Shalom family~
I just want to start this off by being completely transparent- Ive been struggling with how to write this, and maybe part of the reason was because the story wasnt finished. Id love to say this is going to short and to the point, however I dont think I can honestly do that. Honestly its probably going to end up being 2 parts. I will say that I will try my best to keep it less about us and more about how followers of Messiah are supposed to act in the face of Persecution. I will point out what we think we did right, and what we probably could have done better, but I will be honest.
At the Start
For about a year, my husband (and occasionally I) worked for an animal transport “farm” in southern Alabama. (How we came to be there is a story for another time.)
When we officially turned to Christianity in the Spring last year (2025), we met a couple through our local church. They were part of what the pastor there referred to as his “inner circle”, and well trusted. They were actually the first people we told when we were secretly married under God, and we were fond of them at the start.
To keep the spirit of avoiding “slander” and “gossip”, I will be referring to them as Ananias and Sapphira from here on out.
Ananias offered my husband a job working for him. He was a sort of “teacher” in our adult sunday class, and one of those people that kind of reign in the crowd during the altar call. Sapphira was in the choir with me and also “taught” sunday school to the younger kids. She was also involved in caring for the elderly as her occupation (or at least, she talked about it) and part of a ministry of bringing plates of food to people from a local restaurant.
When they offered us a place to live on their property after their daughter moved out of the camper there, we all too readily jumped at the opportunity, believing living on a Christian farm would be great for our walk and help us grow under a couple that seemed to be more developed in Christ. That was in October of 2025, not too long before our conversion to understanding Torah. My husband had already been working there with a few others for about 4 months. There were issues sure, but nothing too outrightly concerning. Also, it seemed like a great deal because everything was included in our rent, and we were allowed to use one of their vehicles to go into town.
The Backlash of Following Torah
If you have ever been in the position of attending a church and come to Torah, you will understand the slow backlash that comes from others who are being convicted by your walk. The withdrawal, the slow but sure ugly rearing of the enemy stirred up. Messiah told His disciples:
Indeed, nothing is hidden that will not become evident, nor secret that shall not be known and come into open view.
– Luke 8:17
We’ve experienced this a few times so far on our walk. It’s like… once the spirit of the enemy sees the true light, it cannot help itself but to act out against it. Its not in its nature to go on pretending.
One of the first “red flags” that we witnessed so to speak- wasn’t even felt strongly at the time. But it was when they invited us for a thanksgiving christmas get together, and knowing our convictions of not eating pork anymore, neglected to tell us until after we had already eaten something with pork sausage in it. We had even offered to bring our own deli tray to avoid any mishaps, but had been assured they would provide an alternative; however, they did not. They were notedly verbally apologetic, but did not do anything to remedy the situation.
We had excused this as a simple mistake- it wasn’t their conviction, so we didnt hold it against them for forgetting. The problem though was the attitude surrounding the mistake. Ananias smirked and laughed with a half hearted apology and it pricked a nerve in me.
Side note: It always seems that no matter how “nice” Christians are, once the subject of food is approached, the defenses go up. At the time, we couldn’t understand why something so harmless bothered people so intensely. But, now we realize that in the eyes of the enemy, this is pretty much step one of entering “the narrow gate”, the first test of the flesh- and it does not like it one bit.
Not to get too teacher-y, but I do find it fascinating that the first time YHVH says “You shall be holy for I am holy” is in Levitcus 11, right after giving the distinctions of clean and unclean animals.
The same thing happened at their christmas new-years get together, though that time I made sure we brought our own alternative and steered clear of anything containing doubt. Again, Ananias poked fun at our convictions, going so far as to pull up Mark 7 to argue with us.
(I had gotten the timeline mixed up here, thinking Channukah was late November, but 2025 it was in December. So the events were christmas and “new years”, not thanksgiving and christmas.)
As the months went on, curiosity and poking fun became open mocking. At times we were greatly upset by this, but at the end of the day we prayed for them and tried to have peace about the whole thing, believing we were there for a reason and something good was meant to come out of it.
But, slowly, we began seeing what Scripture warns about playing out in real time. The more convicted we became, the more we witnessed and answered their questions through in-depth study, the more the more the masks seem to slip. I noticed this especially after we officially stopped going to their church and the congregation started ignoring us and our ramblings.
Sapphira started showing her true colors more and more as a gossip and a busy body, endlessly complaining about others in the church and her own husband, and we had to actively avoid her. The plates she was bringing people in need included us at times, but we politely declined pork and seafood when it came up.
During Chag ha’ Matzot (the Feast of Unleaven), we firmly told her upon being pressed, that we could not even bring the food inside the house according to the commands because it contained leaven, and asked her to leave it outside the door. She seemed really confused and we explained it was only for the week. She didn’t get it. After that, the plates became less and less frequent, until they stopped all together.
She let it slip to my husband one day that she only brought plates (and fresh chicken eggs) to people she liked. This was greatly upsetting to me, triggering my inclination for justice- not so much because it affected us, but because the food was a church sponsored ministry and she was abusing her position of authority. I thought, who is she to decide who “deserves” food? Besides that, it was just plain wasteful because sometimes she had so many plates that some got thrown away or fed to the dogs.
Ananias’ business started falling apart. It started because no one else was really willing to do the intense farm labor for the little he was paying- nor where they willing to put up with Ananias’ scheming and switching things up. My husband became the main, and usually only, farm hand.
My husband is an extremely hard worker, as long as I’ve known him, he gives his all to every job, working overtime, doing the jobs no one wants to do because someone has to do them. We jokingly call him the “work horse”.
As the work became almost completely set on his shoulders, most days he was extremely exhausted and the pay on top of the rent we were paying was less than $8 an hour. He was working random hours, at Ananias’ beck and call. Sometimes early morning, sometimes late into the night. Sometimes hed be done for the day, relaxing with me, and then receive a call that he had to load an entire trailer by himself to go out at 1AM after already working a full shift. It started getting under my skin and I felt he was being taken advantage of. Ananias seemed to have no thought for anyone but himself.
On top of what began feeling like slave labor, we got very little sleep because of rats in our ceiling and roosters crowing at all hours right next door to us. We had asked for something to be done about the rats, to which we had gotten a snarky reply of “that’s just farm living.” My husband even offered to replace the ceiling, but Ananias didn’t want to pay for the materials.
Another part of the problems was that because Ananias paid very little, we were struggling to eat and buy basic needs most weeks. The deisel truck we were allowed to use got the worst gas mileage I’ve ever seen- and we were throwing $30-40 in it every week just to drive into town and back for groceries. Our clothes and shoes were falling apart, and we couldnt afford new ones. We tried not to be bitter, but it left a bad taste in our mouths to hear Sapphira complain about “money problems” as she opened several amazon packages of materialistic nonsense on a near daily basis. This coming from someone who had early on told us she didnt want to hear about our own money problems.
We had also been gifted a vehicle; we only needed to pay for the title and the plates. Ananias had said that he would help us figure this out, but that never happened. After a few months of it sitting in the yard, we finally said that we would just look into it ourselves. But he told us the key was missing- even though it had been driven to the property only a few months before. It seemed more and more that Ananias wanted to keep my husband under his thumb. He talked about helping us, but his actions repeatedly showed his love of mammon was stronger than his love for his neighbor.
The Testing of Convictions
I believe it was when we were convicted to not work- paid or not- on Shabbat that we really started to annoy the enemy that was pulling the strings there. Ananias repeatedly tried to bribe my husband to work anyway, though he had said that he would respect the decision. That was about May, I believe.
We realized that while we had ceased doing anything for actual pay on Saturdays, we were still laboring and not resting by watering the animals and feeding them- probably on average water and food for a couple thousand chickens, a couple hundred pigeons, some turkeys, 50-100 rabbits, ect. It took a couple hours with both of us and quite a bit of effort. I struggled with this and became depressed because I’m an animal lover, and they were actively dying in the heat and cramped, dirty conditions.
But ultimately I realized that if Ananias wanted them cared for, it was on him- the owner- to do it, or plan for it, not us. The command is clear not to make others do work:
but the seventh day is a Shabbat to YHVH your Elohim. In it you are not to do any work—not you or your son or your daughter, or your man-servant or your maid-servant, or your ox, your donkey or any of your livestock or the outsider within your gates, so that your man-servant and your maid-servant may rest as you do.
— Deuteronomy 5:14
Then came the biggest problem.
Backtracking, when Ananias had first hired my husband, he had explained that he sold pigeons and other animals (other birds, rabbits) for pagan sacrifices. He reassured us that God had told him this was alright, because he was “bringing money from the dark into the light.” (meaning he was “tithing” to his church).
Even as new/ ignorant Christians, this struck as as very bad. But, we did not yet understand why, and we did not understand that there is a distinct difference between what the church teaches and what Scripture tells us. We thought we were supposed to keep the peace and let people do whatever they felt led to do, so we stayed quiet about it. It wasn’t our decision, and our lively hood was set upon working under it. Over the year, we’d asked for advice from a few different people, and they all agreed it was a tough situation to be in with no right answer.
Fast forward to July 2026- about a year after being hired. Ananias had started being pretty openly rude about our convictions. He had basically insinuated that touching a dead unclean animal was a sin so the whole thing was moot. This drove us even deeper into Torah to find the truth. (In actuality- touching a dead animal of any kind leaves us in state of temporary uncleanliness, but that is not a sin. And gloves and washing remedy that.)
We came to the realization that catching and caging these animals for travel was quite literally handling and preparing the sacrifices for pagan deities, and explained that our beliefs would not allow us to engage in that part of the business any longer. Ananias immediately came back saying he wasnt sure when something went to be sacrificed, and wasnt in charge of what happened to animals after he delivered them. This was a change from what he had always said in the past. My husband warned him that if he was lying (which he was prone to do), then the guilt would be on him and not us. We prayed for the truth to be revealed and brought to the light if that was the case.
Shortly after, my husband overheard him on the phone saying something along the lines of, “if they dont sell, I’ll just send them down to Florida for sacrifices.” To me, that was definitive proof that he did know where they were going, and knew exactly where to send them to make easy money. I also want to briefly point out that the animals he would send out, especially in the last several months, were often sick or in bad condition- which is why they weren’t selling well.
When my husband accused him, he just lied and deflected again. We struggled with what to do. I think Ananias knew our convictions were becoming stronger and now that it was directly interfering with his business and making money, he hired a 17 year old not even a week later. At the same time, he tried to push a different job on my husband, claiming he didnt want to “hold him back.” The timing was just way too convenient in our eyes.
The Last Straw
And this was the beginning of the end of the situation. It started out innocently enough with me studying through the book of Job as preparation for our “Why we (Actually) need a Savior” series.
I came outside as I often did to excitedly inform my husband of something new I had discovered while studying (about new wineskins and Messiah’s allusion to it). The new hire teenager was also there and listened in. After that, he started asking my husband and I questions. After explaining something things like the history of the council of Nicea, Ananias and Sapphira took us aside and informed us that we needed to get his mothers permission before teaching him anything else, and we agreed that we would “honor” the parents before speaking with him more. The teen continued to pepper us with questions and we did our best to point him to Scripture and the New Testament for answers, repeatedly telling him he needed to ask his mother before we went any further.
A few days later he told us he had asked his step-dad, who encouraged him to try and stump us with questions and saw it as a good opportunity to test his faith- and who had questions of his own. After more prompting by Sapphira, we again told him he needed to get his mothers permission specifically. He did that, and came back saying it was fine and she was alright with him learning from people with different beliefs. So we launched into answering his many, many questions, talking about biblical answers to his current life struggles, ect.
Ananias sent Sapphira over to point out again that we needed his mothers permission. When we explained that he had gotten it already, she pressed the matter a few more times before withdrawing. I would point out here, that she had no further issue at the time.
The next day the teenager, after another lengthy discussion, admitted that Ananias had called his mother that past night, and the end result was that, because of whatever he had said, his mother believed we were in a cult and didnt want him speaking to us. Her worry was that he was extremely gullible and would believe anything anyone told him.
We were confused and upset. He seemed like a pretty intelligent young man, who had repeatedly told us he wasnt going to believe anything just because we said it. In response we had applauded him, and encouraged him to find all the answers in Scripture himself, explaining how Paul had applauded the Bereans in Acts 17 for the exact same conviction to test everything.
My husband was irate, and called Ananias to demand an explanation. Why had he went behind his back instead of just speaking to him directly? The call escalated into yelling, and he called Ananias out about a lot of things he had been doing and saying. Ananias hung up on him, refusing to speak with him or answer his messages for a couple days after. Once again, we felt the timing was all too coincidental. It seemed to us the real reason for this pushback was because Ananias didn’t want another worker being convicted not to engage in the evil side of his business.
That same night, I felt the urge to look into what the “Church of Christ” (the church the teen went to) believed- and it was bad. For those who dont know, the COC believes that they are the one true church, and anyone who does not go to their specific churches and abide by their specific doctrine is therefore bound for hell. They have a habit of shunning/ ostracizing anyone who asks too many questions or goes against them. I was sickened by the thought of all this, and especially by the thought of enforcing it on children.
The next day, the teen came back with new information. He told us that he found out Ananias had told his mother that we were “forcing our beliefs on everybody that came through”, and that somehow they had come to the conclusion that because we believe in the Torah, that must mean we believe in animal sacrifice as well. (I thought this was absurd because Ananias was the one actually contributing to that, but thats neither here nore there). We explained that we dont believe in/practice animal sacrifice, because to do so would be going against Torah itself.
The teen also informed us he had gotten in a debate with his mother, telling her it was a “50/50 shot that we were right” and she had yelled at him and told him he could just stop going to church since he didnt “believe in God anymore” This broke my heart. I told him that honoring his mother does not mean blindly obeying her even when she leads him away from God, and that nobody had the right to keep him from his Heavenly Father. And, actually, by giving her a boundary, he was helping her to incur less guilt in the long run.
When he left for a lunch break, Sapphira came over for some reason or another, and she and my husband started talking about the situation. I heard raised voices and came outside ( because on the testimony of two witnesses a matter is settled). She was impressing on us that we needed to stop talking to the teen because his mother had called her and we needed to honor her wishes.
Giving her the benefit of ignorance, I firmly explained:
- “Honor” does not mean blindly obey; and backed it up with Matthew 10:34-36 (“I did not come to bring peace, but a sword…”)
- That the mother was trying to keep him from God for simply asking questions
- That his church was an actual cult, and pointed out that she herself knew salvation is not through a physical church, but through Christ alone
- That the teen had confided in us that he was suffering from thoughts of self harm and depression, and struggling with addict behaviors, being a past addict
- That it was our duty as followers of Messiah to stand on the Word and teach so to others
I think i thought that if I could just show her face to face that she was going against what Messiah has commanded, she would see the light and change her mind.
Unfortunately, no matter what I said, she redirected back to honor the mother, adding now that this was a work environment and not to be talking about Scripture and distracting workers. She went so far as to threaten us by saying “All im saying it yall need to stop talking about this- or else.” When we asked, or else what? She pivoted and said “We’re allowing you to live here.” I immediately retorted, “Youre not allowing us to live here, we pay rent to live here.” My husband chimed in that not only that but we were barely able to survive and buy food with the little that Ananias paid him, but that we would happily take back the money we had paid the last year. She said that wasnt her business and pivoted again back to saying we needed to honor the mother.
I started getting enraged at this point and I shouted Matthew 18:6 at her and she replied with “Hey- Im a sunday school teacher”, as if that meant something. I said then why dont you care about the words of your Lord and Savior?
We prompted her to answer the question “Do you care about the authority of man over God?” She kept dodging the question and saying she wasnt going to debate about Scripture. She finally asked if we were going to stop, or not.
We said, “As long as someone comes to us with questions, we will answer them”. She got fed up and started walking away. I don’t remember what she was saying but it upset me enough to yell something like “How dare you try to keep someone from seeking God! You should be ashamed!”
I admit that I was definitely not filled with peace in that moment.
I was so angry with the hypocrisy, and that someone in charge of children cared more about her earthly reputation than the well being of a “child” who was lost and confused, seeking truth. This from someone who had told me that its acceptable to push the responsibility of “accepting Jesus” on someone as young as 10 years old, because that was old enough to have accountability. This from people who proudly proclaim “Jesus is Lord” all over their property- but dont even flinch when you quote Him to them. I felt we had given them grace upon grace for months, and this was the breaking point.
Persecution for Pushing Accountability & Publicly Exposing Sin
The next day, (Shabbat) Sapphira started making some pointed facebook posts, and I commented on one calling out her sin of slander, telling her that being shaped by Messiah is being held accountable to our words and actions. She told me I could say “my side” of what happened, but when we did, she tried to smooth it over and lie about what happened. When that didnt work, she deleted the whole post (but not before i had screenshot the whole thing on a hunch that would happen).
A few moments later, Ananias knocked on our door, and said he needed the phone that we used for wifi because it wasnt reaching to the cameras outside (this had never been an issue before). When I walked outside, his wife was sitting in their golf cart not looking at us, and Ananias had brought a 2nd male as a witness (I’m guessing). The second my husband gave the phone to him, he handed him back papers firing him and an 8 day vacate notice:
When my husband asked, “Are you kicking us out and firing me for talking about Scripture?” He replied that he didnt need a reason, and it didnt matter anymore anyway. His wife was also recording us on her phone, and attempting to hide it. We assume that they were trying to catch us doing something against Scripture so they could show everybody we were not to be trusted.
We told them that it maybe didnt matter legally, but it sure mattered to God. We noted, being filmed, that this was happening because we tried to hold them accountable to Scripture and words of Messiah, because they had placed themselves in positions of authority, and therefore had to be held to higher accountability (James 3:1, Luke 12:48). And that their guilt was evident since they deleted the post that we exposed their lies on. Sapphira seemed visibly upset when I told her I had screenshot-ed the whole thing anyway.
We calmly asked them if they were sure this was the decision they wanted to make, and pointed out that they were persecuting us. Upon their dismissal, we then informed them that we were calling the police to come out and explain what the legal situation was, since they wanted to resolve things with the world’s way rather than the Kingdom way. All three of them immediately left our side of the property.
We talked with an officer and explained what was happening. He was very kind and explained what our rights were. This wasnt a legal eviction notice, just a civil “first step”. We explained that we were not trying to stay any longer than we had to and just wanted the local authorities to be aware of the situation so that our bases were covered.
The funny thing is, our “lease” said that we could only be evicted if we broke the terms of the lease- with illegal activity- which we did not do. Of course, when we had asked for that protection in the contract months ago, they had given us back something hand written- so they denied they wrote it or that it was even valid.
You can see the written in notice at the end. Also, the lease included internet, so by taking the internet in an attempt to isolate us, they voided their own agreement.
I honestly feel this is not the first time they have done people wickedly in this way, but theres no knowing for sure.
When we left to walk to a friends to use their Internet and buy a phone card, Sapphira was speaking at the officer in a voice raised enough to be heard across the property- we assume they were upset at being told their “eviction notice” wasnt in the least bit legal. Little did they know we’d actually leave in less than a week.
Honestly, this moment that was meant to feel like despair it felt like freedom.
We weren’t being abandoned- We were being led out of bondage.
We didnt know where we were going, but we knew the Father had us in His hands, and after 2 years of trying to make it work, we were just excited to get the heck out of southern Alabama.
(Part 2 coming up- The last few days at the farm, and how they really showed their colors, donating almost all our stuff, heading south, our experience in Pensacola, and the Father’s greater plan for us. Stay tuned!)
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