turned 18, and it wasn't long after, but we finally got in our first fist fight. Went to my mom's place and he come out of swinging and I'm like man, this dude was like 6'3", 6'4", 2'8".
Speaker 1:Oh, he's a big boy.
Speaker 3:He's a big old, rookie-looking boy. Yeah, you know, and I'm 5'9", 175 pounds. He's like all right, well Dang, you know this ain't going to hurt too bad. He swung and I just came into him and next thing you know, I'm on him, just whooping on him. Yeah, you know, just whooping.
Speaker 2:That branch must have made the little fella dude. Yeah we got nothing to lose.
Speaker 3:But here's the word Interesting as well. My uncles come running down the street Now. My uncles both have already fought with this guy. Everybody's fought with this guy. You know, he's just that kind of person and they pulled me off of him. One held me and the other one proceeded to beat the crap out of me. Really, I'm like what is going on here, man.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:They both literally just they whooped on this dude, you know, numerous times, and then when I do it, I get beat up for it.
Speaker 2:Was that your mom's brothers? Yes, oh.
Speaker 3:Yeah, she called them down. Yeah, mom's brothers, yes, oh, yeah, she called them down. Uh, it was like oh, here we go. But it just escalated and escalated and it wasn't long after that my mom moved here with my sisters and that guy. So about six months later I moved out here to arizona yeah, so I was 19 and I moved here with a cocaine habit and a lot of money. What?
Speaker 2:would make you want to come here if you knew that dude was going to be here. Be around your mom and your sisters.
Speaker 3:I was just sick and tired of the—.
Speaker 2:Or just wanted to get out of the Chicago area.
Speaker 3:Well, I was sick and tired of the girl I was dating. In those days, women were nothing but objects to me.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know the guys and girls, you know who can nail this one first To please us.
Speaker 2:Please us Make us happy In the drug scene. It's nothing, good man.
Speaker 1:It's not about them, it's all lust, it's all flesh. It was.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's something that I hadn't brought up yet, but it was. It was just a competition who could bag the most babes? You know who can get this one's virginity or stuff like that. No, I'm not proud of that stuff, but looking back it's like it's just who I was. You know I was a good-looking kid that worked out. You know, took care of myself. You know it was just fun.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, we partied. Get a little wild and squirrely, yeah, and then all right, who's next, you know? It was kind of like the list, just kind of like all right, I've had enough of that. And then coming out here, it's like I came for a two-week vacation. I wasn't planning on coming to stay here.
Speaker 1:Who'd you come and visit with?
Speaker 3:My uncle was the one that brought me out here okay but I didn't know they were bringing me out here to leave me out here, oh wow yeah are these the same uncles that your mom's brothers yeah, oh, wow. Yeah, I thought we were just coming out for to visit my mom and they were like we gotta get this damn kid out of here.
Speaker 1:He's causing a struggle man, ricky, you got to go, we're getting him across the country, and it was and it hurt too. That's real bro.
Speaker 3:Because they were my support team Dang. But I came out here.
Speaker 1:Now you're really alone.
Speaker 3:Well, because I couldn't live with my mom and them. So I ended up moving in with one of my sister's friends and, uh, right away he got me my quarter pound of weed and started selling it yeah so I could uh have money for my my rent. Yeah, as well as so I can keep my uh, my uh cocaine addiction yeah, when you say cocaine, you're talking like powder or crack Powder, powder, yeah. And then the prices out here were cheaper than that. You're right by the border brother.
Speaker 1:It's cheap $45 in Nepal bro. Oh my God.
Speaker 3:I think when I first got here, jesus, it was like $40 a teen in Nepal, yeah, and it wasn't like that back east. Oh no, it cost money to travel it that far.
Speaker 1:Yeah, prices go up, but it was good up in alaska man in the military is a gram for a hundred bucks.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah buddy, I knew a guy that was from chicago he had this mexican furniture store. I'm going to mexico to get some furniture yeah the next thing you know he's flying back to chicago and bags of money and it was like wait a minute okay let's put two and two together.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's not mexican furniture bud so I can't, you know, come in here, got to see my mom and sisters and right away I just started hooking up with these other girls and it was like man. He was only here a couple weeks and where?
Speaker 1:where are they staying at phoenix?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah, like 72nd indian school area oh wow, way out there. Okay, yeah, way west glendale uh, when glendale's a little over from it yeah but it was like all right, I can live with this. And I did um not too long after that and and I still came over with my racist mentality. Yeah, but it seemed to have gotten worse when I was here so you're 19, we're talking like 1990, yeah, november 1990, I moved here.
Speaker 3:Um, when I moved here not even 30 days here, I got jumped by three Mexicans, a white guy and a black guy. You know I've been jumped in Chicago a bunch, no big deal, you know, the pain goes away. But when this happened I had a big old gas right here just pouring blood. But I was in more shock because all three races were hanging together. Yeah, you didn't see that there. Yeah, you did not pouring blood. But I was in more shock because all three races were hanging together.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you didn't see that there. Yeah, you did not now you see it yeah, but back then you didn't see it. I'm like what?
Speaker 1:you're more magic dude. You're my, you're supposed to be helping me with this dude not kicking me in the face.
Speaker 3:It was just it just I was so drunk leaving this, this place and then I like sat down on this, down next to this pillar and someone came around the side and just booted me, yeah, and I tried to fight and the cop even watched it and I'm like what the you know, these three races hanging out together you know yeah. Like I couldn't grasp it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Drunk sober, whatever. It took a while, and then I started noticing.
Speaker 1:I'm like, like what the heck?
Speaker 3:is going on here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a different way of life out here yeah, way different.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, yeah, what? I have learned, though, is some people here versus some people there. It's different it is back there. If someone says they're going to kill you, they're, they're going to kill you, yeah, yeah're going to kill you. Yeah, Out here I saw a lot of neck running. Yeah, I'm like all right, here it comes.
Speaker 2:And I was like wait a minute. What happened? Yeah, they talk a good game.
Speaker 3:It's a lot of. There's a difference in realness. Yeah, you know, it just blew me away. I was like whoa, but as I kept going I finally kicked the cocaine habit. Probably about six to eight months after being here Started working a job. Now don't laugh at me, but I was a telephone operator for AT&T. Nice dude For about eight months. Really, that was my first job in Arizona.
Speaker 2:I had tried to get a job like that with a place called Excel and I passed the type writing test and all that stuff. My dad was like do you really want to sit up behind a desk? And I was like no, I don't. It sounded good, I was tired of my nails being dirty. You know what I mean? I'm greasy, because working on cars I'm like that sounds cushy. And he's like, do you really want to do that? And I'm like no, I really don't. Dad, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:But I would go to work every day high from the weed.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I would leave on my break, go smoke. So at first I wasn't doing it. Just you know, as I got comfortable about six months in, I would do that. Come in smelling like weed and they said all right, enough's enough, you've been doing this now for too long, we've got to let you go, okay. Then I started doing.
Speaker 2:You probably made good money doing that too, huh.
Speaker 3:I really don't remember. Yeah, but it was enough to keep me to paying my rent, wasn't bad, yeah. So that's when I met this girl, lisa, and we weren't dating but we, you know, a lot of flirting back and forth and you know I had big bags of weed so I was just constantly over there. Well, she moved, moved away, came back pregnant and uh, it wasn't my kid or nothing, yeah, but we had talked, you know, that after she had the baby, that you know we'd get together. Yeah, and we did. So. Ashley was born, and then she got pregnant with my other daughter, brittany, and then, a year and a half later, my other daughter, casey. So I got three. I consider I have three girls, yeah, and uh, man, it was great, you know, just the flashback of holding them little girls and holding them little girls, and you see that was about 91. Well, it didn't take long for me to start.
Speaker 3:You know dabbling with meth, yeah, and that family that I had. I ended up giving it all yeah. So yeah, I'm gonna do that to you, bud wick yeah, so I gave that up the family, family to, you know, for the meth addiction. As time went on, you know, I got more and more involved and then I started selling it and doing stupid things, you know. Starting to consume you Robbing corporations versus people, oh, yeah.
Speaker 3:But then even farther down the story. You know it's like when you didn't have enough money you'd do a tax job. Oh yeah, collect a little bit here and there and come up. Yeah, but I used to do bank trash.
Speaker 2:Oh God dude, oh yeah, oh my God, Rich People would buy it and whatever they did with it, they did with it, but they'd buy it off.
Speaker 1:Me loved it I just got ptsd, bro. I was literally in high school dude, and I'd come home from parties and stuff with my friends, bro, and my dad and my mom would be in the front room with all these tweakers, bro. They'd have all these bags and they'd be taping these lines of trash together, finding these number. I'm like it was crazy, bro. Everybody had their own pile in their own bag. I'm like what the hell?
Speaker 2:you guys are crazy I literally found this beginner checkbook. You know the beginner checkbooks. I have nobody's name on them right and I don't think chicks. What's the statute of limitations on that?
Speaker 2:before I say something, don't say anything, bud anyways so I I write my name and information on it, I go use it. It it comes, you know, it clears and I'm in prison and my mom calls and says, or call home, and mom's like, hey, your bank account's overdrawn. I'm like I don't have a bank account and she's like, yeah, it's like $120-something. I'm like, oh, pay that, mom. You know what I mean. And it was somehow that blank check turned into an account for my name and they said it was overdrawn because obviously there was no money in the account. So I made my mom pay it and it went away.
Speaker 1:but I'm like dang dude yeah, yeah, wow, a white collar crime will get you bud, oh yeah yeah, oh yeah, math will make you do some fun things, buddy. So you didn't find meth until you were here in Arizona.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I didn't touch meth until I was 22 years old. We didn't have it back there. Yeah, never heard of it, but you saw crack back there.
Speaker 2:Some of you are younger than you, so we're around the same time brother. Yeah, 90s were.
Speaker 1:You guys are two peas in the pod man.
Speaker 3:I can't speak for other years, but I think 90s was the best, and I shouldn't even say that the best years to be.
Speaker 1:Oh that was. That was the white boy, dope bro.
Speaker 2:That was back when the bikers did it. That was when we were cooking and they cared about it and they were concerned about it. Make sure the pH levels were good and all that other stuff.
Speaker 1:It was clean dope Now people are losing their minds, bro, because the dope's all off, bud. Now it's all cartel, it's all cracked out bro, cartel method.
Speaker 2:They don't give a crap.
Speaker 1:They're making it in pans, bro, in large.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's crazy. Not that any more dope is good, but, jesus Christ, you know what I mean. If you me lord, forgive me god, because back then you wouldn't lose your mind, you wouldn't freak out, see shadow monsters and all this other crap.
Speaker 3:You could just get high. I know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. That's when I first started doing it, though after a while it was like I got to the point where I could smoke and then I go eat a porterhouse.
Speaker 1:Yeah I go to red lobster. Yeah, now you're just a functioning addict, buddy big old wads of cash.
Speaker 3:Take the cash back to Pick up.
Speaker 2:My problem was I started getting high and I want to start robbing and stealing everything.
Speaker 1:This dude had a great job man. He told mom I'm going to make more money stealing copper. Oh yeah, he quit his job, dude.
Speaker 4:I could rob and steal anything.
Speaker 2:brother, the only problem was that I'd always get caught. You know what I mean. Yeah, It'd take me six, six to nine months when I started using meth before I'm on my way back to prison.
Speaker 1:He's back to prison. We lost everything Over and over and over.
Speaker 2:Had a house nice job, cars, two kids, Six months it took me by the time I started smoking meth.
Speaker 1:I was back to prison.
Speaker 2:Smoked it up Six months, man yeah.
Speaker 1:We laugh about it now, but ain't nothing funny about it about it, man.
Speaker 2:It's hell when you're in it, dang yeah, I don't know if it was really hell, though well for us it was we had to restart every time. If I'm being honest, bro, there were times that I was using that life I had fun you know I mean.
Speaker 2:I'm not gonna lie and act like it was all hell and just miserable. There were times that it was fun you know what I mean but it always led to. You know what I mean. I'm not going to lie and act like it was all hell and just miserable. There were times that it was fun you know what I mean but it always led to prison. You know what I mean and I can honestly say today, as an addict, if I knew me using meth wouldn't lead me to prison, I couldn't say that I wouldn't use it again. I just know the end results now knows, I don't even want to do it.
Speaker 2:I'm being honest, right.
Speaker 4:Can we?
Speaker 2:be honest. Yeah, we're supposed to be. You know what I mean? I'm good. The only reason I don't use it is because I know the end result is me going back to prison, and I don't want to go back to prison. It's boring in there now. It's just lame. I mean it is yeah. So how the hell did we get on that conversation? Oh, you started using math. That's what we got there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks, rich.
Speaker 2:I think it just got triggered.
Speaker 1:I think you still need some work to do, but you still need some work to do, bud, you still got some stuff in your heart. You need to work through. Bro, we got a leadership team meeting next month.
Speaker 1:Being honest, man, it's good, dude, I mean no, when I went back in 2019 to use it again, bro, that one just broke me, that one. It happened so quick, man, but it just took all the fun out of it. And then I went back to the old people. The old people were doing the same thing and they were even more miserable. And I went to the white boys and the white boys were like you're, you're done, yeah it just, it ain't the same man.
Speaker 2:It wasn't this, it's not the same as it was to be honest with you, I don't think I would, because the dope today is just horrible.
Speaker 1:It's killing people.
Speaker 2:It's mixed with fentanyl and all kinds of other crap. People are strung out and like they're on heroin and they're using meth and it's horrible. You know what I mean? Is there even heroin left?
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:No, it's all fentanyl brother. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, the Chinese Mexican cartels with their fentanyl dude. Yeah, anyways, 22. 22, you start using meth.
Speaker 1:Early 90s, that was a tangent right there, bro.
Speaker 3:So the early 90s I would say 95 was when we completely parted ways.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Me and the mother of my kids.
Speaker 4:We tried, you know, but two of us you know, but she never used, she used, oh did she oh yeah, we used it together two people in addiction don't work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no nope, and I did a lot of out of town work. Came home, just it's like details you don't want to go into man it was like you know I could have done so much better, and trying to point to blame, but you know we were both to blame, yeah takes two to tango yeah.
Speaker 3:So from 95 on is when it just really got crazy start to sell a lot of meth in this valley, how I mentioned earlier. You know, I would, I would take, I would take meth, I I would leave the house or the apartment, probably between five and eight ounces Dang, and I would go out and I'd sell it all and I would come back and I'd empty all my pockets and I mean my pockets.
Speaker 4:Yeah, stacks, stacks, stacks yeah.
Speaker 3:Come back, put it in the safe, grab another five or six, go back out and just keep going and going and going.
Speaker 1:Where were you getting the dope from?
Speaker 3:I had a good connecting window.
Speaker 1:Yeah, white boy.
Speaker 3:No, mexican girl. Yeah yeah, she's a man.
Speaker 1:Cartel queen no Not even that oh really.
Speaker 3:Yeah, she's a she. She just knew some people that's what it is, man you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and she just liked the way we did business for her. Come on, it went from like a 16th to, I think, a pound in less than a year. Good Lord, yeah. And just kept going, yeah, going and going. But in that life get locked up here and there. Yep, let me see my first time. In Arizona I got locked up in 91 DUI that was what for about three or four days, don't know why. For DUI In 95, getting unlawful flight from the law, you're not supposed to run, you're supposed to stop.
Speaker 3:I mean, you got two ounces of yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm gone bro.
Speaker 2:Catch me if you can. I was already in prison by then.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 93.
Speaker 3:So doing that and probation, and I was on run for a few years again back to selling the drugs it's all you knew that's all. I knew basically all my life so I would have several different types of vehicles cars, bikes, whatever.
Speaker 1:You don't want to be in the same thing.
Speaker 3:Women, just you know, a lot of times just different women nightly, or different restaurants, different whatever, thinking I was invincible. Yeah, and I felt that way, yeah you know, cops would come looking or whatnot and gone, disappear and hop the wall, whatever, jump into another vehicle just a few few blocks down or whatever, and uh, or whatever it took, yeah were you in your mid-20s?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah, I was. You know, it was like I could scrap back then. Now I'm not scrapping. If you're going to come at me sideways, I'm going to pick something up. Hey Jim, stop it. I don't want to get hurt and I don't want to hurt no one else. Too fat, no.
Speaker 1:Pray for your enemies. Yeah, pray for your enemies until they're not your enemies anymore.
Speaker 3:I don't know if I'm gonna pick something up any anymore, but I used to amen now you got a wife.
Speaker 2:She was rich get over here, boy. So it's a new life.
Speaker 3:We don't give people reasons to want to beat us up, that's right we're living a different life yeah, so from 95 on um I did probably about eight years, three and a half of it in prison time. The other four and a half to five was in county. I know a couple times fighting cases.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, oh wow. You spent like a year plus in county at a time.
Speaker 3:Almost 11 months.
Speaker 4:County time is worse than prison man Six months here nine months, it is. County time is way worse, man. Six months here, nine months, it is County times, way worse bro.
Speaker 2:Way worse. Ugh, you got like a 130 number 135-815-0955. Yeah, that's a 09. I'm a jizzle 265581.
Speaker 4:Shut up, dude, shut up. Now they're in the fours man, are they Holy?
Speaker 2:crap, yeah, crazy. I haven't been back to prison in almost 14 years, brother.
Speaker 3:I got out in 2011.
Speaker 2:You got out 2010. Yeah, you know why I haven't been back. Jesus baby.
Speaker 4:No because he quit using dope.
Speaker 2:He quit getting high and quit going back.
Speaker 3:man, I'm saying Jesus Amen. So all this time that you know, in and out of county prison or county and prison, and then being homeless, we ever cross paths in prison. I've been to Tucson and I've also been to Safford. When were you in Safford? 2010, 2011.
Speaker 2:You said Tucson. When were you in Safford? 2010, 2011. You said Tucson.
Speaker 3:When were you in Tucson? 98, 99 in 2000.
Speaker 2:I just got down. We missed each other.
Speaker 3:Yeah, could have been, friends Could have been.
Speaker 1:You guys would have been no.
Speaker 3:We would have been great buddies.
Speaker 4:Yeah, geez, you guys would have come up with some great ideas. I just see it.
Speaker 1:Hey Rich, I know we can go get this air conditioner man, you know who he reminds me of Remember my buddy Butterbean, oh yeah. Oh man.
Speaker 2:Hey.
Speaker 1:Butterbean had some good dope. He had a wife.
Speaker 2:that was crazy, though. Oh my God, I don't know why she thought she wanted to do fraud. That was a bad choice.
Speaker 1:Thank you, lord. Yeah, yeah, it's the drugs people. Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know I can look back and laugh in them stories. Yeah, you know, it's like it is what it is. I can't change it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like.
Speaker 3:It is what it is, I can't change it and it's part of what made me who I am today.
Speaker 1:That's right man, it's your experience, man.
Speaker 3:So where was I at again?
Speaker 2:Oh 93-ish 95-ish yeah.
Speaker 3:So 97, when I got out, okay, I went to prison in 98. When I got out, I got married to a bartender. Worst 18 months of my life bro, she's a bartender, bro.
Speaker 1:Hey, rich, don't do it. You know, here's the thing she was hot.
Speaker 3:She'd jump over to the bar and I'd watch her just hit these dudes bigger than me and I was like, oh wow, I'm just fresh out of prison.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like, that's cute, I'm in love. Yeah, I'm in love we didn't box like that. No.
Speaker 3:But she would just be like man someone tried to throw a punch at her. You know I was on it, yeah, but it just definitely didn't work out. And when but it just definitely didn't work out and, uh, when you got out of prison did you start using again? I was good for about 10 or 11 months. I actually ran orders, uh, for a company called fleming's okay making good money, and then I started going to the bars and for the bars.
Speaker 1:All of a sudden it's like once you get your and your inhibition cut, where's's the dope bag? Alcohol brings our inhibitions down buddy. I was the same way man, I would walk in and after a few weeks or whatnot.
Speaker 3:Every time I'd come in, they knew what I was getting. By the time I got to the bar, there'd be a Michelob and a shot of tequila yeah, ooh, tequila. Just kept going, and going and going. But we separated and I still hadn't had my kids in my life. You know, when I was selling drugs I would send them money and everything.
Speaker 1:Oh really.
Speaker 3:But I would not have them where I was at, because the people I was with, weren't the best? Influence. You know very, extremely racial, violent, and you know some were just they had too many screws loose.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Even for me.
Speaker 3:So it was like why would I bring my kids there? Yeah, look, here's some money, you know.
Speaker 1:At least I mean at least you're sending them money. For a while, A lot of the dudes that I knew that were on the streets that had kids, they weren't sending no money. Nah, Nah, dude.
Speaker 3:So I mean, nah, dude. So I mean, at least you were sending money. I was trying to do my, trying to do your best, yeah. So with all that, the day me and my uh, me and my ex or my wife, whatever, split up, was the first time I had someone put a needle in my arm. I didn't put that needle myself, yeah, I was the same way, buddy and uh, I don't want to go into detail who it was, but yeah, it was. Uh. Yeah, did you okay?
Speaker 1:so let me ask you this, because when I went back into addiction in 2019, I went back into using and I was using needles again and everybody that I was using with was getting high, interveniously, and I knew that if I learned how to do it myself because of how I am and how I'm wired, I it. That's something that I I knew within. Don't teachers don't learn this. So every per the people I was getting high with, I'd have them all hit me and they would look at me like, really, homie, you want get high, but you can't do it yourself. No, bro, I'm not going to learn myself. And I'd have them do it and they'd look at me like, oh, you're a little girl dude, but hey, because I knew I'd be in the bathroom freaking, I'd come out with all these. You get addicted to the needle.
Speaker 3:You get addicted to the process, not even getting high. So was that kind of no, not at all scared to death of needles oh okay, but I wanted that next level oh yeah, and that's the next level, but you know it's again through all them years trying to find something stronger and stronger to suppress that stuff that happened at the younger age.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um man, man, and that's really what it is. Huh, bro, yeah, dang god, that stuff that happens to us when we're just a kid man and we're supposed to be protected and we're supposed to be cared for and loved and it just keeps popping up. It's been a lifetime trying to run from it and dude or just cover it up so that dang.
Speaker 3:So with that I didn't even get high because the dope was bunk Really. And oh wow, I said, hey, I don't feel nothing.
Speaker 1:Now you're more pissed off. I'm mad because I got this hole in my arm. Yeah, and I didn't even feel it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just this poke and felt something go in and nothing. Yeah, just this poke and felt something go in and nothing. Yeah, but it was I don't know, I don't even know how much time later. But I was at another place and, like you, I was having other people hit me and the dude and chick went in the room for some time and they threw me a sack and a syringe, like what?
Speaker 3:am I going to do with this? Yeah, Nobody came over or nothing. I'm like man I wanted to get out, so I did it, I mixed it up and I was just terrified, yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I'd watched him do it enough. It was like yeah. And from that point it was on.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, buddy, it was through. I'll venture off. I just got chills, man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I got a poop, I got a poop.
Speaker 1:Ain't that truth, man? Before you even pick up the dope sack, you're like I gotta poop my stomach. You're waiting for. You're like, oh man, I gotta poop. For all the sober people that watch this and listen to this. Oh, you guys have no clue.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, man, I didn't mean to say that it's real buddy.
Speaker 1:I think dad's getting some healing in this one Jesus, Sorry bro.
Speaker 3:So I just want to make it clear for any and everybody this isn't stuff that we are dwelling on. Yeah, living, no, this was reality for us Come on bro man. To walk through this. It was hell. It took a seriously special person. Yeah, I don't mean anyone better or worse, but man, yeah, once that needle came out, it was a whole another world. Yeah, all bets were off. Yeah, yeah, stealing from your own family yeah, man taking whatever you wanted.
Speaker 3:Basically work, you know not, not worrying about getting busted. Yeah, any care concern went out the window.
Speaker 1:It's gone, yeah, just all self yeah, you got it, you got a high. No, it's all gone.
Speaker 2:Even hygiene started to go away brushing yep every, every moral, every character, we had, everything we had disappears when you do that any good thing everything good, and we're not talking about this to glorify any of this no, no because they're going to come apart in the story where you're going to hear where, where god shows up, things change.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean, but you need to know where he came from and what he went through before he encountered the living god. Yeah, that's why we tell these things. It's not to glorify our past and you hear us laugh and it's not funny. It's just because we've been there and we understand. You know what I mean, and we're you know it's not some people. Don't make it out of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, so we don't need to laugh and make fun of it, but we've been there and through it, so it's what it is for me, I think, why I laugh is the stupidity.
Speaker 1:How lost I was, how far gone I was thinking I got this man, I'm invincible.
Speaker 3:You're lost, buddy, you're lost so after we got divorced and started doing on my little run, I uh I started dating this girl you know, I had a bunch of dope cash and everything going on um.
Speaker 3:But she had a daughter and they were all white, but she started dating this black boy the, the daughter her daughter daughter started dating the black and, uh, you know, I still had my racism, so I wasn't really nice. Yeah, yeah, I was man, I was, I was a piece of work. Yeah, you know. And who knows about that? This dude?
Speaker 1:This dude got out of prison, bro, and I would literally have Filipino friends, black friends, mexican friends. We'd be going to my house in Mesa to get high for lunch break, bro, in my garage dude is a six by six swastika. I bring them in. Come on, we can go in my garage and get high. Bam, I got great examples, bud, of what not to do. I'm not that person anymore. Praise God, god, the lord changed him. Yeah, but that hate that's. That's real man.
Speaker 3:It is yeah, and it started in chicago and it just stuck with me, yeah my mom didn't raise me that way streets did yeah, yeah, um we?
Speaker 1:we just had a message preached and they said either the church is going to disciple your kids or the world is we get to choose one. Which one?
Speaker 2:it's what it is, man the world will always preach a hate and division come on yeah.
Speaker 3:So her daughter got pregnant. She had twin baby girls. Oh, wow, wow.
Speaker 1:I love them baby girls, as if there's my own grandkids is that what god used to change you, bro, and to take the hate out of your heart? That started oh man, that's beautiful. That's only something god can do. Were the babies black, looked black, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Wow. And it was like I couldn't believe it. Wow, you know. And then the other kids, my gosh. Wow, I didn't realize that's when God was working on me. He didn't completely clear me of it. Then, you know, planted the seed.
Speaker 1:Because, bro, you were this dude in your 20s, bro that was hard and running and gunning and doing what you God's got to use this little baby, bro, just to soften that heart, man, and make you feel again and tenderize you, you know, dang dude, I did a lot of dumb things at that house, or she had this rule and you know, if you hit someone in her home, then you had to leave, and I did.
Speaker 3:I had to leave, but you know I could have a relationship with that family today and I probably could. But you know, her other son, her son, um, we did dope together after he turned 18 and that ruined our relationship yeah, man, it ruined it.
Speaker 1:It does. I tell people in my cr testimony do not get high with your kids.
Speaker 3:No man and he was like a kid. He's like my son, yeah you think.
Speaker 1:You think it's a way for you to bond. You know what I mean to get closer together. But no, man, I need a father. I need a dad. I need somebody to teach me how to be a man, how to make good choices. It's not a good way to bond.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not a good way to bond Before he was 18?.
Speaker 1:You're not doing it.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't let him touch nothing but you're an adult now.
Speaker 1:You're gonna make your own choices.
Speaker 3:You're gonna sit there and watch me. That's on you, yeah, but I'm not sharing this with you. Yeah, I don't care what your mom does with you when I'm not here. You know that. That's how it went, yeah, once he turned of age you're an adult now you're gonna make your own choices but I was already being stupid. Yeah, so it's like that justified it. Yeah, yeah, lies, yeah, yeah, so it was like that justified it. Lies, yeah.
Speaker 1:Learning lesson, learning lesson. That's what that was, man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so my first time in prison. 98, 99, and then 2000,. I read the Bible in a year. Come on, I read the Bible so I could tell my mom I did. Yeah, I applied nothing. I don't even think I understood nothing.
Speaker 1:I just I read it, you read it.
Speaker 3:Because in the back of the Bible it's got these little boxes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the check. Read the Bible in a year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I did that, wow, the next time I went in in 2010,. I did it again Check, check. So I was checking the boxes and that was it.
Speaker 1:Seeds. Seeds were being planted.
Speaker 3:Wow, I didn't realize that then, yeah, wow, and there's probably a lot of the story that I'm leaving out and I don't intend to.
Speaker 1:The Holy Spirit's working man, the Holy Spirit's using all this right now. Yep.
Speaker 3:So first time reading the bible, and then when I get out man, I was even that drug addict and that drug dealer or drug addict. Sometimes I'd be walking around. You know, little orange bibles you get from prison I'd have in my pocket. Never did I open it never did I open it.
Speaker 1:This will keep me safe why this will keep me out of trouble today.
Speaker 3:God is with me you know, never did I open it and read it, but it was always man in that back pocket and I look back and it's like what was I thinking?
Speaker 1:wow, you put your ball in one and the Bible in the other. Yeah, it was a little crazy. Wow, dude, you know that's god man just working moving you know, oh, that's what I forgot.
Speaker 3:And all this, you know, start out, uh, riding bikes, dirt bikes, um and street bikes, harleleys. You know, my family all rode, my mom rode, I rode on the back with my mom and I remember those memories, man, it's just like wow.
Speaker 1:In Illinois on the block in the family and everything you got riding bikes and working. My mom had a bike, my dad had a bike. My uncles each had a couple bikes. You know it's like what the heck it's in the family it is.
Speaker 2:So you were raised kind of in a biker community.
Speaker 3:Not a no affiliation, no affiliation.
Speaker 2:They just liked bikes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, greaseheads.
Speaker 3:Gearheads, gearheads.
Speaker 1:Bikes, cars, whatever, yeah.
Speaker 3:They'd fix these cars, man, and they looked like they belonged in the junkyard. But, man, they'd smoke the tires and they were fast. But anyways, back to life. Out here, before I went to prison, that first time we were stealing a lot of motorcycles, crotch rockets, yeah yeah, so simple you know oh my God. So that's what I ended up going to prison for, Thank you.
Speaker 4:Jesus, not that.
Speaker 3:They caught me. No, no, they caught me on it. Well, they didn't catch me on, but I was on a stolen bike, I was selling dope and someone brought me a gun because at the time they were coming and kicking the doors and anyone that knew how to cook dope or drug dealers and all that, and they were just. It was going crazy back then.
Speaker 1:They were laying them down.
Speaker 3:It was nuts. So I was taking the gun back and the police got behind me.
Speaker 4:a little chase Ran to this one place and I ended up going to prison for a gun charge.
Speaker 3:Really Okay, cool Did my time. Got out, said the marriage and then the divorce and then back to slinging dope again. Yeah, you're just in it, you're just in it, you're just in it. In the midst of all this, it's that cyclist.
Speaker 4:It's what it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're homeless.
Speaker 2:It's just the next chick.
Speaker 3:The next sack, the next water money, the next day the next one.
Speaker 2:That's all you know that's what you find your way back to man. It was the easiest way to survive. Yeah, there's a reason why the recidivism rate in arizona is so high, dude, because a dude gets out of prison, he needs money and he just the first thing he can do is go get some dope, yeah, and make some money real quick and get the things that he needs to get started. But unfortunately, the money is so good that you just stay in it because the money's good and that's quick.
Speaker 1:You know, I mean yeah easier to sell dope than work a job.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, so this is where life gets even worse. Uh, 2006 or so. Um, I tried heroin for the first time, so mixing it with the heroin and the speed speed balls, all right I like this I liked it so much that I pushed speed out of the way and then I, I couldn't I couldn't sell anymore.
Speaker 3:My mind just wasn't there so yeah, I gave up that life of a dope dealer to be just a full-blown heroin junkie dope fiend and uh, you know I od'd a lot went back to prison 2010 for about a year it is a miracle you're even sitting at this table, bro.
Speaker 1:The only way you're here is, by god's grace, dude. Oh yeah, how you didn't od and die and turn blue and purple and man it's amazing that you're sober, bro.
Speaker 2:Yeah, heroin addicts don't usually get out of being a heroin addict brother. They either end up dead or just strung out for the rest of their lives, most of them dudes don't get out, Because even in prison you're getting high all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my God, rich, wow, dude, you've come a long way, buddy, wow, Wow, dude.
Speaker 3:You've come a long way, buddy. Wow so 2012,. I almost lost my leg.
Speaker 1:Like an abscess or an infection.
Speaker 3:I did some heroin. Yep, I shot it in my arm, went to my heart. My heart rejected it, went down to my leg.
Speaker 1:Oh, through your femoral artery dude.
Speaker 3:Oh, my God to my leg, oh, through your femoral artery dude, and oh my god um 18 inches of my skin, muscle, tendon and ground out some bone cotton fever, no, uh, sepsis, some type of fasciitis, oh wow. And then the left side of my leg they took out. I think it was like nine inches, wow, same thing, but they. It was crazy, crazy for four days. You know it just kept getting worse and worse and I couldn't walk. You know I'm, I'm the man that I am, you know I'll get by. I'll get by, I'm okay.
Speaker 3:That fourth day I was leaning off the side of the couch and urinating in a uh in a cup, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Because I couldn't get up. Wow, you were losing it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then going to the hospital. I got to the hospital. Every single bump was just the worst pain ever. Yeah, I get to the hospital and find out that if I had waited another 12 hours You'd been dead.
Speaker 4:I'd lost my leg.
Speaker 3:Wow, in 24 hours I'd have been dead. Yeah, I'm like that pain, I couldn't, I couldn't last, I couldn't last another hour. Wow, that's why I had to call and get it right, rich I had.
Speaker 1:I had something. It wasn't because of drugs, bro, because I was living in. I was over in california in 2016 living in a men's home.
Speaker 1:We would get all kinds of men from all different walks of life man out of parks, behind Circle Ks and Walmarts, man, and we'd bring them into the home and let them shower and clean and feed them and give them clothes and stuff. But a lot of them come in dirty and I popped this thing on my knee. It was just a little bump and I popped it and it was like three days. In the fourth day, things all swollen, I bent my knee and it pus came out. I go to the hospital and they're like we got you an emergency surgery. At 6am. I went in and the next day they cut open my knee and started cutting out all this infection that was in me, dude.
Speaker 1:I woke up during the surgery with my knee filleted half open. There's this thing in front of me and I see him. I'm like what are you guys doing? You don't want to see this. You don't know. I want to see what are you doing. They move the thing. I'm like, oh my god, my legs all cut open, bro. It was like, and I had to relearn to walk again. It's it ain't no joke, man, addiction and that kind of stuff. Infection, especially inside the body, it'll take you out so quick, man. And but you think, oh, I'm good, I'm good, it'll go away like the other stuff, but when god has to slow you down, man, god's really got to get our attention and slow us down you're on dope or heroin man, the last thing you're worried about is my health.
Speaker 1:What is?
Speaker 2:that.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. Yeah, just give me another shot, I'm good. Yeah, I'll get through it.
Speaker 3:You look at my leg and you couldn't tell. Wow there is nothing out of shape, nothing out of form, but if you touched it it was hot.
Speaker 1:It was almost like a hot hot. It was wow the infection was. It was working its way. Wow. So how old are you at this? You're in your late 20s when this in 2012?
Speaker 3:yeah, nice, 30, 31, 32, no, almost 40 yeah 41.
Speaker 1:doing math on live Doing math live people 1971 to 2012.
Speaker 2:We can still do math.
Speaker 3:So between 2012,.
Speaker 1:I actually was staying off and on at my mom's house. Is mom still with the dude?
Speaker 3:Because she was with that dude 30 years. No, no, no, no. Okay, but there's, there's some, there's some coolness in here somewhere. Um, but 2012 to 2015, almost every night I would go. It just be about starting to get dark sun, starting to go down. I would crew straight down central to sunny Slope, hang out there all night and then, before the sun came up, shoot all the way back to 16th and Indian School.
Speaker 1:What were you doing in the?
Speaker 3:slope.
Speaker 1:What are you always doing in the slope being bad Party hard yeah, doing what you do.
Speaker 3:So in that time, you know I— Did you ever run into cleo? Uh, not till, I was sober okay, that that's cleo's hood. Bro, I got a boy man that'll go search houses for you dude, I um, I've od'd a lot in it in slopes, yeah, different corners and stuff. I even got hep C out of all this. Of course it's a given.
Speaker 4:Play dirty.
Speaker 2:Get dirty.
Speaker 1:Share needles.
Speaker 2:I just finished my treatment. Yeah, he just took his last. I'm getting mine.
Speaker 1:I'm in the process of the gastro and getting the meds.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I go next month to get my blood work to make sure we're good Healed in jesus name that's a story in itself come on, buddy they wanted me to pay 21 grand. Bro, my insurance covered most of it. They want me to pay 21 grand. I called this place and they said oh yeah, we just wiped that all out.
Speaker 1:Every medication's on its way they wiped it all out, twenty one thousand000 through coupons, thanks God.
Speaker 2:Yeah, amen.
Speaker 4:Amen.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So let me see, I did a lot of working on my racism throughout those years Gave up being a drug dealer to be a full blown heroin junkie, gave up caring about anybody. I've taken a lot of things from a lot of people. Yeah, addiction, I've stolen some things, but I've also taken them and in my eyes at the time, if you can see me doing it, I'm not stealing from you, I'm taking from you. Know, if you're, if you can see me doing it, I'm not stealing from you, I'm taking I love you rich.
Speaker 1:That's my how I justify being bad. I'm not stealing it from you, I'm taking. You're watching me this ain't stealing.
Speaker 2:I love you rich, stop me oh man, I'm praying for you.
Speaker 1:T you got a strong one here, sweetie.
Speaker 3:And again, it's not to brag, but it's just to kind of give someone a picture of stupidity of life, the level of stupidity. Yeah, so this is the amazing part. In 2015 of August, I was going to get some more heroin. I got my heroin. I'm like, yeah, on my way back, I started praying to God. What.
Speaker 1:Why would you do that?
Speaker 3:I know, I didn't know God was real.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I asked God to take my life. Now, when I asked him to take my life, I wanted that next hit to be the one To take you out.
Speaker 1:No more breath. Yeah, because I didn't want to hurt my mom. No more, yeah. Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:Rich, I had no idea.
Speaker 4:Oh, wow, yeah.
Speaker 3:No idea what it would have done to her. I was thinking in my drug head that it would solve her problems. Yeah, so a couple days went by.
Speaker 1:That day you prayed, you had the heroin in your pocket, oh yeah, and you're driving home Riding on a bicycle. Okay, so you're riding on a bicycle to wherever you're going because you're homeless, and you pray to god lord, take me, take my life take my life. Take my life I want this to be my last one. I want that, yeah, to take me out. It's done okay death okay.
Speaker 1:So what I hear in this is you literally being at the end of your rope and telling God, if God, because you don't even know God. If you're, hey, let this be the last one. So that is literally how God starts to unravel your sobriety and your recovery, to where it's literally the end of rich, the end of the heroin addiction.
Speaker 3:The end of Tez.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you come into wow dude, you say tez, is that your nickname?
Speaker 3:yeah, wow a lot of years really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, yep okay, so a couple days after, and how does this go?
Speaker 3:wow. So a couple days after, uh, my mom finds me, and you know, almost unresponsive.
Speaker 3:But, I think if she would have just not found me, maybe I would have went into that slumber, yeah, but she did and got me out of it. But then she called the PO and the PO said have him come in tomorrow. So I did, got me out of it. But then she called the po and the po said, uh, have him come in tomorrow. So I did. As soon as I got in I said look man, just send me back to a yard, I'll do my time. Start over fresh. So he told me he says no, I can see in your eyes you want to quit. You just can't. I couldn't, oh, man, yeah it had you by the balls, bro.
Speaker 3:yeah that, yeah, that's real dude.
Speaker 1:Because you need it.
Speaker 3:It had such a great effect. Yeah, you need it, wow. So, with that being said, it was like all right, I'll go tomorrow. He said, no, you'll go today.
Speaker 1:To where.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I didn't tell you that part. He said and I'm the first case that he's done this with.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God.
Speaker 3:He said I want you to do a three to five-day detox at the Phoenix Rescue Mission. Wow, I'm like I'll go tomorrow. He said, no, you'll be there at 5 o'clock today. So I went home. He let me go home.
Speaker 3:And I would have been content with going back, just doing time, yeah, but he's like be there at 5. Cool, I went home, slept for a while. No, I went home, did a blast, slept for a while, got up and I think it was about 4.40 pm on August 17th of 2015. I did my last blast of heroin, wow, bro. And so my sobriety date is Augustust 18th, because that next day when I woke up, I was sober. I was sober, yeah, so I couldn't even get up and try to walk off this property to get to a bus stop or nothing.
Speaker 1:I couldn't, yeah oh, you were detoxing, bro. Oh yeah, you were feeling it, buddy. Were they helping you through it? At least?
Speaker 3:so. So at that time it was like well, you can either sign for a year program or you can go somewhere else. I'm not knowing. This is a faith-based program. I couldn't leave and I realized why I couldn't leave now, but back then I couldn't. It's like I couldn't make it. You know it was coming out all ends. So I signed, got a bid. Wow, I detoxed right there without leaving. Wow, now you don't get that opportunity. Wow, I didn't have to go to a detox facility.
Speaker 1:Yeah, community bridges, I did it with nothing.
Speaker 3:Wow. Cold turkey, and that was the first time I ever detoxical turkey, wow, oh God. So the Lord was all over that Dang dude. And as I'm there and I finally get out of bed after a couple of weeks, you know, and really paying attention is like all these cats running around. Oh, I love you man, Love you bro, Hugging each other.
Speaker 1:What the heck is going on here when? What am I involved in y'all? Are weird what is really going on.
Speaker 3:And then, you know, a couple weeks go by and you know I call the po and like, hey man, they're trying to shove jesus down my throat. Now maybe, in the stupid know-it-all knucklehead stubborn person that I was, I needed it to feel that way. And I'm looking back and it's like it really wasn't being shoved like that, but it felt like that because that was his way of getting through to me. Oh yeah, three weeks into the program I was in the chapel listening to the worship band and you know, grown man can't let anyone see you cry.
Speaker 1:We were talking about this morning at the man's meeting. Real men cry, real men cry, that's right.
Speaker 3:So you know, duck in the face, I'm not crying, I'm good dude. So I walk out and you know, and I don't even know why I do this, but I go find the biggest dude there. You know, I think I'm in a prison yard or something. I go find the biggest dude and I'm like, why am I tearing up? And he said it sounds like the Holy Spirit. I'm like, no, really, why am I tearing up? Yeah and uh, he said it sounded like the holy spirit.
Speaker 3:So him and another guy took me back into the chapel and, uh, that was the night I asked the lord into my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's august 18th. Come on.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, no it was three, three weeks after, okay, okay yeah, but you know, I asked him into my life and, uh, I felt great that I did it.
Speaker 3:I didn't feel no change or nothing yet yeah, yeah but from that moment forward, it's like everything just kept getting better and better and better and better. About six months down the road, all of a sudden he starts working on my pride. You know, and I was. Yeah, I'm sure there was parts of my life where I was a bully, yeah, but there was also parts of my life where I didn't like bullies, yeah, you know. No, you ain't going to pick on him. No, you're not going to hit that girl. Yeah, there's plenty of times where I've grabbed dudes off of girls. Next thing, you know, that girl's on my back beating me up for beating her boyfriend up.
Speaker 1:It's.
Speaker 3:Like, come on, man, he was just laying you out, dude. You know it's just like, yeah, but that pride thing, it still sticks with me. It's hard sometimes, yeah, but back to the program. A month later, a month and a half half later, my mom moves back to illinois. I forgot one thing before I got my heroin, before I, uh, went to the mission, my mom's husband was sitting in the chair just running his mouth and I told you that it's been a very violent thing with me and him for a lot of years. Yeah and uh. In that I actually thought that I was like my own god, you know, and I even told this guy. I said, look man. I said the only reason you're even breathing is because I allow it. My mom was just like she ain't never heard nothing come out of my mouth like that.
Speaker 3:You were angry Dude had his 45 sitting to him, right next to him in the chair. I mean, nothing would have stopped him. I don't know why he didn't. If someone would have said that to me, I would have felt fear for my life, yeah, but anyways, I started going to celebrate recovery, wow, at the same time that my mom left. So I had no one here. My sisters wrote me off, my uh, all my family wrote me off.
Speaker 1:My kids weren't talking to me, you know, there's just addiction, bro, from this to up to this point, rich in your life, there had there's, there's, there was, there was no consistent period, there was no period of your, and if there was any good part, it would slowly and crap out again. So everybody close to you, bro, they're just waiting for you to crap out again. They're waiting for this thing to fall apart and you go back to doing what you've always done.
Speaker 3:Wow dude, not this time.
Speaker 1:Wow, bro, that's how you know. God showed up dude.
Speaker 3:He showed up.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:Rich.
Speaker 2:You said you started going to CR when you were in the program. Yep the program took you to Celebr the program. Yep. The program took you to celebrate recovery. Yep, really.
Speaker 3:So when you're in the second phase, which was inner healing, you're mandated to go to church and recovery program Come on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 3:And I got to do that.
Speaker 1:That's real good.
Speaker 3:Now, when I went there and I saw people getting these chips for sobriety, men hugging on each other love you, bro, congratulations, good job. It's like okay. Now I'm intrigued. Yeah, you know, because it was just classes and all that stuff in the program. Yeah, there's some, just really some weird people there that's real bud, really weird, there's some crazies out there. But then again, you know, that's how people could have thought of me. You know, back in my day, yeah, I was weird too yeah, we were out there, yeah, um, but just going to that, it just escalated.
Speaker 3:It just kept growing and growing, and growing. So, as I'm going through this program, when I called the po uh and it came close to the two months, he's like I told him I said I'll stick it out. Man, I'm intrigued, wow.
Speaker 1:So you go in August 17th, august 18th is your sobriety date, september the beginning of September is salvation. And here you are calling a month later, in October, saying I'm going to stick this thing out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, wow, and I stuck it out for two years. Wow, I did the uh foundations, inner healing, discipleship, uh servant leader training for five months. So that was the first year. The second time, second year, was all ministry training and that's where they actually paid us a certain amount. So that was actually employment, wow. So I actually, man, I got to walk with a lot of people, I did a lot of intakes and just led a lot of people to Christ. You know, wow, I wasn't just teaching them, but I was learning from them. Yeah, if someone asked me a question about the Bible sometimes not a lot, sometimes I'd be able to answer it. If I didn't, I'd bust that sucker open right in front of them. Let's go through this. I did a lot of intakes, helped people to get their access.
Speaker 3:I had no computer skills before I got there. My computer skills was turning the power on and getting to Facebook. That was the limit of my skills In doing that right now. I use that computer so much and I'm in so many different programs. It's like how the heck does someone that used to do acid cocaine speed heroin, weed drink how does someone do all this stuff?
Speaker 1:I'm going to operate this machine.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, and just reminding myself that this is all God. Yeah, you know that beautiful woman right there. God, I don't deserve that, I don't deserve that, I don't deserve her.
Speaker 1:You know, there's a God knows what you need God knows what you need Rich, that's what you needed, bro, yeah man.
Speaker 3:Jesus. So uh, when am?
Speaker 1:I at now.
Speaker 3:Two years.
Speaker 1:Two years. You finish up the second year where they pay you an intern.
Speaker 3:So before that, it was right after my first year, someone approached me and asked me how I would help be a leader for Celebrate Recovery at North Phoenix Baptist Church.
Speaker 1:Is that the church you're going to? Yeah, is that the CR? Oh, no, I mean back then.
Speaker 3:No, that was at Salvation Army.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay. Okay, but I'm like but North Phoenix is the church you're going to on Sundays because you have to go to recovery meetings and church in your second phase of.
Speaker 3:No, that was at Citadel, oh you have to go to recovery meetings and church in your second phase of. No, that was at Citadel. Oh, it was Salvation Army Citadel on Friday nights. Okay, and then some other guys were going to church there and then they came and asked me oh, so the woman that was starting it, her son, was in the program with me. Okay, so I got to walk with him through it, okay. And they asked me they're like how would you like to help start a Celebrate Recovery? I'm like man.
Speaker 3:I'll do anything for you know, for recovery.
Speaker 1:Not even knowing what you're going to get yourself into.
Speaker 3:Okay, so I was like, let me go and check out the church and make sure that's the place I want to be. So when I went, that's good. I checked to be so when I went that's good, I checked it out and the pastor had only been there. What Eight months? I went there? February of 2017 was the first time, and I think the pastor had been there only about eight months prior to that. Okay, but the way he was teaching was straight from the Bible. You know, scripture by scripture.
Speaker 4:Yeah, hacking it.
Speaker 3:Yep, I'm like I like this because all the other churches I've been to there's too much jumping around, okay, so that I really didn't have a stable foothold in the work it was expository, preaching verse by verse yeah and uh, I'm like all right. So we started, we birthed that celebrate recovery in april 20th of 2017. Wow, um, wow. So at that time, while you were in the program still yeah, really wow yeah they allowed you to go.
Speaker 3:Do that another blessing from god because they don't, they won't allow someone to do that now. Yeah, but they did back then. It was like all these firsts, wow, rich you know? Yeah, I was the first success sex successful um probationer that they put through, that he put through that program that succeeded yeah I get to hold that title yeah, you know I'm happy, I'm proud of that. You know they even the pos came to my probate or my Wow, your graduation, my graduation, dang, dude.
Speaker 1:Wow bro, who gets that? Yeah, I know, dude Wow.
Speaker 3:So Wow, Rich. Started restoring my relationship with my mom. Well, my mom never gave it up, but she did move back to Illinois, so I didn't have her here, but I had her support.
Speaker 1:Phone calls. You'd talk to her Phone calls, yeah.
Speaker 3:Letters, whatever. My sisters started talking to me again, seeing that I was doing the right things. I was even going on passes to my sister that lives here. The other one lives in Kentucky at the time. I think she lives in Vegas.
Speaker 1:It sounds like to me, bro, before the heroin. It sounds like before the heroin, all your family was still there, you were still working, you're still kind of living life in your addiction, but it was like, once the heroin came in, nobody yeah, everything, all bets rough Okay. They didn't like who they saw.
Speaker 3:It makes a different person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they didn't like who you became.
Speaker 3:That dude was jacked up.
Speaker 1:Well, like you said, man, you're stealing from family, stealing from yeah, okay, all right, and so now you're at a place, because it it was what you got out in 2001, I think you said from prison.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then. So from 2001, 2000 okay up until about 2015.
Speaker 1:That's 15 years of just craziness. So 2015. So here you are in 2017 and now your family's starting to come back and there's some restoration happening. 2000, yeah, Wow.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 3:So they were coming back, you know.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 3:I was starting to experience what life truly was man, Because before that it was like I couldn't.
Speaker 2:So it's hard for a family to sit there and watch somebody they love go through addiction. Brother.
Speaker 3:It really is.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I don't think that they're giving up on us. They just can't.
Speaker 1:Watch it. It's hard to watch, bro.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dude, when you're killing yourself, you'd rather separate yourself than sit there and watch somebody you love like willfully Kill themselves Slow suicide, you know what themselves, slow suicide, you know I mean it's hard to watch that dude. I mean I don't think they give up on us, they just don't want to participate and watch us kill ourselves.
Speaker 3:You know, I mean so I think it was sometime between 2016 and 2017. I called my mom and I said mom, let me talk to jay jay is mom's husband she's like why yeah, what do you?
Speaker 1:why do? Why? What are you gonna say to him?
Speaker 3:be nice just let me talk to jay. She's like, why just let me talk to him? So she put him on the phone and I just started out. I told him. I said, look, I forgive you for what you've done to me. I just ask for your forgiveness for what I've done to you and, uh, because we've done a lot of physical yeah, yeah, taking things from each other hurt each other violently um, wow, and just you know, ask if we can start over, yeah, and he said uh, we can do that.
Speaker 3:come on, man, that was good enough for me. Yeah, so, my mom, she, what did you say to? Him, so I told her and she's like whoa well, he ended up dying three months later, three or four months later, but she told me after that. She said that she'd never seen him so happy After you know. I made that amends with him. Wow, rich, wow. And I'm thinking to myself why am I doing this? But I knew why and I did it and once I did it, it was like Wake on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this guy had that same thing with his father.
Speaker 3:Yeah, wow, so he wasn't a father figure, by no means, yeah, but uh, you know he was there. Yeah, we just we just couldn't connect, and that's okay, you know they'd I put my mom through it.
Speaker 2:Did you feel like the anger and the hate that you had just kind of left you Kind of like there was freedom?
Speaker 3:from that now Well the anger and hate was already going away. You know, once I was in the program itself yeah. And then, once I was able to do that, it's like it cleared my conscience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's like a coat we wear sometimes, brother.
Speaker 3:And it's heavy, heavy.
Speaker 2:You ever had like a weight vest for exercising. Yeah, sometimes that unforgiveness and that stuff that we hold on to is like that weighted vest, and once we forgive somebody it's like take that weighted vest off. You just feel so light now.
Speaker 3:You know what I?
Speaker 2:mean yeah, you carry it with you for years bro, it weighs us down.
Speaker 3:Yeah, dang dude.
Speaker 1:So doing all that um you know I've gone to a couple different summits, celebrate recovery summits biggest recovery party in the world and I love, love it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the first one was in Saddleback. The second one, I actually went with her. We weren't dating, we were just in a leadership role. And the woman I originally started to celebrate recovery with. We went to Tennessee Beautiful Nice and green, a little humid. Actually, it was a lot humid, but it was beautiful. We went there and you know, just having some conversations Before that, her and I were just friends, you know Watched her, you know, as she went through the program and not that program, but went through Celebrate Recovery and all that, the hit or misses times she'd show up times she wouldn't.
Speaker 3:But it's just a connection, a good one.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I wasn't looking for a relationship, she wasn't looking for a relationship. We were just friends.
Speaker 2:You guys met at CR.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Nice bro the second week, oh wow. Can I say that well, she we're gonna have her on to share her testimony, so we'll get the truth from her when you got out of phoenix rescue mission, what'd you start doing for work?
Speaker 2:so?
Speaker 1:he's still there. When I got out of pho Phoenix Rescue Mission.
Speaker 3:I was looking for work somewhere else. I went through three amazing interviews. I like that word amazing because it went well. I didn't get frowned upon nothing like that. It was like yeah, okay, cool, come back for this one, come back, come back An hour after my third one. They're like we have to inform you that, because of your background. We cannot hire you here all righty, back to the drawing board you know, what I mean.
Speaker 3:I thought that's where I was going, because I didn't want to be one of them entitled people that just because I graduated here, I get a job here yeah yeah and uh. So a couple weeks later, not even a week and a half later they offered me a job, really at the rescue mission nice I'm like all right, cool, and I did, I took it and I started working for uh case management office. Come on, and that's where giving back these computer thing I'm like okay. I'm still that slow.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I'm the same way, bud.
Speaker 4:Are you a finger puncher, that's why I didn't go to year five at Thales Bible College.
Speaker 1:I write six-page papers every class, nope.
Speaker 3:So I did that for 14 months.
Speaker 2:Our buddy's going there to preach on Halloween.
Speaker 4:Yeah To the Phoenix Rescue Mission.
Speaker 2:Nice, yeah, giving out Bibles and candies and these little Halloween things. Yeah, mike Hinkle, yeah.
Speaker 3:So I worked there for 14 months and then they asked me how would I like to come to the street outreach team? I'm like, yeah, they're like you don't want to pray and I was like, no, that's an answered prayer yeah, so we're at 2019 2018 november 2018. Okay, so with that I was in an office with four people talk about claustrophobic and annoying people. Iron sharpens, iron bud.
Speaker 1:Man sharpens man. I was being sharpened in there. It was crazy. God was rounding out some of those sharp edges on you, buddy, and using those people to do it.
Speaker 3:So I continued. I started at the street outreach and then I was able to help build relationships with several different cities wow, you know, with the police officers, um what?
Speaker 1:yeah, the people you used to run from.
Speaker 3:Now you're developing relationships with them the ones I was running hard from.
Speaker 1:This is crazy bro.
Speaker 3:Yeah, police officers, city resources, city officials. You know I was able to help build with Avondale, tolleson, glendale, peoria, surprise Wow.
Speaker 1:Rich.
Speaker 3:Scottsdale even, and the Phoenix part. Just you know, when they barely started I was still there, but then I ended up switching jobs. So the cool thing is, you know, I have all these relationships with all these cities that I was never thought I could do. You know a drug dealer yeah, bud. You know order runner, or you know mechanic or taker yeah, Takers.
Speaker 2:And here I am building relationships.
Speaker 3:I don't know if that's a job title but it is to us when we're in that mindset.
Speaker 1:I need this for money. I'm taking it.
Speaker 2:I think that's a character defect, not a job title.
Speaker 1:I would have paid you for it. Take it from him and bring it to me. I'll give you some money. That's right, I'll give you a list.
Speaker 2:Buddy, I'm telling you man Help us.
Speaker 4:God.
Speaker 1:He's giving us new life, boys. Thank you, jesus. Wow, bro.
Speaker 3:In all this time, you know.
Speaker 4:When did I?
Speaker 3:get the bike. Oh, I got my. So walking back and forth. I lived about four blocks from the rescue mission and every day I would walk back and forth. I ain't had a license in 24 years.
Speaker 4:Okay yeah, 24 years DUI, bro Addiction.
Speaker 3:Addiction Two 24 years.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah 24 years DUI, bro, addiction Two of them. Yeah, man.
Speaker 3:And then, finally, I got my license. No, there's a woman named Miss Pam, and I can say her name comfortably. Her name is Pam Morrison. She's been like a guru of knowledge, you know, and she's the one that helped me get my foot in the door oh yeah she says hire Rich, have him come work in this office, you know, case management office.
Speaker 3:I'm like, oh wow, here we go. But it just kept going and going and going. Amazing, amazing woman of God, you know, and she just helped the path that I've been on. Anytime I had issues, I called miss pam. How do I do this? It's good. How do I do that? It's good? Yep, and she would always, always have answers yeah well, I don't have that answer.
Speaker 3:Let me call you back. She'd call me back with the answer come on, come on, buddy and that just started me on my yeah on my journey. Come on, buddy. And that just started me on my journey. So now my Rolodex it's not as lengthy as hers. She's been doing it 30-some years. Yeah, buddy, but my Rolodex. I have over 1,100 contacts in my phone.
Speaker 3:Come on bro 800 of them are resources for helping people. Wow, wow, dude. 800 of them are resources for helping people. Wow, wow, dude. I would have to say yeah, 750 to 800 are actual resources of places where I can get people help. Wow, wow, rich. That's a blessing from God, because before I used to take from people yeah, now I get to serve people. Yeah, you get to give to them.
Speaker 2:Wow, I get to give it all back, but in a different way yeah, so I got that bike seven months later.
Speaker 1:When you say bike, you mean a motorcycle or you mean a bicycle Harley. Davidson.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Two wheels down baby.
Speaker 3:I would pray for a Harley, a woman, to spend the rest of my life with and a home to live in when. I got that, harley, I got scared. I'm like, oh man, I ain't ready for a relationship yet you quit praying for the woman. I kept praying.
Speaker 3:I didn't know it was going to be her you know, I thought it was going to be Buds or what not. You know, I'd house, sit, watch the animals or what not. And then a year later I thought we were going to be buds or whatnot. You know, I'd house, sit, watch the animals or whatnot. And then a year later I was just clowning with her. I'm like when are you going to get on the bike? You know, because we were just friends like that.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And what would you say? Never or something like that. I don't remember what she said, but it was.
Speaker 1:Giving you a hard time. Basically a no, yeah, so.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so about a year later we were supposed to have a leaders meeting and go somewhere.
Speaker 4:Well, it turns out.
Speaker 3:All the leaders were bailed out. It was just me and her.
Speaker 1:Oh God set up a date for you.
Speaker 3:Leaders meeting, but we were supposed to, you know, at the same time she was going to get on the bike Now.
Speaker 4:I had to try sushi.
Speaker 3:Okay, I never had sushi before.
Speaker 4:I was scared to get on the bike.
Speaker 1:No, I had to try sushi.
Speaker 3:Okay, I never had sushi before. I was scared to death of raw fish.
Speaker 1:What you want me to eat raw fish.
Speaker 3:What you want me to get on the back of that bike.
Speaker 4:I'll let you get the details on that, but she's got a good story for you. I can't wait, man. This is great.
Speaker 1:She's got a great story for you. Oh man, this is great.
Speaker 3:She's got a great story for you, oh man. Jesus. But back to the Tennessee trip. It's like we were having conversations and I started looking at her in a different way. I was like, all right, paying more attention, and she even told me about a date that she went on, you know, and it just wasn't a good thing and I let her know that you know, maybe God's grooming you for the right man or grooming the right man for you. I didn't know it was going to be me Wow bro, Wow.
Speaker 3:I mean at the time I didn't mind it, but that was not my intention or motivation when I said that.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know that just wasn't it, and then, a couple few weeks later, that's what happened. So what.
Speaker 1:You're just sitting at a meal or something and see her. Did god speak to you? Did she come and they're doing cr together, I know, but a couple weeks later they got together.
Speaker 3:How did it because we were supposed to have abundant leaders, supposed to all get together. Oh go, do this, and then go to another meeting, the bike ride sealed the deal, didn't it?
Speaker 2:oh yeah, it did. She on the back of the bike and was like yeah, I'm in wow, dude and
Speaker 3:she wasn't even all scared, it was just a natural thing for her. Yeah, loved it. Come on, wow so.
Speaker 1:What year is that? That's 2019?.
Speaker 3:Yeah 2019.
Speaker 1:Right before the shutdown of the world Jeez it gets better, wow.
Speaker 3:So we started to date in 2019.
Speaker 1:And you're doing this in the church with accountability. You're doing this as a Christian man and a Christian woman, not as you used to, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Well, did you guys do it right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, get married. Well, how are you dating? We got our answer.
Speaker 2:We got our answer, bro. It's all good bro, we'll get it from her. Were you dating? We got our answer. We got our answer, bro. It's all good, bro, we'll get it from her Were we dating.
Speaker 3:Yes, never mind, did I screw up?
Speaker 1:Okay, sure.
Speaker 4:There's grace.
Speaker 1:There's grace buddy.
Speaker 3:You know, Amen. I look back at it. It's like you know what we're meant to be together.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So if I screwed up, I screwed up. Yeah, yeah, you know, I asked for forgiveness, I know.
Speaker 2:Me and his mom were together for 10 years before I married her bro.
Speaker 3:Oh.
Speaker 1:So you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Dude. Their first 10 years, bro, were hell. They were living together and playing the husband and wife, but not actually married through the court, because my mom has through my father and previous marriages, so just a lot with her, so she didn't want to make that commitment. But their first 10 years of being together was hell a day. It was from 96 when he got released from prison to 2006 when he went back to prison, and that 10 years was just hell, bro. He gets out of prison in 2000. Well, before he goes in 2006.
Speaker 4:She married me In order for us to go see him she had to be married through paper.
Speaker 1:So they're like, okay, so 2006, they go and get married Well he got married so she could come visit me. That's right, but he gets out in 2010. And from the time he's gotten out in 2010. It's been good, it's been blessed, bro. Those first 10 years they were literally living under a curse, yeah, and these last it's because they did it God's way. He was able to bless them.
Speaker 2:Didn't help that we were both addicts either.
Speaker 1:So Do things, god way Do things in life god's way he can bless those things.
Speaker 4:Learn, buddy yeah, I am I am, I am, I am, I am, I'm watching it all this guy.
Speaker 2:He's a handful brother. I don't know what to tell you, man, that's all right there's only one of me.
Speaker 1:You'll never meet another one.
Speaker 2:Thank you, jesus there was another one of you. I don't know if I could do this.
Speaker 3:Oh my god so after we were dating for a few months, you know I decided, all right, this is the one. So I asked her to marry me on New Year's Eve. Come on 2019?. Yep, wow, yep or no 2020., 2020.
Speaker 3:Yep, yep, january. Oh, it was actually after. It was January 1st of 2020. Wow, but I don't know if it was a couple days later or what it was. You know, a few of our friends were over at her place and we were kicking back and celebrating Sober, I was going to say remember we're a part of Celebrate Recovery.
Speaker 2:Sober, celebrate. You can celebrate and not have drugs and alcohol involved? Yes, you can Come on, man, that's our best celebration.
Speaker 3:The cool part about it was and I'll let her get into details on hers but her father had passed, but there's a picture of him up on the wall, so I got to ask her to marry me in front of her father. Come on, it was awesome.
Speaker 2:Come on man.
Speaker 1:That's almost a way of honor, bro. That's awesome.
Speaker 3:I didn't even think about it Until a couple of years Looking up I'm like Whoa, yeah, wow, and it was so cool yeah.
Speaker 1:It's almost like an approval From him, from heaven.
Speaker 3:Wow, dude. I don't know what I would have done if she would have said no good thing, y'all never have to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she said yes, but I was playing that in my head like all kinds of different scenarios did you?
Speaker 2:did you do it on a knee and everything like yeah, yeah, that's good buddy yeah, how many times did you have the fantasy conversation in your head that it went the wrong way before that?
Speaker 1:oh several oh, you play this thing in your head, these fantasy conversations.
Speaker 2:I'm going to ask her what if she says this and I'm like, oh no, and sometimes we never have the conversation because in our head it played out the wrong way, so we never actually do it because we're afraid it's going to go that way.
Speaker 3:I mean, hey, man, that's part of us that we carry throughout life for years.
Speaker 2:It's all fantasy conversations.
Speaker 3:Every now and again, it's still going to be there. Yeah, the crazy thing was I didn't get the ring until that day. I ordered it and everything and it was like waiting, and waiting, and waiting and waiting. All of a sudden it's like okay, it's in. I'm like dude let's go Now.
Speaker 1:I got to do it, Wow Rich.
Speaker 2:He, I got to do it.
Speaker 1:Wow, rich, he's been holding on to his for how long I just haven't met her yet. Amen, Bring her Lord.
Speaker 3:Bring her. So we ended up getting married exactly three years from the day we met. Come on, it was April 27th of 2020. We had plans going to have some people and this and that, but the COVID stuff, yeah. And so, with that, we were having it at the Phoenix Rescue Mission, in the chapel where I got saved, oh, but we couldn't invite none of our friends. Yeah, so we used six guys.
Speaker 1:From the rescue mission that were staying there.
Speaker 3:Yep, three from my side and three bridesmaids. Yeah, nice. It was great man. I can show you pictures later, but you know we got to do that.
Speaker 4:That's special.
Speaker 3:You know all the people that we wanted or didn't want To be there. Got to witness it. Yeah, on facebook live. Wow, I got a smart woman.
Speaker 2:Yeah you guys got married on facebook live.
Speaker 1:Yep, that's freaking awesome dude wow so that all the family could see because it's covid and it's still on there?
Speaker 2:is it saved on facebook? I want to go watch that is that on your page?
Speaker 3:okay, cool yeah, yeah, in uh 2020 her mom couldn't even be there, but her mom was on a phone right there watching come on. And then what did she say when, uh, she wanted to give me some advice. And she said you know you'll never be right again when she wanted to give me some advice and she said you know, you'll never be right again.
Speaker 1:You got no idea what you're getting yourself into. You'll apologize for the rest of your life for things you never did, brother. Well, let me ask you this Is she your better half? Yeah, they really are, aren't they?
Speaker 3:they are wow in and to keep it 100 real. We both have our flaws yeah, I mean but that's kind of the fun is, you know, when we get past the flaws of each other and still knowing that we still love each other. You know, that's the amazing part. Yeah, because when reality is until the marriage, we're only seeing little bits and pieces of each other. Yeah, that's right once we get married that's where it all that's when the burp and the fart and the snoring and all the other stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's all you take a shower, you stink, brush your teeth. Oh god is good man, he knows what we need.
Speaker 2:I think the beauty of marriage, brother, is like you just said, when you get to see a side of your spouse that you haven't seen through dating or whatever, and you still love her, or she still loves you in spite of your little quirks and things you know what I mean and you just, you guys, learn how to adjust still loves you in spite of your little quirks and things you know what I mean and you guys learn how to adjust and deal with those kind of things. Man, that's the beauty of it, bro. You know what I mean. Not to let it be like oh, I can't believe.
Speaker 2:You just farted. You know what I mean. It's like, oh, you, farted, go to the bathroom, you know what I mean, but it's those little things. And you still just wake up every morning and say you know what? I still love you and I choose to stay with you. Man, that's the beauty of marriage, bro, is to learn each other's things, be tolerant and show grace in those things. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:none of us are perfect man, we've all got stuff but when you can show your spouse grace for their little quirks and their little things that are annoying sometimes, that's the beauty of marriage, bro. I mean working through those things oh, yeah, yeah yeah, go ahead bro go ahead, go ahead I love p break.
Speaker 1:I love this because, as he's as he's talking, it just makes me think of you and mom, yeah, and what you guys have been through and how god has carried you um. It just it's crazy it is it's, uh, it's pretty over here, brother, right here, bro, you're good dude, um just how man 26 years, bro 20, 28 years you guys have been together 28 years we just had an awesome conversation the other day about feelings.
Speaker 2:Oh, I was feeling a certain way and just expressed you don't being in recovery, now I'm learning how to process my my emotions, my feelings, to be able to talk about them, and I was feeling a certain way and I was just sharing with her.
Speaker 2:Hey, this is how I'm feeling right now. Yeah, and it got kind of crazy, but I'm like I'm not saying anything. I'm just saying I'm learning. I feel a certain way. I don't like the way I feel and I'm learning how. I'm not saying the way I feel. They're valid, because feelings come and go, but I needed to process through them in a healthy way.
Speaker 1:That conversation was cool man. Yeah, you guys have come a long way Because you know we talk about it all the time, how communication in our house is. Well, it's trauma. Trauma in a home keeps people from communication, communication. Changing that, bro.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm changing that. Yes, we are.
Speaker 1:we're gonna communicate and process our feelings and our emotions in a healthy way do it together where the kids can't hear, not in the middle of the front room, that's fighting and arguing conversations have healthy conversations in front of your kids.
Speaker 1:You know, no, so I'm not fighting, and arguing as he's, as he's sharing about with her and how they found each other and where they found each other. That gets you excited. It just so I don't know if I told you this, but last, last week god, god was really messing with me man, and he told me that because I have a fear of hurting.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I have a fear of hurting my future woman. Yeah, because I'm freaking, messed up and I'm broken, and but I don't want to hurt her Right. And so the Lord literally tells me you're going to allow the fear of hurting a woman keep you from the joy of loving one? Yeah, and I'm like oh, when he told me that I was like dang, it's almost like I'm willing to step out in fear. Is that a thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Step out and just try. Most people don't step out, in fear they stay hidden away.
Speaker 1:But because I want to love a woman, I want to experience the love from a woman, I want to have somebody, yeah, man, that just loves me, for me, Not for what I can do for her, not for what I can give.
Speaker 2:I don't have much, you know this, but just the beautiful thing about salvation, brother, is the rewiring of the brain and the way that we think, the way that the world has manipulated our minds to think that this is how things are supposed to be or that's how things are supposed to be. Now that we're saved and in recovery, we're learning. Wait a minute, those are not the way things are supposed to be. We're retraining our minds and learning new things. You know what? I mean yeah.
Speaker 1:It only comes through relationships.
Speaker 2:Feel better.
Speaker 1:Yes, Good, I thought you were leaving. I was like, wait, come back, bro, we're back from pee break. Hey man, this is live. You seen all the water the dude's drinking man.
Speaker 2:Put on some slack, bro. No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1:So you guys get married in 2020. First you got the bike and you got the girl.
Speaker 3:And the girl had the house, and the girl had the house. That's what.
Speaker 1:I'm believing too, bro. The girl's going to have the house and everything that we need. Amen.
Speaker 3:Again, I had no clue, yeah come on bro.
Speaker 3:You know, um, her story and my story were just like two completely different people, yeah and uh, you know god's god is amazing that he is, know he put us together and at first I wasn't sure how to think of all of it. But now, when I'm looking back and you know and this is something that's been on my mind a lot lately is that he gives she has knowledge that he has given her, that I don't, but he's also giving me a lot of, uh, different knowledge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you've got experience.
Speaker 3:So it's like she's got a lot of what I don't have and I have a lot of what she doesn't have, and just putting them together, that's a strong team. It's a strong team as well as sometimes it can be a challenge. Yeah, because she's different. I'll speak about myself. You know, again, I'm not cured of pride, but she may have the right answer or know something and in my head sometimes be like, okay, let me work on getting to that point you know, and it's like something right.
Speaker 3:You know, and it's like it's a struggle it's precious it's my struggle, yeah yeah, and it's there's parts in there where I should just trust but then that man pride jumps in again come on, you know, I should just trust my wife you know, buddy you're preaching, now come on it's a challenge, it is no, and sometimes it's like why can't you just do it, why can't you just accept it and bond from it? Yeah, grow from it, and it's like, it's like beating my head on a wall, yeah, there's
Speaker 2:a reason why they're called our helpmate brother there's a reason that god refers to them as our helpmate. You know what I mean, because there's they hear straight from god.
Speaker 1:for you, I'm gonna use my wife for an example my mom hears from God for him.
Speaker 2:My wife has great discernment when it comes to people. I, on the other hand, are just stupid when it comes to people. I believe the best in everybody, and my wife's, like this, is not.
Speaker 1:We can't have those people in our house. I'm like, what are you talking about? They're great.
Speaker 2:And they turn out to be a piece of crap. Yeah, if I would just listen to my wife, I would just save myself a lot of trouble. You know what I mean, but I have to have learned over the years okay, when she's saying something, listen to what she's saying. She's not trying to overrule me or or or over step her bounds in my life. She's speaking from a place that she has discernment in. I need to listen to that.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean, yeah, that's what she's got yeah, she's got some stuff she hears fresh revelation from god so when you hear something that you don't agree with or that you don't think of, ask god. She's speaking to sermon here, god. Am I supposed to be listening, or you know, I mean kind of like this hold on, wait, god.
Speaker 4:Yes yeah what's the deal?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah yeah, quietly in your head I don't know how she's gonna feel about that wait I don't think she would be upset that you went to god about it just do it, honey.
Speaker 1:Just do it like the nike commercial just do it amen.
Speaker 3:So there's a. There's another person in my life that's real influential, and I met him one month after I got into the program, so that would be September of 2015. And his name is Kerry Hogan. Now I heard after visiting with him once or twice that he was a cop, but he came in doing a mentorship program at the Phoenix Rescue Mission and so after a month or so I sat there, I mean every week. I met with him Monday and Wednesday. I would be real careful not to give him a name, a date, a place a time I was like I got real simple with these words.
Speaker 3:Keep it to myself yeah, and then I asked him. I said look man. I said for the last month I've been racking my brain trying to figure out why you're here to bust me, because that's what was going through my head. Yeah, is, I'm like man, I did this, I did that, I did that oh yeah, you're trying to build a case on me, ain't?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's all your old past, yeah.
Speaker 3:That old behavior just was solid. It was like I was right yeah.
Speaker 4:But I was wrong.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because he said I've been retired for 15 years, wow. And he said how does it feel, an ex-drug dealer and an ex-NARC, you know, on the same playing field for Jesus, come on, wow. And so we met. For a long time after that, he's still my mentor, he's been my mentor now for about nine years Really good Rich. After about a year he asked me if I would house sit for him.
Speaker 1:How's that feel? I'm like what.
Speaker 4:An ex-burglar thief stealer taker hey, can you watch my stuff? How does?
Speaker 1:that feel I'm like an ex burglar. Thief stealer taker hey, can you watch my stuff? How does that feel, bud? It's like do you know what I went to prison for?
Speaker 3:he was gone for a week yeah, boy you could have cleared this place out when I was there, I was sitting on that couch and I'm like I was scared to do anything. Man, I'm like there's cameras everywhere yeah everywhere, big old tv right here. Okay, there's a camera in there. They're watching me. Yeah, it was just a stupid side of me coming out keeps you on your p's and q's man yeah, come to find out.
Speaker 3:Um, you know he had weapons and stuff all throughout the house, but he trusted me. Yeah, and what that did for me, oh yeah, yep, yep. It made me feel like a human, a man. Yeah, it made me feel like a I'm different, a feeling I've never had.
Speaker 1:That's powerful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then a year later he did the same thing, only he was gone for two weeks this time. Yeah, and I told him after the first time. I said, look man, I said I was pretty nervous just sitting here, you know like, uh, you know you got cameras all throughout the house and I ain't got no cameras.
Speaker 2:Like how you trusted me man.
Speaker 1:I know, bro, it it's real I just finished house sitting for 10 days for somebody. Last year I house sit it for a week for people. It's crazy, bro. Nice house, nice houses in rich neighborhoods where it's like I'm not even gonna walk in the neighborhood because people think who's this dude? In my neighborhood gonna steal stuff. Yeah, you see how I look, bro. You know, in in cantera and santan valley no, just stay in the house, rowdy man it's, it's empowering.
Speaker 1:It lets us know, bro, that we're not those people that we used to be, that god has actually changed us and brought us to where other people can see it, where other people, because for some reason it's hard to see our own change because we're stuck with ourselves. But that dude, kerry, he saw the change and he's like, he's different. He's different. He's not that man that he used to be. And then it's almost like here God will use this situation to test you. Are you still that same man? Are you going to make the right choice this time? And we make those right choices.
Speaker 2:He has the keys to a multi-million dollar building bro. I wouldn't trust him with my car, but God trusts him with a multi-. Come on, baby, come on baby.
Speaker 1:You got another key, dude, Come on.
Speaker 2:When we went to the Camelback, him and Domingo, jeremiah, jeremiah, they all pulled out when I come out to north phoenix for the relapse lesson.
Speaker 1:We'll do it. We got our church keys.
Speaker 2:We've come a long way, bro, but don't those moments right there, bro, that you're talking about, dude, is god literally used that person to show you just how different and trustworthy you really are, even though our mind and our minds were still that dude yeah, we're stuck in a couch in the front room.
Speaker 1:We're still that person.
Speaker 2:God literally used that dude to show you look, you're somebody that's people can trust. You're no longer that dude, even though our minds say we are, you know, I mean, I mean, that's beautiful. God uses people, bro, to help us along our paths and our journey, bro, to reassure to us that what we're doing is right and that we are changed. Bro, that's beautiful, man. God brought me a cop too, dude. First dude I met when I came to this church was a Mesa police officer and we served together and we got talking.
Speaker 1:It's like, isn't it's funny that you're a cop and I'm a felon and we're conversation when dad first came here because of his past, they're like you can't, so you can't be in the building, you have to serve in the parking lot. When I show up, they're like oh yeah, we'll hire you on staff and give you trying to be an usher dude that people have dealt with money?
Speaker 2:they're like we're not putting you with money, bro you got to go outside. I could have been a greeter I didn't have to go out to the parking lot.
Speaker 1:I know I'm just better.
Speaker 2:But it was to put me with that dude who was a Mesa cop for me. And that dude are damn good friends now. He was on our podcast. I learned so much from him and his leadership and his mentorship, being the head of the men's ministry at the time and just became damn good friends, bro, and the fact that he was raised one way, I was raised the other didn't let that stop us from being friends. That's beautiful bro.
Speaker 1:You're still so. I think honestly, Cary doing that, Cary right, Cary Hogan, him doing that is a huge reason why he's still in your life, bro. He believes in you, he trusts you, he loves you, man.
Speaker 3:It is. It's you know, and since I've been knowing him, he's been my mentor. We're a part of what was Breathing Life International. Knowing him, he's been my mentor, we're part of what was Breathing Life International, and it's on to new breed Empowering men to empower men.
Speaker 1:Come on and basically, you guys just had a big camp out or something.
Speaker 3:Twice a year we have them, wow. Third weekend in April, third weekend in September. Oh wow, so last camp we had 85 or so people, so we have a good amount of people.
Speaker 1:it's like it's you go up there and you relax man is it just your people, or is it people from all different ministries and different churches, all different? Oh, I love that. Look man, I love there's millionaires.
Speaker 3:there's broke people, yeahcops Come on there's ex-pastors, there's ex-cons, yeah yeah, buddy, there's people that are right on the fence of Christianity. You know, taking that next step, wow, this last retreat, wow, we witnessed five people baptized. Two of them father and son Son, lived in another state. They got baptized together. When asked afterwards of why he came all the way down here to get baptized with his dad, you know, when he lived in another state, he said because I want to see my dad in heaven. Come on, man.
Speaker 3:That touched me just hearing that I get to experience stuff like that with them. Come on, man, you know, and we get to pour into people Every chance I get. We're sitting up there at those camps and we have sessions on Friday night, session on Saturday morning, saturday night and Sunday morning. You eat well, you sleep in cabins or you can sleep in a tent, but we get to fellowship and we get to pour into each other. Come on, there's guys there that I don't know, eight, nine months, ten months into their recovery, so they're not knowing. A bunch of people like this.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and when?
Speaker 3:they're at a retreat like that, they get to meet these people. Yeah, and when they're at a retreat like that, they get to meet these people. And when you pour into someone fresh into Jesus and recovery, that means a lot to them. Yeah, it does, and we get to do that. You know a lot of this originally started. You know the fact that a lot of men in life grew up without a father figure.
Speaker 3:Right back to the same thing, you know. Turn to the streets. Fatherless generations, bro. Yeah. And now we get to just pour into people, you know, and some people, they have their different ways of doing it, you know, and that's between them and God. Yeah, as long as it's God's way. Yeah, you know. But to get to do this, it's like I know you're an uncle head. I still love you. Let's hear what God has to say. Yeah, you know, and you get to share with them. It's like you did what? Yeah, and I'm still here with you. Yeah, you know, it gives them hope. Yeah. Yeah, we feed them, we pour into them hope. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3:Knowing that Jesus is real and knowing that, you know, accountability is real, yep. And having you know your mentor, because it's I don't care who you are. The ladder keeps climbing, climbing, climbing, climbing. Yep, like me, I have some people I mentor. I have my mentor that mentors me. My mentor have my mentor that mentors me. My mentor has his mentor that mentors him. Yep, and that chain just keeps going and going and going.
Speaker 4:Yep, that's right.
Speaker 3:So whoever they started with, came down to my mentor's mentor and he mentors three people, and then those three people are mentoring other people and it just keeps going and going and going.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 3:And you never know who's getting spoken to. Come on, you know, because we're all over the place, yeah, all over the east west, wherever it's good. God is amazing how he puts us all together and we get to follow his lead. Come on, because if it was my lead, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we would have done messed it up a while ago, bro. We heard where your lead led you, buddy. That was nowhere good. Just keep denying yourself and following Jesus, because he's making you a fisher of men, buddy.
Speaker 3:It's time to deny yourself daily. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, so you're working. You're at the Hope House helping other men with resources. You're at the Hope House helping other men with resources. Now I'm at the Hope Center. Hope Center, sorry, you're leading new breed ministry with Kerry. Yeah, I'm a point man for that. Point man for that, you are in Broken Chains.
Speaker 3:State director for Broken Chains. Broken Chains for.
Speaker 1:Celebrate Recovery. You are on staff at North Phoenix Church recovery.
Speaker 3:you are on staff at north phoenix baptist church only god, only god people and of course I got her come on, buddy.
Speaker 2:Only god better half man jesus so give us uh yeah, what would? You give us like a five year what you believe in god for, and maybe like a 20 year what you believe in god for man and when.
Speaker 1:When we say this, this is what we're talking about. Has the lord planted a seed in you for a book? Has the lord? Is the lord asking you to go behind the walls, to go behind the bars to share hope to those locked away? Is it a food ministry? Are you?
Speaker 4:there's something in you that he wants because we all, bro, are.
Speaker 1:We got a ministry in the church and we got a mission in the world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so there's a couple different times that I felt the nudge to go into the prisons or county jail. Come on, okay, um, you know, and the thing about it is is that I would, I could know a bunch of people, oh, yeah, in both places, yep, and it's not just people I used to run with, but it's people that I've actually helped over the last nine years. Yeah, and you know, it's like in prison you're pretty much stuck with just the mentality yeah, you got to stick with your own. Yeah, you got to do. Yeah, you got to stick with your own. Yeah, you got to do this, you got to do that. You got to do that In prison, because where I was at, they didn't have someone coming in, you know, either time, either in Safford or in Tucson.
Speaker 3:But to go in there and just to pour into them guys, and you're going to pour into some of the hardest guys you're going to find yeah, yeah, but to go in there and just to pour into them guys, and you're going to pour into some of the hardest guys you're going to find, yeah, but when you start talking about Jesus, them hard guys, they get all soft.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they do and then you're learning something from them as well as you're pouring into them.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's not like you're going there just for them. Oh yeah, you're going there for you. Yeah, you know, and it's also a reminder of when you came from. I was here. Yeah, buddy. Yeah, you know, and it's redemption, bro, enough. Not enough people in there get to, yeah, experience the fellowship and the love and the hope of Jesus. Yeah, because they're already in their own head thinking that, you know, society hates me. Yeah, I'm no good, I'm worthless, I'm good for nothing, I'm not going to change.
Speaker 1:I've been there, man, that was me, that was me, buddy 100%.
Speaker 4:That's how I thought.
Speaker 3:I thought I was going to be nothing more than a needle junkie If you would have asked me nine years ago where I was going to be back in prison dead somewhere with a needle in my arm. Yeah, you know, something like that never did. I think, when I made that prayer nine years ago, a little over nine years ago, that god was going to take my life and do this when I was asking for death.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but his version of death. My death was two different he just gave you new life. All things are made new man behold man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he just definitely opened a whole new world. Yeah it's so much better too, bro if I would have kept going the way I was, I would have been that guy. I don't know if you can put blues in a spoon and shoot it, but I would have been that guy trying to.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you can, buddy, and I wouldn't have been here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, jesus, jesus. But no, I don't want to put my kids on blast, but I want my kids to know that they're loved and appreciated and they went through their years like myself. Right now, on this day, all three of my daughters are sober.
Speaker 1:Let's go. Two are married. Let's go.
Speaker 3:dude Kids got their kids back. One of my daughters is recently um in recovery, healing three, four weeks. I don't care.
Speaker 1:That's their cares. They're working on it.
Speaker 3:They're working it man and I pray to god that she can, you know, stay stick back in with her kids as well, yeah, man as well, and they were in alcohol just like their dad. No, but it turned into some very beautiful girls, very beautiful.
Speaker 1:That's a beautiful thing. Now you get to literally be a light in their lives. You literally get to be a beacon of hope for recovery and what it can, what the opportunities that can happen if we just stay working this thing, if we stay in this thing, because it takes time, especially three weeks in man. After a month, nothing's changing it's like give it some time.
Speaker 1:That's why I tell the new people at cr I'm like, give this thing six weeks, do this consistently for six weeks, every week. I promise god will show up in that time. Now, bro got your daughters all had a great example of what an addict looked like. They saw that guy. Now they get to see this new guy that's walking with Jesus in recovery, married, living a new life, just denying himself and sold out for Jesus. That's a great example.
Speaker 1:So my encouragement to you because I know how he is with my mom and my sister and because he's made a lot of changes. But a lot of the changes sometimes that we make, we hope that it'll affect people that we love so they'll make changes. We just got to make the changes and stay faithful in it, trusting that God will do what he's doing with them in his perfect timing. So your daughters, man, are on their way. You were literally an example, or like a a little fire to light their flame for that recovery, and now you just stay in it and watch what god does. Man, you're, you're the, the one that's three weeks in. I feel like she's called and she's anointed. I don't know if she's the youngest one, but I hear God saying I saved the best for last Jesus. Yeah, you watch what God does with that one brother, jesus.
Speaker 3:That's what they said about me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's go. You're praying for this one, buddy Jesus. Thanks again, brother. Thank you, rich. Really appreciate you, dude.
Speaker 2:You can put our lives together and they'd be a reflection of each other. It seems like to me, brother, a lot of the same things, man, so thank you for sharing. Uh, hope you had fun I did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I appreciate you guys love you, man, you too, and thank you bro, man, just I'm.
Speaker 2:I'm in awe of god of what he did for you, brother. That just touches my heart, man. It really does. Hope you know that yeah oh, father man Jesus man, most gracious God.
Speaker 2:I just thank you, lord, man. I thank you, god, that you can take people like Rich Lord and just thank you, lord, man. You can turn lives around God. You can just take a a broken vessel, lord, and you can make lives around God. You can just take a broken vessel, lord, and you can make it a shining beacon of light for your kingdom. God, and I thank you that you've done that for Rich God. I thank you, lord, that when he cried out to you, father God, and he said to take his life, you said I'll take that life and I'll make something good of it, god. So I thank you, lord, for hearing his cry, his plea to take that life, god, and and and I just I praise you for doing that, lord, and I just thank you, god, just for a celebrate recovery. I thank you for Phoenix rescue mission, god, I thank you for every ministry that this brother is involved in.
Speaker 2:Father God, Lord, I thank you just for the mighty voice that you've given him, father God, and I thank you, Lord, that he is a man of influence. God, that when men in recovery hear him speak, Father God, their ears are tuned in and they're listening, Father God, and I thank you, Lord, just for the journey that he's been on. Lord, I thank you just for the job that he has at Phoenix Rescue Mission. God, and the pastoral staff at North Phoenix Baptist Church. God, I thank you for everything you're doing in his life. Lord, I just see blessings and favor all over it. God and Lord, I thank you, Lord, that by the byproduct of his salvation, Father God, the byproduct of what he is doing, Father God, that his daughters are going to be a byproduct of that as well.
Speaker 4:Father God.
Speaker 2:Glory Because it starts with the head of the house, god. It starts with the father. When the father is redeemed, father, the children follow Father God. So I thank you, lord, for just for the redemption of the two. Father God, Generations.
Speaker 2:For the one who's coming up from behind, father God, jesus. Because in your kingdom, father God, it says, those who are first shall be last God. So I thank you, lord, that this last one, god, is the one that's going to be first in the kingdom of God. So I thank you, lord, for her life. I thank you that she is the anointed one. She is the one who is called to do great and mighty things for your kingdom, Father.
Speaker 2:God, so I thank you, Lord, that, even though it's just starting, Father God you are in it you are amongst it and you are moving it mightily in her life, father God, and I thank you, Lord, that she will be victorious in Jesus' name, father God, lord, I just thank you for this beautiful marriage. Father God, I thank you for the blessing that they are to celebrate recovery, father God, and not just for celebrate recovery, but for the people who are around them. God that can see what a kingdom marriage looks like.
Speaker 2:Father God that, even though there are faults and there are things, and they're not perfect people. Father God, that they will honor one another, that they will work through things, father God, and I praise you, and I praise you for that, father.
Speaker 1:God, and I praise you, and I praise you for that, Father God.
Speaker 2:Thank you, God Lord. I thank you that when this brother is with broken chains and he's on his bike, Father God, I pray for a hedge of protection around them.
Speaker 1:Father God that no car or weapon or anything shall come against them.
Speaker 2:Father God, in Jesus name.
Speaker 1:Thank you God.
Speaker 2:So I thank you, Lord, that that there's this protection around that bike, that man and that ministry, Father God. So I thank you for everything you're doing, lord. I thank you for what's to come. He has no idea what you're getting ready to do in his life. He thought he was, he was, he was there already, father god, there's more coming in jesus name jesus I thank you, lord, just for increase.
Speaker 2:Thank you for increasing, anointing, increasing influence. Father, god, lord, take your son and do what you need to do to make him just this beacon of light across this valley, god, thank you God. I thank you, lord, that when people hear the name of Rich Father God, that they're just moved, yeah, that they show honor, they show respect where it's due, father God, because he is your son first and foremost. And I thank you, lord, just for his testimony, his willingness to share. God, have your way in his life. We pray in Jesus' name, amen, amen.
Speaker 1:Rich. Can you do me a favor, bro, and pray for Speak Life AZ and pray for me and dad, Pray for the ministry.
Speaker 3:Thank you, lord, father, we just, we want to come to you right now and just thank you, lord, thank you for what these men are doing, thank you for giving them the opportunity to just open up these doors and just speak life, az. What they're doing is just a miracle in itself, giving opportunities to hear people's story, to touch other people's lives as well. Thank you, lord, father, we want to lift these two men up as they continue on their journey, just leading the path for other men to see what they're capable of doing. You know, lord, we just, we just thank you that, uh, you gave them this opportunity. Lord, just want to uh, thank you, god, if rowdy to you right now is. You know he mentioned earlier about the, the woman lord, that you placed the right woman in his path and that he sees it crystal clear Doesn't rush it, doesn't try to pursue it, but just follows your lead, yep.
Speaker 3:Thank you, lord Wow. Thank you, god, lord, you're going to bring him the woman that you have handpicked for him already. Yep, lord, I can't thank you enough for these men and what they're doing and how they're reaching everyone out there, all them Christians, and even those that aren't Christians that may hear this. You know, word gets around. We just ask that this expands and continues to reach all types of ears In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.
Speaker 1:Hey, I don't know where you're watching from or where you're listening from, but, as you can tell, it literally all starts with an encounter with Jesus, just like Rich shared with you, man. So if you yourself have not encountered Jesus, it's a very simple prayer Romans 10, 9 and 10,. It says we believe in our heart and we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and you shall be saved because we believe under righteousness and we confess unto salvation. So, just, I'm just going to pray, and if you want to give your life over to Jesus and a fresh start, just say this with me Jesus, come into my life, change me, fill me with your Holy Spirit. Thank you for dying for me, thank you for forgiving me. Help me, from this day forward, to follow you and deny myself in jesus name. Amen, amen, man, um, I don't know where you're listening or watching, but if you could please rate us the five stars, it helps.
Speaker 1:If you comment, go ahead and type Jesus on there. Man, that really helps us with the algorithms. If you yourself would like to come on the Speak Life AZ podcast and share your testimony, you can reach out. Speak Life AZ all one word. Twitter, facebook, instagram. Until next time, we're going to continue to Speak. Life AZ. God bless you.
Speaker 3:Jesus, jesus.