Only God could unite ex-cops and ex-cons. 

Tony spent 36 years of his life incarcerated and two of those decades were spent in solitary confinement. It would be understandable if Tony had seen enough cops during the course of his life and might not want to spend any more time around them than he has to, given the fact of his life experience. However, the opposite is true. Tony wants to team up with anyone who wants to be disciple makers and Kingdom makers. 

In 2019, Tony and I made the decision to team up with retired Louisville Metro Police Department officers Rich and Lee Ann Hardin to further the Freedom Lake project. Freedom Lake is the vision God has placed on our hearts to find a refuge to house men coming out of incarceration who need a second chance and a place to grow in their walk with God. Rich and Lee Ann Hardin are this month’s featured Sponsor Spotlight as one of our premier Kingdom Community Impact Sponsors.

One of the critical aspects in which the vision of Freedom Lake will help the men who call it home is by having them train a dog that they can in turn give to someone in need.

Rich and Lee Ann are the perfect couple to team up with in this effort as they own a local dog training business called Double H Canine Training Academy. Rich is also affectionately known as the “dog whisperer”.

Additionally, Freedom Lake was birthed from the Hardin’s nonprofit, Freedom Farm Ministry, which they turned over to us last year. 

Understanding how our visions merged into one mission is a story so detailed that only God could write it. But, as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe once said: “God is in the details.” 

From Freedom Farm to Freedom Lake

Our story begins in 2011, when Lee Ann retired from the LMPD and was working for the Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney as a fugitive detective. 

“A big part of my job was picking up prisoners from all over the country who were wanted by the state of Kentucky and to bring them back to answer their charges,” Lee Ann said. “I would spend several hours either on a plane or in a car transporting them. That’s where I got to hear their stories. I found that a common theme amongst the prisoners was that there was no place to transition to when they got out to truly help them transform. They just got right back into the same situation and it was like setting them up for failure. That’s when God really started working on me and showing me that there was a need for this. I began to see these men and women through different eyes.”

Lee Ann started sharing the Gospel with fugitives, who had no choice but to listen.  “I started talking to these men and women about Jesus. They were like my in-captive audience,” Lee Ann added. 

In 2013, Lee Ann married Rich, who had retired from the LMPD two years prior and was training dogs for the Navy SEALS canine program in Virginia before they met. 

“God was already working on us in different areas with our unique experiences and developing skillsets before bringing all of the pieces together,” Lee Ann added. 

In 2016, the Hardin’s dreamed up Freedom Farm Ministry, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that would help women overcoming addiction by training rescue dogs for disabled veterans, children, and first responders. 

“With addiction, it’s very self-centered, so we were looking for a way to give them [women] that feeling of doing something for someone else,” Lee Ann said. “To train a dog and then to be a part of giving that dog to a disabled child or veteran… it’s that feeling you get for doing something for someone else versus plugging those holes that you have for drugs or other addictions.”

Dogs are known as a man’s best friend.

“Dogs are the great conversation starter,” Rich added. “When people are sitting and talking, if they’re just touching that dog, it seems to loosen people up. I had cancer last year and as soon as everybody knew I was a dog trainer, it dominated the conversation. Nobody even cared I had cancer. It’s the great ice breaker. It’s that common ground. It brings people together from all over the world. It’s a dog and people love them.” 

Rich and Lee Ann were able to train and provide several service dogs through Freedom Farm Ministry but there was always that missing link.

The Hardins thought about ending Freedom Farm and looking for opportunities to love people one at a time through their dog training business. Their Freedom Farm experience wasn’t one in which the Hardins had heard God wrong. In truth,  He was actually just getting warmed up. 

Around that time, the Holy Spirit kept prodding Lee Ann to reach out to me, which wasn’t easy to ignore because every Sunday at Southeast Christian Church’s Blankenbaker Campus she saw my husband Tony baptizing one man after another. 

In October 2019, she messaged me on Facebook. Little did Lee Ann know that Tony and I were already floating around ideas about what we could do to help men with work opportunities that will be housed on a property dedicated to that end. 

The name Freedom Lake hadn’t been thought of yet but one idea that came to the surface was training dogs because we saw this work successfully done in prisons. 

While the two couples met together for four hours over lunch—sharing their stories and ministry visions—they quickly realized how strikingly similar they were. 

“We think the world of Tony and Kim. They’re the real deal. It’s so refreshing to be around the real deal,” Lee Ann said. “We had talked about partnering with their vision, but God put it on my heart that we weren’t supposed to partner, we were supposed to give it [Freedom Farm]. What I heard loud and clear was, ‘It was never yours to begin with.’ He [God] wanted us to get it going, carry it so far and then give it up. It was never our ministry. It’s landed where it’s supposed to land. We’re not washing our hands of it; we want to come alongside them and serve in any way that we can.” 

In May 2020, Rich and Lee Ann passed the baton to us, as the name officially changed from Freedom Farm Ministry to Freedom Lake because we liked the idea of freedom coupled with a lake retreat. 

“The biggest piece of the puzzle, what I always loved about Lee Ann’s original vision is that we want the men training those dogs to give that dog to someone else so that they can see something bigger than themselves,” Rich said. “They did this work and they can give it to someone in need.” 

Once the property and programming for Freedom Lake are finalized, Rich and Lee Ann will find dogs with the right temperament and help these men train the dogs. 

“The whole idea behind the Cash’s ministry is that they don’t have a halfway house, they have an all the way house,” Rich added. “When you change the behavior of dogs, people are learning to change their behavior with Jesus.” 

You may be familiar with the current television commercial that states: “Dogs bring out the best in all of us.” 

And, as we’ve seen time and time again, God can use anything for His Good and to be a blessing to us and a blessing to others. Sometimes we’re meant to give those blessings away. 

Just like Rich and Lee Ann Hardin

You can read more of Lee Ann and Rich’s story in the Southeast Outlook here.

Have a story of how you’re using your business in a Kingdom-building way? Contact us if you would like more information and/or ideas on how you can partner with us.