The journey that brought them to this moment of no return began approximately 2½ years earlier during a regular day on the job. Abraham put in his earbuds, hit play on a YouTube documentary called “From Babylon to America: The Prophecy Movie” and began welding. As he listened, he heard a word that would dramatically change his life: Sabbath.
“Christianity had even adopted the pagan worship of the sun,” the documentary narrator, Attila Kakarott declared, “on the day of the sun, or Sunday, instead of the Bible Sabbath.”
Abraham’s interest was piqued. He had never heard the word Sabbath spoken out loud, though he had read it in his Bible and even in the Mennonite catechism. Until this moment, he’d never even considered that the word was referring to anything other than Sunday.
“I was a very strong believer in the Mennonite faith,” says Abraham. “I thought we had the truth.”
From the time he was a boy, when his parents would tell him stories about Jesus, Abraham had a strong desire to meet Jesus and go to heaven. This desire led him to study Scriptures more than many of his Mennonite neighbors, who were content to accept the teachings passed down through their church and families.
“I’ve been judged for bringing a Bible into the church,” he says, explaining that preachers would be offended that he might fact check them.
So when Abraham heard that unfamiliar word through his earbuds that day, he did what came naturally. He went looking for proof. He looked up texts, watched more documentaries, and did research to see if there were any Christians who kept the Sabbath.
One day at lunchtime, Abraham drove 20 minutes to return home, looking quite upset. Anna was surprised. “He never came home for lunch,” she remembers.
He asked if she wanted to go out for lunch, then shared what was on his heart.
“Anna, I saw something that’s really, really hurting me,” he said, “and it’s making me a little confused.”
Anna sat shocked as he told her about the documentary and the Sabbath and his research. She pushed away any thoughts of change. “I don’t want to do that,” was her response, and she dropped the subject.
But she couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation. One day while cleaning offices with her mother, Anna brought up the Sabbath. “How do we know Sunday is the right day?” she asked. “If it says in the Bible the seventh day is, why aren’t we keeping the seventh day?” Her mother wasn’t able to give an answer that satisfied Anna.
It was the same with others they asked. Abraham and Anna were told the Mennonites worship on Sunday because of Christ’s resurrection. Sometimes their questions were ignored altogether. Meanwhile, these questions were straining relationships, and Anna felt stuck between love for her husband and devotion to her parents.
“He’s wrong,” family members told her. “He’s trying to brainwash you.”
Dangerous Detours
Feeling the need to spend some time away to think clearly, Anna concocted a secret plan. While Abraham was at work, she would leave her daughter with her parents and disappear for a week or two. But her plan was interrupted when Abraham had an accident that morning, totaling one of their vehicles. He had to take their remaining pickup to work, leaving Anna without transportation.
Not long afterward, Anna discovered she was pregnant. Looking back, she sees that as a reason God may have kept her from leaving.
That afternoon brought more pressure. Anna’s mother came over to give her a lecture. “You see what happens when you do this nonsense?” she told her daughter, connecting the accident to their new beliefs. “God is punishing you.” Anna’s mother accused Abraham of trying to drag Anna away from her family and into a dark place. “If we had known this would happen,” she said, “We would never have given Abraham our blessing to marry you.”
The words hurt.
“I loved him and wanted to be with him,” Anna says, “and that hurt me.” The words hurt Abraham too.
Abraham wanted to be a good husband, a good son-in-law. But the questions wouldn’t leave.
“If we keep doing what our parents taught us, we will be saved,” others reassured him, but he didn’t see how he could put tradition above the Bible.
“I never felt peace anymore,” he says. “I couldn’t handle it all.”
One weekend, Abraham went team roping with friends. When they finished early, the horses were put away and the drinking began. It was common for him to drink with his friends, but he usually stopped before getting drunk. On this night, he didn’t.
“I don’t even remember much of that night other than I came home drunk,” he says.
Seeing her husband in that condition shifted something in Anna. Though still unconvinced about the Sabbath, she didn’t want to see her husband destroy himself over the inner turmoil he was facing.
If I don’t try this out, I’m going to lose him, she thought. He’s going to start drinking. It’s going to go downhill.
So Anna began doing what Abraham had already done. She studied. She watched documentaries that Abraham sent her. She did her own research. She read her Bible and prayed. And slowly, the conclusion she had resisted became harder to avoid.
“There’s no way around it,” she says.
For Abraham, the night he got drunk brought a decision of his own. “I saw the evil and I wanted the good,” he says. “That’s the night that changed everything.”
He was done drinking. And he was ready to follow where he believed God was leading.
A Different Kind of Saturday
Before visiting an Adventist church, Abraham and Anna tried keeping their first Sabbath at home. They got up, made coffee, sat down with their Bibles, and studied. Then they went outside and spent time with their animals and in nature.
For Abraham, the quiet day felt different. “That was the point where God was really leading,” he says.
But Sabbath presented a problem. Saturdays were part of his work schedule. He told his manager he didn’t want to work on Sabbath and began praying that if what he had discovered was really truth, God would show him how to live it. Then work slowed down. Employees who normally worked until 6 p.m. were being sent home around 3 p.m. Abraham approached his manager with an idea: Why not work Monday through Friday and take Saturdays off? His manager agreed.
Eventually the slowdown became severe enough that workers were laid off, and Abraham moved into construction, where he could work Monday through Friday.
Later, when an employer offered him an extra $300 to work on Saturday, Abraham declined.
Meanwhile, the couple began looking for a church. Their first stop was a small Seventh-day Adventist congregation in Hobbs, N.M., about 30 minutes away. They appreciated the worship but, accustomed to a larger congregation, didn’t quite feel at home.
Then they found the Lubbock
Seventh-day Adventist Church, more than an hour from their home.
They were nervous. Their first Sabbath, they stayed for the service and slipped out before people could talk with them. But not before they noticed something: People welcomed them.
“They were so sweet,” Anna remembers.
When Abraham and Anna returned to their vehicle, Abraham had something to say: “That’s the love of Jesus right there.”
For a time, they continued attending both the Old Colony Mennonite church and the Adventist church, still trying to sort out what they believed.
Abraham decided to conduct a little experiment. He would count how many times Scripture was referenced during each service. At the Mennonite church, he could keep track on one hand. At the Adventist church, he lost count.
Anna noticed other differences. There were instruments—piano and violin—unlike the unaccompanied singing she had grown up with. Children were included in the worship service. And the family could sit together instead of men and women sitting on opposite sides of the church.
By their second visit, Pastor Raul Alvarez caught them before they could slip away. The young couple wasn’t used to a pastor making a point of finding them just to talk.
“When I first walked into that church, you could see the love of God in him,” Anna says of Alvarez.
They kept making the long drive back every Sabbath.
The Unpardonable Sin
Accepting the Sabbath was one thing, baptism was another.
Abraham and Anna had already been baptized in the Mennonite church, where water had been poured over their heads in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
But as they studied Scripture, they became convinced that they should be baptized by immersion into the
Seventh-day Adventist Church.
There was one terrifying problem. They had been taught that being baptized again could close heaven’s door to them—that rebaptism was the unpardonable sin. The warning had been planted deeply enough that even after becoming convinced of what the Adventist Church teaches, they hesitated. “Give us some time,” the couple requested of Alvarez.
Abraham was ready for baptism first, but he wanted to wait for Anna so they could be baptized together.
They did decide, however, to dedicate their daughters in the Adventist church. The very same Sabbath their girls were dedicated, Abraham and Anna made the decision to get baptized.
That’s when the vehicle problems began. Their pickup developed engine trouble. The diesel truck they used for the long drive to church suffered multiple tire blowouts, including one on a Sabbath morning. The repeated obstacles felt like more than just bad luck.
During the week that they planned to be baptized, Anna’s family invited them over specifically to talk about rebaptism, even though they knew nothing of Abraham and Anna’s plans. It was the unpardonable sin, they were reminded. Heaven’s door would be locked.
That night, Abraham walked outside to the area where they kept their farm animals. He climbed onto the roof of a sheep shed and sat beneath the stars.He stayed there until midnight, praying.
Are we wrong? he asked God. He wanted a sign. He wanted certainty. Instead, Bible verses about baptism began coming to mind.
Abraham climbed xdown convinced that the obstacles weren’t warnings from God to stop. They were satanic attempts to keep Abraham and Anna from following what they had become convinced Scripture taught.
The decision was made. They would be baptized.
A New Family
On baptism day, Alvarez told Abraham and Anna that their church would be their family. After the baptism, Alvarez invited church members to come to the baptistry to greet the couple. Nearly the entire church came forward, one by one.
That day the fears Abraham had been battling were quieted. He often wondered what would happen if he died in an accident, knowing what God wanted him to do but refusing to do it.
After baptism, that fear was gone. “I finally have that peace,” he says.
Today, Abraham and Anna still live among the culture that shaped them. Anna still wears the traditional head covering. Their rural home reflects other parts of their heritage they cherish—animals, a garden, food made from scratch, and an appreciation for self-sufficiency.
Abraham has since started his own construction business, helped by loans from his brother and father to buy tools. Running his own company now gives him control over his schedule—and his Sabbaths.
Their relationships with their families have also improved. That is significant to Abraham and Anna because leaving the Mennonite faith usually means leaving the community as well. In fact, many are reluctant to question traditional beliefs because they fear being denied or pushed away.
Abraham and Anna chose a different path. After a period of tension, they made it clear that they wanted to remain connected with their families, but that connection would require acceptance on both sides. Eventually, they found a way forward.
“Let’s make peace and hang out,” Anna said.
Today, that’s what they do. They vacation with family, spend time with their parents and friends, and are raising their daughters to speak Pennsylvania Dutch so they can communicate with their grandparents. There are still subjects some relatives would rather not discuss—and an occasional side-eye, Anna admits—but they have remained part of the community.
Abraham believes those relationships may someday give him an opportunity to reach people within the Mennonite community in a way that an outsider could not. He has even told Alvarez he wonders whether God may someday call him into ministry to the Mennonites.
Alvarez believes this may very well be the young family’s calling “They still look Mennonite, but they have different beliefs now,” he says. “When they go back to their communities, they can share the truth with those who look like them.”
For years, Abraham says, he had sensed something was missing from his faith, even though he couldn’t identify what it was. Not anymore. “I don’t feel like there’s anything missing,” he says. “I feel like we found that missing piece.”
