Wayne Weible - A Child Shall Lead Them: Stories of Transformed Young Lives in Medjugorje

Stories of Transformed
Young Lives at Medjugorje

WAYNE WEIBLE

2005 First printing

2006 Second printing

2005 by Wayne Weible

ISBN 1-55725-454-0

All Scripture references are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The messages attributed to the Blessed Virgin Mary given through the visionaries found at the end of each chapter and in the appendix are taken from the official translation supervised and approved by the Franciscan priests at Saint James Church in the parish of Medjugorje.

Library of Congress Cataloging -in- Publication

Weible, Wayne.

A child shall lead them : stories of transformed young lives at Medjugorje / Wayne Weible.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-55725-454-0

1. Mary, Blessed Virgin, SaintApparitions and miraclesBosnia and HercegovinaMedjugorjeBiography. 2. Medjugorje (Bosnia and Hercegovina)Church history20th century. 3. Medjugorje (Bosnia and Hercegovina)Biography. I. Title.

BT660.M44W42 2005

232.91'7'0949742dc22 2005016852

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete Press

Brewster, Massachusetts

www.paracletepress.com

Printed in the United States of America.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to the memory of Geraldine Loftus. Her struggle in life and courage in death have been my inspiration to write it.

I also dedicate it to the memory of Pope John Paul II, who passed on to his heavenly reward on April 2, 2005for his personal and public inspiration through his life, his active faith, and his leadership.

And I dedicate it to all of the young people whom I have written about: Their stories give confirmation to the love of the Father for His children.

by Svetozar Kraljevic, O.F.M., Medjugorje

Special Message

Dear children, I am calling you to a complete surrender to God. Pray, little children, that Satan does not sway you like branches in the wind. Be strong in God. I desire that through you the whole world may get to know the God of joy. Neither be anxious nor worried. God will help you and show you the way. I want you to love all men with my love, both the good and the bad. Only that way will love conquer the world. Little children, you are mine. I love you and I want you to surrender to me so I can lead you to God. Pray without ceasing so that Satan cannot take advantage of you. Pray so that you realize that you are mine. I bless you with the blessing of joy. Thank you for having responded to my call.

Message given to the Medjugorje visionary Marija Pavlovic on May 25, 1988.

The history of humanity often goes the wrong way because it deals with important world leaders, global wars, scientific discoveries, tragedies of all kinds and generally things of the world. It forgets or relegates to a lesser status the simple individual human beings who are the most important participants of history.

These individual human beings who do not pretend to do anything more than live their simple lives in the circle of their family and friends are the principal and leading makers of history. These people make history and history makes them. Unfortunately history often deals with the millions and forgets the individuals.

God is interested in the life of individual people. He wants to make the world a good place for each person. I find this book by Wayne Weible most inspiring because it relates the stories of individual people for whom God came upon the earth and died.

A Child Shall Lead Them does not speak of millions of people who are converting, those we do not know. Instead, it speaks about those people who appear in our lives, those we may know as brother or sister.

To read these pages is to sit with these people and have a comfortable, relaxing time together, maybe drinking coffee, listening and having an enjoyable conversation. When we give the proper attention to people who have names, who are true human beings, not lost in the nameless crowds, we begin the right journey with Jesus who met Matthew and the other disciples and called them to Him.

It is the same with Mary, who met the children in the hills of Bijakovici near Medjugorje and called them to her.

Svetozar Kraljevic, O.F.M.
Medjugorje, Bosnia-Hercegovina

It really does take the heart of a child to accept something as awe-inspiring as apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I discovered that when I went to see and experience this phenomenon for myself in the little mountain village of Medjugorje in Bosnia-Hercegovina. It was there that six children claimed that the mother of Jesus was appearing and speaking to them daily, and had been doing so for nearly five years.

The memory of the final minutes of my first pilgrimage to Medjugorje is as vivid today as it was that crisp May morning in 1986. The transformation to a childs heart reached its zenith for me as our group prepared to board the bus for the journey to Dubrovnik. We would leave the following morning for our homes in the States.

In anguish, I knelt alone behind the church, grasping all that I could out of the last minutes of our stay. I cried as I hadnt cried since childhood, wanting to stay forever in the peace and happiness of that secluded place.

I had arrived in Medjugorje as an adult, convinced the apparitions were truly occurring, but unsure of their ramifications for me, personally. Like millions of others before and after my first visit, I went home transformed into a child of God fully believing and accepting of the graces of this exceptional place.

I now understand why God, through the Blessed Virgin Mary, would choose young people to receive holy messages at Medjugorje and other apparition sites. The young are in a developmental period before their innocence is slowly tainted and corrupted by the world. They are pure, empty vessels waiting to be filled. The call to conversion, which is the major purpose of apparitions and other supernatural phenomena, is for us to again become like a little one, a repaired vessel in the process of spiritual replenishment regardless of age.

In the rustic, primitive beauty of this simple village nestled in the mountains, the Blessed Virgin began appearing to two boys and four girls. She didnt select the local Franciscan priests or nuns or other persons of importance to be visionaries. Instead, as in past apparitions, she chose childreninnocent, open, receptive children.

No one believed little ten-year-old Jakov and teenagers Ivan, Marija, Vicka, Ivanka, and Mirjanaranging in age from fifteen to eighteenwhen they first claimed to have seen a beautiful young lady immersed in a strange light on the side of Podbrdo Hill. The hot, rainy evening of June 24, 1981, would be but the beginning of many such appearances to the children. After several days of apparitions and spectacular miracles, few in the village doubted.