Todd Dammen, a retired engineer and lay member of Middleville UMC, fixes cast-off bicycles and gives them away, many to children served by God’s Country Community Ministries in the Upper Peninsula.
The young man down the road needed a bicycle, and the problem was partly a matter of scale. He stood six-foot-three and was a big guy all around, not someone you hand a kid’s bike to and wish well. A coworker of Todd Dammen’s at the turkey farm where he works part-time in retirement had planned to lend him her bike, but someone else had already borrowed it. She mentioned it as someone might mention a problem they don’t expect anyone to solve.
Dammen expected to solve it. “I said, you know what? I’ve got one I can give him,” he recalls. “I’ve got the perfect bike for him.”
A couple of weeks later, the young man returned to say thank you and to deliver a report.
A walk that used to take him three hours now takes less than 45 minutes.
The day before Dammen told this story, another coworker brought him a similar problem. A man she knew had been borrowing her bike to get to work, and she wanted it back. Dammen had one for him, too.
This is how things tend to go for Dammen these days. Bicycles come to him broken and leave rideable, and they rarely stay long in between.
Dammen, a lay member of Middleville United Methodist Church, has been fixing bicycles for most of his life. He grew up in North Dakota, and one of his first jobs, in junior high, was at a small bike shop owned by a local farmer. By eighth grade, he was managing the place and handling all the repairs. “He just trusted me with it,” Dammen says.
After college, he spent a couple of years in the Texas oil fields as a geological engineer, a tough lifestyle he remembers. In the mid-’80s, he and his wife, Mary, also a North Dakotan, followed family to Michigan. Dammen took a job designing automated equipment and stayed for 36 years, building machines for heavy-truck makers like Freightliner and Mack and doing a good deal of work on the latest Corvette. “I’ve always been kind of that mechanically inclined guy,” he says.
The Dammens began attending his sister’s church in Middleville more than 30 years ago and have never left. They raised their children there. He taught Sunday school, preached an occasional Father’s Day sermon, and played in the praise band for years. The congregation, he says, is full of people “we consider extended family.”
The bicycle ministry began before he retired, with an engineer’s eye for waste. Dammen kept noticing bikes set out along the road, either given away or simply abandoned, and, to his mind, most of them had “really minor problems.” So he and Mary went into business, of a sort. “She finds them,” he says, “and I fix them.”
Mary is the scout. Dammen chooses his words carefully here, calling her “a social media expert.” She browses Facebook, where many people post about free bikes, and friends now message her when they spot one at the curb.
For years, Dammen paid for parts himself, stripping bikes that couldn’t be saved to rescue others. Last year, the men’s group at Middleville UMC began chipping in. Now he can put new tires, tubes, and seats on bikes he might once have scrapped. With this additional funding, he can expand.
About five years ago, the Dammens made their first trip north to visit God’s Country Community Ministries. They brought a few bikes along.
God’s Country Community Ministries, an EngageMI ministry partner based in Newberry, serves roughly 66,000 people across five counties in the eastern Upper Peninsula. Its director, Randy Hildebrant, is a Church and Community Worker with Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church’s mission and relief agency. The ministry feeds children and low-income residents, shelters people experiencing homelessness, hosts about 17 mission teams each year, and maintains a birthday closet where children in need choose their own presents. A bicycle fits right in.
Hildebrant warmly welcomed those first bikes. That came as a relief, since Dammen had his doubts.
“I felt really uncomfortable about it,” he admits. More than once, he has put the question to Hildebrant directly: “Randy, just be honest with me. If this is stupid, tell me.”
It isn’t stupid, Hildebrant told him. It’s a great ministry.
Newberry sits in a struggling region with few jobs and little to do. Many families there carry heavy burdens, often through no fault of their own, and children feel it most. A bicycle can at least brighten a kid’s day.
Hildebrant also offered a larger frame. Dammen fixes bikes for kids, teens, and adults. Hildebrant pointed out that if a whole family has bikes, cycling becomes something they can do together, a simple way to encourage Christian families. Dammen found that “kind of encouraging.”
In the early years, Hildebrant hauled the bikes north himself, about 15 at a time, along with supplies the Middleville congregation gathered.
This summer was different. Middleville’s mission team goes to Newberry every other year, and this was an off year. But Dammen, in his words, was “just busting at the seams with all the bikes.” So he decided to make a run. Jody Pratt, a fellow Middleville member who serves as Volunteers in Mission Coordinator for the Michigan Conference, was heading north anyway and suggested they caravan. The Dammens loaded a U-Haul and his pickup with 27 bicycles, and the group made a weekend of it, including the Wild Blueberry Festival in Paradise. With that delivery, the ministry has given away roughly 60 bikes.
Hildebrant told Dammen that a couple of kids had been asking when the bikes would arrive. On an earlier trip, a Spider-Man–themed bike was in the bunch, and Hildebrant knew right away where it was headed. “I know the kid this is going to,” he said.
Dammen has never met a single recipient in Newberry. He would like to and hopes Hildebrant might send a photo or two. For now, he’s content with the arrangement. “I’m happy he’s on the other end,” he says.
Ask Dammen why he does this, and he’ll tell you, honestly, that he isn’t entirely sure. “I don’t know why I really felt motivated to do it,” he says. “I just started fixing them, repairing them, and then giving them away.”
But there is an older longing beneath. For a long time, Dammen wanted to be a musician and a worship leader, but it never quite panned out. In the praise band days, there was a prayer the group returned to: “Heavenly Father, if we can touch one person, let it happen today.”
He has come to suspect that a bicycle can do something like a song. “It might be kind of a stretch,” he says. “But if a kid gets a bike and he’s inquisitive about it, if he thinks, why would somebody do this for me? Maybe when he gets older, he says, I need to find out a little bit more about what these people have going on.”
He calls it a spark. Maybe it lands in a child. Maybe it lands in a family, out riding together, asking each other why a church would do this for them. Either way, Todd hopes someone runs with it.
He still wrestles with whether it’s enough. “The hard part for me is whether God would be pleased with my intentions,” he says. “It’s just a small, silly thing. But man, if it makes a kid happy or sparks an interest, there it is.”
Michigan United Methodists can support God’s Country Community Ministries and Randy Hildebrant’s work through EngageMI, the Michigan Conference’s mission engagement program. Have a bike to donate? Contact Mary and Todd Dammen at [email protected].
Editor’s note: This article was written with AI assistance, based on an interview with Todd Dammen, and then edited by Michigan Conference staff.
The publication of this article was made possible thanks to generous financial gifts from local United Methodist churches in Michigan through Ministry Shares. Thank you! Learn about the impact of Ministry Shares on mission and ministry in Michigan and around the world.
Last Updated on October 22, 2026