Last year, a couple of speakers came into a men’s group I had just joined in Des Moines. 

Dan had come back from Medjugorje and he shared about the miracle the sun and an Irish priest that could read souls and a number of other cool things, how they felt like they were at home the whole time. It brought their family closer together. He mentioned how he saw a different side of his children. They were different people when they came back, and couple other people have mentioned the same thing about his kids. 

Then next week, he brought in Marilyn Lane to talk about the exact same thing. I had never met Marilyn before. She came and talked all about it, and I got to know her a little bit.

My other friend who came here with her daughter last year as well told me about her experience and her daughter being a different person when she came back and how they were just glowing the whole time they were here. They just felt different when they came back. 

Three times in three weeks I get testimonies from this place called Medjugorje in some country I’ve barely heard of. I was like, “Okay, God, You don’t have to prod any anymore on this one. I get it. I’ll go. I don’t know what this is, but I’ll go.”

Then by the middle of August, I had somebody else introduce me to Marilyn again, and I got on the list for this pilgrimage. 

I had had a lot shared about it with me, and I expected it to be amazing.

But I also tried to not take everybody’s experience and expect the exact same thing. Like, yeah, I wanted to see the miracles, but I didn’t need to see it. I wanted to see what the big outside adoration and the big Masses were like, but I didn’t need to have the same experience as them.

I wanted my own experience. I went in with an open mind. So I went in just with expectations to grow closer to Mary. It met those expectations and exceeded them. 

It’s incredible to be able to live like this where almost everybody is on the same page. It’s like, “Hey, we need to pray. We need to build community together. We need to talk. We need to smile.” 

Seeing the people here is probably the biggest miracle of anything, how happy they are and how joyful they are. The pilgrims are too, but the locals are just happy. They all say, hi, good morning and good afternoon. They learn our language to help welcome us more, which is incredible. 

My faith really exploded in the last few years, roughly since mid 2020. God sends a plague, and you jump on or you jump off.

It built up through that time so by the time it got to mid 2023 when I heard about this, there were no barriers to it. If I had heard about it a couple of years before that, there would have been barriers. If I heard about it before 2020, I wasn’t even practicing. My faith built significantly over those years.

With my work, especially as a guy, I compartmentalize pretty well. If work is a little negative, I can shut that off and it doesn’t affect the rest of my life. Well, the news and movies and TV shows and people were all negative all the time. I have been blessed to be a happy person most of my life, purely a gift of God. I was always happy, but everything was negative. 

One day after work in May 2020, I sat down and just said, “God, I’m tired of all the bad news. What do I do to get rid of the bad news?” 

I have hundreds of things going through my mind at any given time. When I asked that question, it was probably 5 seconds in our time, but, you know, God doesn’t function in our time. It felt like an eternity of pure silence. All I hear is three words. “Read the Bible.” It wasn’t a thought in my head, nothing I was potentially thinking. It was very clear it wasn’t of me. 

Now, obviously, it came through my head, but it wasn’t even a voice I recognized. After 5 seconds again of silence, everything turns back on. 

I probably went a month and didn’t even think about it, didn’t do anything, didn’t start reading the Bible.

Maybe a month later, I go, “I know God is simple in a good way.” Read the Bible. What is the Bible? Good news. The answer to get rid of the bad news was literally read the Good News. So I started reading the Bible.

I’m like, “I’m going to read it from the beginning to the end.” It took me three or four months and I didn’t get anything out of it. Now, obviously I did, but I didn’t feel it.

I had 13 years of Catholic school before that so I had that on my mind, but I wasn’t able to unlock it per se. When I came in, I was starting at kindergarten. I didn’t understand any of it, but what it did was pique my curiosity.

It was tough. Genesis went well and then it was a struggle basically the rest of the Old Testament. Tobit was really good. All of them are good for the record, but Tobit really caught my attention, the love aspect of it. God uses the word love a lot. No mistake there. 

I started reading all that, and that’s when He started working through me. Good things started to happen in my life. I started being, not just happy, but a little joyful, like the start of it. A lot of positive events just started filtering into my life. I started saying yes. I got invited to church, got invited to a young Catholic group, did a couple of those things.

Once I got to church the first time, I missed one Mass in the next three years.

I ended up attending a young Catholic event where I didn’t know anybody or anything, and I looked for some young people because maybe they’ll know what’s going on. I turned around and asked a guy. He was like, “Yeah, it’s over here in the parish hall. But hey, how about you come to confession with me?” 

I had zero intention. Never even thought about it. I said, “Sure. I don’t have any reason that I can think of why I wouldn’t.” People struggle with that when they come back to the Church. I didn’t because I wasn’t prepared in that way. I wasn’t scared. It had been 12 or 13 years. I got the perfect priest, and he told this amazing story to lighten it up. Then he goes, “Would you like to tell me all your sins?” And I was like, “Yep, let’s go.”

---

I would recommend people come in with expectations to just have your heart wide open and experience the change that He wants you to experience, not the change you’re trying to experience.

Yesterday, we heard this twice. We heard from Father Robert in a speech, “love God’s will.” And then in the documentary that your team made the same line, “try to love God’s will,” from Father Ryan. I’d never heard that in my life. Love God’s will and try to live in God’s will and try to experience it through that mindset. 

One of the things Mirjana said, which I had asked the question, “Can you describe in earthly words how beautiful Mary is or how beautiful her words are?”

And she said, “I really can’t. Her beauty is undefinable because it’s pure love. Her beauty is love.” 

To me, that just said I was on the right path. I was trying to be Jesus to people, get to Jesus through loving people, through building community. Love, love, love is the biggest takeaway.

The first person to serve me at the first meal I had was Mirjana, and I was like, “Okay. Service is very important. Serving others.” So that’s something I’ll take back. 

Medjugorje reaffirmed love, servitude, love of neighbor, praying fervently. 

Apparition Hill the first day. My friends kept going up and they’re like, “Let’s keep going.” And I’m like, “I don’t think I’m supposed to go up.” It was just a feeling. Then Patty’s walking down and it’s really slippery. I realize that’s why God was giving me this feeling not to go up because I was supposed to help her come down to serve her. She probably served people her entire life, so it was time for somebody else to help her when she was coming down Apparition Hill. 

But God doesn’t like to tell me exactly what’s happening ahead of time. He usually just kind of points to me, and I have to I have to make call. I have to make a couple steps, but then it’s pretty clear right away that I was taking the right steps.