Rachel – Part 1

“I had the Wayne Weible book. My parents had gotten it from someone so I read it when I was 16 years old. I loved it. I was so curious about Medjugorje, but back then there wasn’t the internet. Maybe there was AOL dial-up, but you weren’t exactly searching Google. There was no information on it. So I feel like that book was just the seed that got planted, and then I really wasn’t able to get more information about it.

It was something that I heard about and carried and definitely believed in, but I didn’t really revisit it for a long time.

[In 2015] I was driving, and I was listening to Seize the Day with Gus Lloyd talking about Apparition Hill [and the pilgrimage contest]. I was like, “Oh my gosh. This is amazing. I want to apply so bad.” I was pregnant, and I thought, “I can’t go because I’m going to be having a baby when they’re doing this.” So I couldn’t do it, but I was so intrigued.

About a year and a half later, I had my son. It was a great pregnancy, but he ended up almost dying. We both almost died. When I had him, my uterus ruptured. When your uterus ruptures, most of the time, you die. But I was in the hospital, luckily, and everything was really aligned. It happened at noon even though I went in at midnight. They said if it would have happened at midnight, there would not have been the right people there to save us. We had the head of Neo, the head of OB, everybody.

My son ended up getting taken to Children’s Hospital in Detroit, so I didn’t get to see him. When my uterus ruptured, he was free-floating in my stomach for about 20 minutes without oxygen. They really thought he wasn’t going to make it. He was blue. He had an Apgar score of 1.

They were preparing me for the worst. My husband had to go with our son, and I just remember waking up so confused. I said to my dad, “You have to pray with me. We have to pray right now.” We prayed the Rosary, and we prayed the Divine Mercy. I felt the Blessed Mother.

She spoke to my heart, “It’s gonna be okay.” She just held me, and she held him. I was like, “I can’t be there.” But so clearly she said, “I’m there with him.”

I had the most amazing sense of calm for what was going on. It was really very weird. I knew, in that moment, it was going to be okay. And it was.

It was nine days and every divine sign that you could have gotten, I received. Every time I started to doubt, I would get a sign of trust. I love St. Therese and got so many roses during that time.

On the ninth day, they did the MRI, and there was no sign that anything had ever happened. He was perfectly normal. He went home, and he was fine. We’ve never had a single consequence since. Even the doctor was like, “That’s a miracle.”

The OB who ended up delivering me had been working for 45 years. He said that me and one other person were the worst cases he’d ever seen in his career. There was no reason that we both should of been ok, but yet we were.

I had this whole experience. About a month after he was born, I was so grateful, and I was thanking the Blessed Mother, and Apparition Hill came in my head out of nowhere. I looked it up online, and the very next day, it was showing in Detroit.

It was sold out, and I couldn’t get in to see it. I was so disappointed. I was like, “God, why did I think of this, and it’s showing the next day, and I can’t see it?”

I ended up feeling in my heart, the Blessed Mother was like, “Because you need to host it. That’s how you can honor me for what I did for you.”

I had never seen it. I was blindly going to show the film. I was going to invite 200 of my people to see this, and I’d never even see it. But, blind faith, I knew I had to do this. So I ended up hosting it. The first time I saw the film was the day that I hosted it. And we sold out.

Then when I was there, people were like, “Have you been to Medjugorje?” I’m like, “No.” I am terrified of traveling. Ask anyone that knows me. I’ve always been really bad about flying. I throw up on planes. I’m terrible. I’m the worst traveller ever.

People were surprised and they were like, “Well you have to go.” And I’m like, “Oh no no. I’m good. I saw the film. I experienced it. I’m good. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving the US of A.”

People were like, “I’m going to pray for you because I think you’re called to go there. You need to go there.”

I was like, “I don’t think so.” I really did not want to go.

Within two months, my heart started to change. I started to feel a calling to go. I just started praying about it, like this might really be a possibility for me. I just felt the Blessed Mother saying, “I want you to go.” I decided two months later, “I’m gonna do it.” So that’s when I booked it, and we ended up going.”

What was so weird was, here I am telling you what a bad traveler I was, and it was the easiest thing. I didn’t get sick, nothing. It was amazing. I felt great. My mom kept being like, “Who are you right now?”

I’ve even gone back to Europe since then. I’m cured from my traveling fears.

I feel like it was way easier than I thought. I mean traveling to Bosnia seemed crazy, then all of a sudden you were just there, and it felt like you were in a different world…”

Continue to Part 2