My journey to Torah. I grew up in a broken family poor and without much guidance in Washington State . When I was about 13 my mom sent me to live with my dad. Compared to moving around all the time mixed up in all kind of problems I was happy to live with my dad because he represented some stability in my life. I learned to be very observant because I had to figure things out for myself. I got into all kinds of trouble and yet continued to observe people and society. In school I realized not everyone had the same things and noticed how people treated each other. I realized as I started getting good at things that people started liking you more and you got more attention the more talented you were. I would continue to learn to master things and gain talents eventually going into business for myself at about 20. I struggled to be the best and build a life for myself pushing myself harder and harder to be the best at everything I did.

I met my wife at a restaurant I was managing. She worked for me and we later left that business and moved to Portland. We were living together trying to make a life for ourselves. We ended up moving back home after moving to seattle for more money and success.

We hit a crossroads in our life where we realized that all the money and success left us with no friends, no social life, and no care for family or anyone else than ourselves. We decided to make some changes and moved back from Seattle to Spokane where are family was. We decided one day when I was setting life goals, going through categories in our life(financial,mental, relationship, family, spiritual) to do something spiritual. Though I would say I believed in God and Jesus I never went to church nor read the bible. But something said We should start improving in this neglected area of our life so we decided to pick up the bible and see how many of the ten commandments we were breaking.

I picked up the bible and didn't even know where to look but I knew there were ten commandments we were supposed to be keeping. We found them and continued to go through them to see how many we were breaking, we figured we weren't worshipping idols or other gods, we knew we weren't killing anyone, we had lied, and such, but we got to the 4th commandment and figured we weren't keeping the sabbath so we decided to start going to church (what we thought that meant). we started going to a non denominational christian church. We also started going to a bible study and attended other theology teachings and such.

This is where the path got straightened out. I am a real estate agent and I was in my first year. Although I was so talented and driven, after all my efforts, going door to door, calling FSBO's, expireds, open houses, I only had one sale. I decided to walk up to my first For Sale By Owner who traditionally don't like Realtors(that is why they are selling by themselves). The people chewed me out up and down about what a loser I was and how they would never hire me. This would be enough to keep people from ever doing that again. But one day I was driving by a house and saw another FSBO (For Sale By Owner) and something told me go talk to him. So I did. It was a russian guy and we looked at the house and I told him I could help him, and he seemed agreeable. Then I told him I couldn't work on the sabbath. He said oh you keep sabbath. I said yes and we proceeded to talk for about an hour about the scriptures. He kept saying Yahshua this and Yahshua that, I thought he was speaking Russian or that was the name of someone in the bible I finally realized he was talking about Jesus.

He then invited me to a Russian bible study. I was so excited I said yes. I showed up with my little NIV bible and sat on the couch. There was all these people speaking Russian I couldn't understand them. Then a guy comes in and sits down with this big beard looking like Moses or something. He had this big stack of books. It was huge. Me being a funny guy said," I must not be as righteous I only have this little bible." there was no laughter I didn't even know if he understood English. I sat down at the table and one guy asked a question. The guy with the big beard opened a big book, said lets look at the original text, then said that is this word, let's look that up and in the end seemed to answer the guys question. I thought wow, this guy is serious. His name was Pat. I later was invited to come over on Saturday to study with him. I thought this was great because I could go there on Saturday then go to church on Sunday.

At this time with my wife's income from Starbucks we were about $200 short every month and we were living in my dad's basement for free. I told her she has to get Sunday off because we can't work on the sabbath. As a supervisor she had to be available all the time and was the only one who could work Sunday. This presented a real problem considering if she got fired we would loose our only income. they said no and she stood by her guns and finally someone else switched their available days because they were moved by her conviction. Oh we thought it was such a blessing she didn't lose her job and we can keep sabbath. They rewrote the schedule which they didn't like doing and we went to study next saturday with Pat.

We told him the great miracle and he proceeded to show us scriptures on the sabbath and asked us according to the scriptures when was the sabbath. We realized we were wrong it was from Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown. The reality set in that we were in a worse spot now then before and what did that mean about going to church. Well I told my wife you have to go tell them you can't work on Sunday and make them rewrite everything again. Needless to say they were not amused and demoted her. Then my first listing I had that was about to expire after the 6 month contract was up in one more day. I was going to get my things and they already said they would not renew. I said a little prayer ," God it would be great if you could sell this house for me." It was more of a joke, but the phone rang about 10 seconds later, in my mind I joked that it was someone to buy the house, but it actually was. I was tripping out thinking what a coincidence. A lady from out of town was 5 minutes away and wanted to see the house.

She showed up and bought the house for full price on the spot. the time was about 10 minutes until sundown and she wanted to write it up because she had to go back to Seattle. I realized i didn't have the paperwork and would have to drive back to the office and come back it would be sabbath. I was literally sweating, my heart pounding wondering how i would say I can't write up the home. The owners didn't like me and after 6 months we finally get a buyer and I'm going to leave. I didn't know if I would get sued, or lose my license. I finally opened my mouth and the word fell out. I can't write it up my sabbath starts in 5 minutes. Well it ended up working ok because she was a property manager and had papers in her car. She wrote it up and I got paid. After that month I was the number one listing agent all summer long. It was like the floodgates opened up. I was tested and though we needed the money I obeyed God and he blessed me. Since then we have continued to grow in Torah and after years of study we can't get enough of it. Every area that was empty in my life became abundant, I got married, I had my first and second son, with a girl on the way. We bought our first house, got awards in real estate, and met the most wonderful friends we have ever had. Blessed are you YHWH (Hebrew name of the Lord)!