The first time I came here, I was single, and I had actually just gotten out of a relationship with a Protestant who was very anti-Catholic.

Whenever I heard about Medjugorje, I was like, “I want to go.” 

I was at work and we donate blood. The guy running it, I think he saw me say grace, and he was like, “Oh, my wife just retired. She and her friend are going to Medjugorje with my mom’s church.” 

And I was like, “Really? I would love to go.” 

So he goes, “Okay, well, I’ll get her to send you the information if there’s still room.” So she sent me the information. Then I asked everyone about coming with me and they told me no. So I just signed up, and I didn’t know a soul. I went like basically by myself.

I was like, “I’m just going to go ahead and go.” We had a meeting and I kind of wanted to back out. Denise was like, “You don’t go to Medjugorje by happenstance. Our Lady called you to Medjugorje.” All my anxiety and fear just went out the window.

In the meantime, Father Mark Beard asked me to come to work for him. I worked at Shell as a turnaround cost engineer, and I was just a single person. I was like, “Father, how can I leave my career? I have a house to pay for. I don’t have a backup income. I need medical insurance.”

He told me, “Go to Medjugorje and pray about it.” 

Whenever I came here, most of the people were my parents’ age. They were like, “How are you not married? I wish my son would have married someone as devout as you. How did you get so devout?” 

And I said, “My momma must have prayed a lot.” Because I didn’t have like an intervention. I didn’t have like a near-death experience. Just one day, really through Father Mark’s homilies, he was feeding me spiritually. I wanted to do more so I started volunteering at his gift shop, and I just started growing.

Everyone was like, “Well, I’m going to pray for you to have a husband.” 

And I was like, “Please don’t pray for me to have a husband. I’m good. I just don’t know what to do about my career.” 

So they were like, “Well, we’re still going to pray for you.”

I’m like, “Okay, well, whatever.” 

That trip came and went, and I stayed in touch with so many people I met from the pilgrimage. That was in like October 2021.

In May 2022, I was in Mass and it just came to me, “You need to go work for Our Lady of Hope, for Father Mark.” It was on Mother’s Day. It was just clear. 

So I actually told him, “Look, I need to finish a project I’m working on at work.” I would start with him on August 1st. 

People were throwing everything at me to stay. I was just like, “No.” I never even batted an eye. “I’m just going to leave.” 

Working in a refinery/chemical plant, it’s a whole different world. The people are very crude. There’s a lot of gossip. There’s a lot of cursing. 

Whenever I came to Medjugorje, it was the first time I had been to Daily Mass every day for several days in a row. When I left, I yearned for the Eucharist every day. I was like, “I don’t know. How can I receive the Eucharist every day?” Because I had to be at work at 6:00 in the morning and I lived an hour away. 

I just felt like I was living a double life. At work, I was in the world. And then it’s so hard to stay away from the gossip and the cursing and all that stuff. Then I would come home and I would pray and I would volunteer. Medjugorje definitely made me realize that I wanted to be closer to God, and I needed to find a way to receive communion every day.

Then I went to work for Father Mark. All of a sudden, Steven, my now husband, came out of nowhere and we started dating. Then he fell in love with Father Mark. Father Mark brought him into the church. 

In that year that I was at Our Lady of Hope, it was some of the hardest, most rewarding work ever. But it’s definitely hard to grow a relationship and see about a family and things like that. But through that, Steven and I grew a lot closer. He would actually come to my house and clean my house and help me take care of my pet. He cut the grass whenever I wasn’t home. He really stepped up and didn’t have to. 

Then we decided to get married, and I told him, “When that time comes, if you want to ask, I want you to ask Father Mark for my hand because he was more of a father figure to me.” 

We got engaged. We were meeting Father for dinner. The pilgrimage in November came up, and that’s when we came up with the crazy idea to get married in Medjugorje. 

In Croatian tradition, the groom picks up the bride. You have to get married civilly here before you can get married sacramentally. The groom picks up the bride and then they walk down the aisle with a crucifix. Whenever the priest does the vows, he does a special blessing on the crucifix. The bride places her hand on top of it and then the groom places his hand on top of hers. Then they make a vow to always have Christ in the center of their lives. 

You’re supposed to hang the crucifix up somewhere where you can see it, like in the center of your home. If you have any problems like family issues or when you’re raising kids, you teach them to go to the cross and pray at the cross.

Instead of kissing the bride, you actually kiss the crucifix because He’s the center of your marriage.

When we were here for the wedding, we received so many blessings that we didn’t even expect.

Maria made us a cake and gave us a gift along with the tour guides and a local shop owner gave us a little gift. In this place, people just want to love. They’re just happy for you. Maria, her staff could not be at the wedding so she made another little bouquet so that I could throw it the next day so that her workers had a chance to try to catch the bouquet.

People are just genuinely, genuinely happy for you. It brings this peace about you that is hard to get rid of. It is peace, peace, peace when you come here and you just want to spread it to everybody whenever you get back home.

So the first time I came to Medjugorje single, the second time I came and got married, and now the third time I’m pregnant!

Every day, mostly every day, I consecrate my baby to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Holy Family and Saint Joseph. 

So she’s the fruits of Medjugorje. The next time I come, I’ll be bringing my little girl. 

Coming back this time, I feel like I’m coming home to my second family. This is like my second home. I see so many people that I me—beautiful people. 

It’s great being here with my mom. Actually she was one of the people that told me no back in 2021. And I was like, “I can’t believe she’s telling me no.” I think she had regretted it after that. Then she couldn’t come in 2023 for the wedding because she couldn’t get off of work. 

When I found out about this pilgrimage and she already had her vacation scheduled, she was like, “Yes, I want to go. We’re going.” 

But her work wouldn’t give her permission to extend it by a few days. She prayed a novena to the Blessed Mother and she waited like a month and her company never got back with her. In the meantime, she’s like, “I’m going. Book it. I’m going.” 

It’s so beautiful to have her here because I feel like we have two and a half generations. And she’s so happy. The other night, we were just laying in bed and about to go to sleep, and she’s like, “I’m so glad I’m here.” So I feel like she feels so fulfilled now. 

She wasn’t going to bring it back up with work because she didn’t want to rock the boat. She said, “I don’t know if I’m going to come back fired or not, but I’m going.”

And I said, “Mom, you really need to ask. You can’t let this take away from your pilgrimage. You need to be 100% in. Why don’t you go ahead and ask again?” 

When she did, her boss was like, “That’s fine. We’ll just work something out.” 

How did Medjugorje change me? 

I remember I was on the phone with my mom when I got home, and I said, “If I ever get cancer or any kind of terminal illness, just send me to Medjugorje and let me just live out my days because it’s so peaceful. I don’t want all that medical intervention.”

And my mom goes, “What happened to you over there? You really changed!” 

That’s how peaceful it is here, and that’s how much it transforms you. 

Being around so many like minded people was so comfortable to me. That’s another reason why I left the plant besides communion. I wanted to be around people who loved God and the Blessed Mother the way that I did, and I wanted to share that.

Being here is what made me realize that there are people like us out there. It’s just a lot of times you don’t find them in the secular world.