Cody Carnine crouches on the ground with a handful of pecans and the widest smile as he calls out to a dozen chickens on his farm in Canton, Texas.

He says a simple task like feeding animals is something he and his wife, Ingrid, couldn’t enjoy five years ago.

"We feel freedom to live our lives as normal people, and not feeling like we have to follow," said Carnine.

Day by day, Carnine and his family are piecing their lives back together. They can’t afford to build a house right now, so they live in what they call the "shop" on their pecan tree farm.

From the outside, it looks like a small retrofitted shipping container. Inside are two cluttered main rooms, a bathroom and bedroom separated from the kitchen by a single burgundy curtain. The children climb up ladders to get to their makeshift bunks in the rafters.

Carnine admits it’s a far cry from the lifestyle the family enjoyed while he was a senior leader at Gospel for Asia. GFA is more than a charity — it’s a Christian organization that people serve, and members usually leave their church and, in many cases, friends behind to live near other staff and become completely entrenched in the day-to-day work of GFA.

The organization raises money for various items, such as chickens, goats, blankets and so-called Jesus wells intended to help remote villages in India and surrounding countries. Monthly missionary and children sponsorships are also popular contributions.

Donors often choose where to put their money by selecting from the annual Christmas catalogue, similar to what Plan Canada or World Vision mails out every year. Glossy magazines and a syndicated radio program — presented by GFA leader K.P. Yohannan on many Christian radio stations — also help promote the charity’s work abroad.

"When you see one thing, but you believe in another — that's the world I lived in near the end."

In 2005, the Carnine family sold their home and a successful construction business in Oregon to move to Texas with their four children. Over the next decade, they took a drastic pay cut and fundraised their own salary in order to serve GFA.

They even opted out of paying social security taxes, while still managing to donate thousands back to the cause they believed in wholeheartedly.

Cody Carnine on his family's pecan farm in Canton, Texas. (Angela MacIvor/CBC) Post image on Pinterest: Cody Carnine on his family's pecan farm in Canton, Texas. (Angela MacIvor/CBC)

Cody Carnine on his family's pecan farm in Canton, Texas. (Angela MacIvor/CBC)

Carnine was in charge of development and high-profile donations in the U.S. That meant he worked directly with the people, mostly church leaders, who spent thousands each month on Gospel for Asia’s missions overseas. Carnine even took donor groups on "vision tours" to India in an effort to showcase where their money was being spent.

For decades, GFA has been active in Canada as well. It continues to raise on average $25,000 a day in this country alone. The charity has strong supporters across North America who continue to contribute funds that they believe are being well used.

But over the course of a year-long investigation, CBC has talked to 28 former GFA staff members and board members in Canada, the U.S. and India who shared their stories of self-sacrifice in supporting GFA. They all described an unwavering commitment to the cause, followed by a sense of betrayal.

Some also voiced deep concerns with the organization about how donations were being used, and alleged that hundreds of millions of dollars intended for the poor in Asia were "missing."

Those allegations were the focus of a U.S. class-action lawsuit against the charity that settled last year for $37 million.

The charity firmly denies it did anything wrong, and insists that all donations in Canada and the U.S. went exactly where they were designated.

"Not only [was GFA] not required to make an admission of guilt when they settled the lawsuit, but had the lawsuit actually continued in the court, they either would have won in court or certainly won on the appeal," said GFA litigation spokesperson Johnnie Moore.

He said the allegations made in the U.S. lawsuit were "absolutely false" and the settlement agreement proves it. "It explicitly states that all the funds that … were designated to go to the field went to the field," said Moore.

Cody Carnine was instrumental in the U.S. lawsuit, as one of the few senior leaders at Gospel for Asia who walked away from the organization.

"At GFA we really felt like, man, our life is really making a difference in the lives of other people. So that was incredibly fulfilling, and we were really on-board and extremely involved with everything we could do."

He said a fellow staff member later used the term "cognitive dissonance" to explain how he was coping with mistreatment by leadership, and that resonated with Carnine.

"[It's when] you see one thing, but you believe in another," he said. "That's the world I lived in near the end."