I had never heard of Medjugorje. I wasn’t really involved at that point in anything church related. I had kind of drifted.

I was home for the weekend, and my mom said something about a video and Mary appearing to these kids. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I was polite to my mom and was like, “Oh okay.” 

She pulled up, it’s still on YouTube, “Medjugorje, are you listening?”

In an instant, seeing Mirjana’s face, she went into ecstasy and it was very indescribable what happened inside of me, but I knew instantly that God exists and that this was real. I was just sobbing. My mom was like, “Are you okay?” She didn’t know what was going on. 

I watched it a few more times. The guy who posted that video, I’ve always wanted to meet him to thank him. I never managed to get through to him. 

My mom said, “I have a book about Medjugorje.” I stayed up all night reading that book. I was totally shaken by this experience. I don’t know how to even explain what happened inside of me. 

The next day we drove up to Boston, and my cousin’s daughter was to be baptized. We walked into the church. We’re Orthodox so there are icons all over, and I smelled this beautiful smell of roses. For the first time, I looked around at all those icons and I knew all of it was real. 

I sat in the church, and my cousin walks over to us and says, “I don’t know why, but I feel like you need to be the godmother.” She knew nothing of what had happened the night before. She said, “I really feel like I want you to be Nina’s godmother.”

I said, “Sure,” but at that point I don’t think I was even an official member of the church. She just went up to the priest right before and asked if I could be, and he said, “Yes.” 

I went through the whole Orthodox baptismal ceremony. You renounce Satan. They actually baptized her Christina even though her name is Nina. As I was going through it, it was almost like going through baptism again myself because I was saying the prayers for Christina. It was amazing.

From that point on my life was totally changed, and it’s never gone back. I went back to New York City and everything was like through new eyes. Everything I saw around me, it was like my eyes were opened. 

I was working at the time in television production. I wanted to leave my job right away, but I did stay a little bit longer.

That June 24th, my dad passed away suddenly. He died on the anniversary of the first apparition. It was just months after I found out about Medjugorje. It was very significant. 

From the minute I saw the video of Mirjana I wanted to go. I felt pulled, called there.

We were supposed to go to Greece again at that anniversary time because in the Greek church you do the memorial service, three months, and then the one year mark. 

When we found out about the pilgrimage, my mom was like, “Oh, that would have been great, but we have to be in Greece.”

The next day, my aunt called from Greece and said, “Do you mind if instead of doing the memorial service on the 24th if we do it a week later?” Because her son-in-law wasn’t going to be able to make it in time. They live in Mexico. 

All of a sudden those dates opened up. We came to Medjugorje together for the first time on the one year anniversary of my dad’s passing. 

We stayed for three days. I came already fully believing. It was just amazing. A lot of things were new to me, like adoration, that wasn’t in our tradition growing up. There were so many beautiful things. I had a lot of experiences. 

On the 24th I had an experience that I definitely felt was my dad. We climbed the hill together that day for the first time. 

I wanted to share Medjugorje with other people. I knew that it was real, and I didn’t know how to share it with other people. 

I never got a day off of work, except for when my dad passed away. That was the first time I ever wasn’t at work. We were moving offices in August so they shut down the office for a week which was totally unheard of, and I just booked a ticket and came back to Medjugorje on my own. 

When I was here on my own, I stayed for a week. I went back and I basically left my job. When I was here that second time, that’s when I knew I wanted to make a documentary just to share what was going on. 

When I told people that, nobody knew about Medjugorje. None of my friends knew about Medjugorje. I was like, “I need to share this.” That was my way of doing it. 

So that was the beginning. 

Then I came out lots of times to film. I made the documentary. I did screenings of it and everything. I was going to film a second documentary, and I came out here. Denis and Cathy Nolan had given me all this archival footage to use in the film so I knew them. They said, “You can have a key to the studio to leave your equipment when you go.”

When I first started, there really wasn’t anyone here doing MaryTV. They just had the studio space. Then I opened the door, and when I went inside, there was my future husband, Josip. 

At that time, he was just starting to work for MaryTV and getting live-streaming going. We met that trip, but it’s not like we started dating right away. We were friends for a couple of years before we started dating. 

Then in 2016, we got married here in St. James church. Now we have three girls, Marija, Emma, and Lucia. They’re 5, 3, and 1.