The Spirit of Medjugorje

Memories of the Early Days

     The following testimony of Suzana Mixan is excerpted from Fruit of Medjugorje #574 on marytv.tv aired on 9/9/24. The entire testimony of Suzana and her husband Joe is quite long. We plan to use more excerpts in the future. Since we celebrate the anniversary of the apparitions this month, we thought you might like to read about someone who was there.
     My story in Medjugorje starts when I was six years old in 1981. My mother was born in Medjugorje. She is a native. She got married in [the] neighboring town, Čitluk. We lived right behind the church.
     When Our Lady appeared, the parish priest called my mom... and said, “You have to come to Medjugorje because your mother is calling you to come immediately.” Because we were her first medical care providers…we thought that's what she needs, to take her to the doctor or something like that. So my dad, my mom, and I - at the time I was six years old - we got into the car and we drove to my grandma's house. She lived right at the foot of Cross Mountain… When we pulled in with the car at my grandma's house, my grandma said, “Don't get out of the car. Last night some kids in Bijakovići said that they saw Our Lady on the hill, and there's people gathering. They think She will appear again.” So, we really didn't doubt anything.
     We pulled up with the car [near Apparition Hill] and my mom, knowing all the local ladies, started talking to them. There were about 200 people visiting. She was standing in particular with this one elderly woman, when some kids out of this group were kind of pulled and started running up the hill very fast. We wanted to go, too. People started chasing after them. We didn't have really good shoes and my mother asked to switch shoes with this older lady, because she had more comfortable shoes. They switched the shoes and my mom said, “Why don't you stay with this old lady?” and I said, “No, I will not stay here. I want to go …” My mom wasn't going to waste any seconds anymore, arguing with me. She's like, “OK. Let's go.” My mother (her name was Angelica) knew every corner of that hill. She used to cut firewood and she used to hide from the woodsmen…She knew where there would be more clearing and which way would be easier to climb the hill. So what she did, basically, she took me, pushed me like that (gesturing) with the hands and then she would jump. Somehow we went around there and we were right next to the visionaries on June 25!
     Me, being six years old, most of these events I just told you, I don't recall. That's stories from my mom, who has since passed away. But what I remember the most was being right next to the visionaries and they were in ecstasy, having some kind of moaning and groaning. They were on their knees. They were so overwhelmed. Their bodies were even like experiencing something (gesturing), kind of movement. I was just looking and trying to see what they're looking at. All I would see is butterflies and birds, maybe here and there, going around.…some priest later explained that [the] Mother of God, She is full of grace. Even though these kids were young and pure, their spirit still has to adjust to such greatness.

Suzana, photo credit marytv.tv

     [At this point Suzana's husband, Joe, gave his testimony, which we will share in the future.]
     ...My story with Medjugorje right after the first day continues. The first days were amazing because there were so many miracles that we saw the first days. Because I was a certain age, that my grandma needed - especially during the summertime and weekends, when I didn't have school - I often spent time with her to keep her company, help her, run to the grocery store for her or something like that. So I experienced Medjugorje when miracles would happen. We would pray the Rosary and look up the hill with binoculars and watch the Cross Mountain. And we would see it [the Cross] just sometimes disappear. Or sometimes we would wake up in the morning and look up and it was spinning.
     On Apparition Hill, the signs were all kinds of signs - lights, flashes of light. At that time there was nothing even close that would make such big flashes of light…Once actually, we would go with my mom and we prayed the Rosary - we went up the hill and then we saw rainbow color balloons dancing from the sky up to Apparition Hill all the way back to Cross Mountain, like that (gesturing). In the beginning days, I remember when people were talking how this man, that was local, washed his hands with dirt from Apparition Hill. He was blind and was able to see!
     I experienced Medjugorje in the first days when we would fast strictly. First Our Lady said Friday. Then we fasted on Wednesday on bread and water. I remember in the first days when Our Lady said, “Let's start praying 7 Our Father's, 7 Hail Mary's, 7 Glory Be's.” So we prayed that. And She said, “Joyful Mysteries.” So we prayed Joyful, and continued to all decades of the Rosary. And then also I experienced the people from other countries when they started coming. We used to call them, when I was little, “foreigners.” We were really intrigued when they would speak a different language to us.
     A very special thing that I had with my grandma: She was very kind of crippled. She had a cane and she had really bad arthritis. She was very hunched down. She wasn't able to walk very fast or much. But she had binoculars. My uncle from Germany got her binoculars. She would remember what color was the color of my shirt. So I would go up the hill and pray the Rosary and she would be on her balcony, watching and praying the Rosary with me. So we felt like we were connected. She was a very holy woman…She prayed the Rosary so much that she had indents of the beads in her thumb. And she read the bible so much. She read the bible as she was cooking. Her bible was literally very dirty from everything she was doing at the time…She would also, as much as she could, she would visit elderly people in the village and pray with them - pray the Rosary and read Scripture to them and just visit them. And then sometimes, even if they just needed a haircut, we gave them haircuts! She was very special. I have very fond and many memories of my grandma.