**The text in this transcript may not match perfectly with audio. Subject to change**

[ANNOUNCER]

The subject matter contained in this presentation is based on Biblical principles and designed to give you accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. It is provided with the understanding that neither the presenter nor the broadcaster is engaged to render legal, accounting, or other professional advice. Since your situation is fact-dependent, you may wish to additionally seek the services of an appropriately licensed legal, accounting, real estate, or investment professional.

"No one can serve two masters. He will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life-- what you shall eat or drink-- or about your body-- what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

"Look at the birds in the sky. They do not sow or reap. They gather nothing into barns, yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they? Can any of you, by worrying, add a single moment to your life span?

"Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wildflowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will He not much more provide for you, oh you of little faith?

"So do not worry and say, what are we to eat? Or what shall we drink? Or what are we to wear? All these things the pagans seek. Your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

"But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil."

[THEME MUSIC]

[ANNOUNCER]

This is Mejanomics with a Friend of Medjugorje.

[JOAN]

In this Mejanomics today, we are going to join a Friend of Medjugorje from a talk he gave on December 10, 2019. The first part of this talk aired in a Mejanomics program this past December, and today were going to hear the second half of that talk.

A Friend of Medjugorje prepares minimally for his talks because he wants to give maximum room for the Holy Spirit to speak and inspire him the topics to address those who are gathered there with him for each individual event. Halfway through his December 10 talk, he took an unexpected right turn and broached the topic of child-rearing, a subject near and dear to his own heart because raising children today is so full of confusion for a lot of people, and yet, raising children to meet the challenges of a brave new world that were all facing, its vitally important that parents get it right.

Many of those who attended his talk came up to a Friend of Medjugorje to thank him for sharing this so-needed information and to encourage them to take philosophies that oftentimes go against the current of the culture.

So, without further ado, we join a Friend of Medjugorje from his December 10, 2019 talk given in the Tabernacle of Our Ladys Messages.

[CLIP: A FRIEND OF MEDJUGOJRE]

Our Lady said, October 24, 1988,

Dear children, your Mother wants to call you to pray for the young of the whole world

That means weve got a worldwide problem. You think, Oh, well, theyre better over here in this country, or whatever. No. satan was coming into the youth all over the world.

for the parents of the whole world so they know how to educate their children

Why would She say that, so they know how to educate their children? Meaning, a negative side of that, is why do they have to know that, is because we dont know that, and the things that are going to be coming on that grab the childrens minds and educate them in the public school system, the universities, all these things, parents, Oh, Ive got to send my kids to college. I told my kids from day one, from little kids, You will never go to college. I will never pay for it. And I trained them not to do that, and none of the seven have done that. Ones in Heaven. It destroys the kids. Well, they have to have that. I tell you what, Ill take any college student, put him against any of these kids here, even their social skills.

Theres somebody here who had his cell phone ringing the first day here. You may not have seen this. I wont pick you out because I dont want to embarrass you, but Lucy, shes eight. She hears that bell. She walks right over there and she says, Cell phones arent allowed in the Field. Youre not supposed to do that. Take that back out. You know, if I had said that, or if you said that, Oh, okay. [LAUGHTER] Our kids are very forward. They know whats right and wrong, and they have no scruples. We have a lot of vendors, because we have a lot of products, and so the different people come in. Theyll meet them out there in the parking lot, and there will be four or five kids, little kids, because the other kids are in school, theyll stand there ten or fifteen minutes talking to them. Last time I saw it happen, this guy comes and he says, Ive never seen kids engage adults. Its amazing. And theyre shocked.

But Im saying this only because our kids have social skills that there is no barrier, theres no wall that they cant talk to somebody. We have one family that left here, having been here for years, and the father came back to me a few months later and said that, All my family cannot believe, he was nine years old, his social skills. See, weve got our kids locked here. We dont let them go play sports and go to movies and do all these things, and were sheltering them. And yet, they can talk to anybody about anything? Except what we would censor. Our Lady showed us this way. We educate our children. Were not going to let the culture do it. And if theyre around other kids, they will be teaching your kids, or your kids and our kids, bad things.

Our Lady protected Baby Jesus, the youth Jesus, the teenage Jesus. And yet, he knew everything. In the Temple, I know everything. What do You want Me to go home for? Okay, Momma. Ill go. And it says, He was obedient. Obedience is everything. Our kids here, theres not a question about obedience because, if they do something, and they even balk at it, theres peer pressure from the adults. My dad, we were talking about stories when he was a kid, and if you busted a window somewhere, with a baseball, three blocks away, they would spank you. They didnt even know you. Corporal punishment disappears when you have peer pressure.

When all the kids go to the statue at apparition time, the babies, when theyre two weeks old, theyre out there. And the children, not the mom, not the dad, takes that baby to the statue of Our Lady during apparition time. Children, when they turn two, every one of them, will start pitching a fit that they want their momma there. And when it started, I told the momma, You stay here. Leave it alone. And the kids keep them there, and theyll go through about two or three days or five days or even a week of screaming, but the peer pressure of the children keeps them there and they dont question it. Thats where they do have to go down. They still play there, but they know theres something happening at that moment during apparition time.

That one right there was screaming there. He runs backTell them what I said to you.

[MAN]

You said, Dont let him win. [LAUGHTER] Go put him back up there.

[A FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

I said, Youre letting him win. Youve got to break it. Every one of the kids will do that. Theyll go and test the adults. But we dont know how to educate our children. Our Ladys teaching us that.

your Mother wants to call you to pray for the young of the whole world, for the parents of the whole world so they know how to educate their children and how to lead them in life with good advice

Who gives advice to your children? Are you more than the 50%, or are they more 50% being fed by something else? The world, cell phones, the school system, the sports things, all these things. Theyre all trained. Youre minimized as parents. You dont have control over your children. You say, Well, my children are grown. Youve got grandchildren. And yeah, you may have battles with your kids because they dont want to raise them different.

My dad, Italian, my mom, we loved to go eat pasta on Sundays. When I started going to Medjugorje, they had the T.V. I got rid of it. I quit going over there. Only twenty minutes away. Because I know I could not raise my children the way I wanted to grow them up and form them with that competing with them. And I love my dad. I had a good relationship. It was fun going over there, but thats one thing I gave up. And my two or three oldest ones would go spend the night. I stopped all that, because I had to get them away from things that are not so super bad, but it wasnt under the influence of Our Lady. So, I had to cut that, and it was very difficult, but I achieved that, and everybody else here has done the same thing.

So, you can see this, and you can watch these children, if you truly have been here over and over and over, they love coming here. Why? Because its freedom. The way to raise a baby is every day, micro, give them another freedom. We have people getting freedom when theyre five years old doing things they should never have freedom to do. And then, if you stop that, then youre resisting, so they become disobedient. Youve got nine-year-olds doing things thats what adults are doing. But if every day, micro, you give a little more freedom, they never feel oppression. Thats what Our Lady wants you to know. Give them God. Let them pray (play?) (11:00) around the Rosary. Let them scream. Let them holler. Let them do whatever they want to do. Let them bang rocks out there. None of the youth are told to pray the Rosary. Its natural. We dont have to tell them what to do because every day, we give them more freedom, and they come to their own reason, their own choice, their own decision. Youve got to educate their children that they make right choices, and you have to bring them at two weeks of old, no matter how cold it is. Thats part of our life. Theyre there. Theyre used to conditions, hard conditions. We were out there in Hurricane Ivan, trees falling all over the place. Weve been out there when lightning struck the ground and we felt it. We, literally, have been blown over. But we go out there, all the conditions. But its a beautiful thing the way we live. It all came from Our Lady, plus the way I was raised in the neighborhood and some good men around us.

Phillip Sessions, a Nazarene preacher, was our neighbor. He taught me more about Catholicism by teaching me how to be a Nazarene. Very moral man, very defining, very explaining politics. We called it elm tree philosophy, because when our dads cars come up, and the truck, on the hill, we all could be playing football out in the streets, whatever we would do. So, wed hear their vehicles. Theyd come up, and they had two or three lounge chairs, and the dads would sit there and tell us the whole thing about whats going on downtown during the 63 riots. Everything on the news, everything in the world. My dad was a World War II veteran. We heard these stories, and we were glued to them, literally glued to them. You dont have that anymore. Cell phones block that. T.V. blocks that. Games, all these things. Not there after school. And I learned a lot of philosophy, a lot of things about these men, and we literally sat on the ground at their knees, and they would talk an hour or hour and a half until the moms called us all to dinner and we all ran in. And the kids arent getting this. They dont hear it. Youre not passing anything on.

of the whole world so they know how to educate their children

Not the kids and how they be educated, but you educate how to lead them in life with good advice. Because they were always giving that because they were giving a slant on a political situation, the president, or whatever. We watched Kennedy get killed. We watched Oswald shoot him live, and they defined all this for us. But we have no defining. Youre dependent on the school to do it. Dont let your teachers do that. I dont care how good they are, the books are bad.

My oldest son, he brings home one book, and it says in there, a Catholic book, saying that Thomas More, who confronted the king, who was going to marry, get a divorce, and he wouldnt sign off on it, so he put him in jail. And the book says from there that he was executed because the Catholic Church wouldnt grant the king what he needed to have. They sided with the king when the whole Anglican church broke away, and this is in the books, and this is in the 80s. You dont even know what your childrens books are saying. And now what theyre teaching and all this abominable stuff. Its dangerous to be in schools today, very dangerous. You say, What can I do? Well, just what we did. Were the future, and youre going to have to do that, and its going to come by choice, or its going to come by force. Those things are going to happen. You say, Well, this is troubling because I cant do that. Well, it would trouble me. I went through a lot of difficulties. I had a reporter right there saying to me, she said, Dont you think youre sheltering your kids? Because we talked about the sports, how we pulled them out of that, and my kids were always very athletic. I said, Yeah. Thats exactly what Im doing. Im sheltering them. But Im sheltering them with something else. You cant take these things away without filling them. And that was one of my big concerns. But I trusted Our Lady showing me You get out of these things. Take your kids away from these things. Change these things. And I knew She would have to fill. I couldnt have an empty cup because the devil could get in it. But She filled it up and changed into something else. And our kids prosper. They still prosper today. So, Our Ladys teaching these things.

Pray, dear children; the situation of the young is difficult. Help them! Help parents who dont know, who give bad advice!

Its not that you have to give them bad advice. Its that you dont do anything, and you let somebody else give them bad advice. Our structure is deformed. Its not conducive to raising children. Agrarian life, parents together, single consecrated women, single consecrated men, is a perfect environment for them. Perfect. Were imperfect. And I always say were living a perfect way of life imperfectly. So, we fail with it, so its not always Heaven here, because Our Lady said a message, God gives you difficulties in your daily chores to test you. So, its not that everythings going to be okay and hunky dory. But the consolations and the joys that we have in life as a result of our life are contentment, a beautiful contentment. The kids have this.

August 14,

I would like to see in the future parents in the families work

W-O-R-K

work and pray as much as they can with their children

Why?

so they can, from day to day, strengthen their spirit

Our kids cannot even understand how there is no God. Its there. Hes there. Our Lady is there. Its so natural. Its so real. Theres never doubts. Theyre not going to get, when theyre fourteen, like, Is there a God? They know theres a God. You raise them that way, and its through your witness. Its through your prayers. Its not through long exercises like the Rosary when you sit in your living room, expecting them to sit there. Theyre not going to like that. The big word here, though,

I would like to see in the future parents in the families

I would like to see in the future, meaning, its not happening right now, and its diminishing right now. Right now, Im telling you, so that

in the future parents in the families work and pray as much as they can with their children, so they can, from day to day, strengthen their spirit

The big key here, is work. Were launching our annual plea for our funds which is the money to help sustain the Community itself. Weve got a lot of pictures in there this time, and its really about the kids. The kids are always with us in work, or around us. But its their life, and they sit on the dozers with us. So, our life is encompassing all these things about the messages that people would never relate them to. We translated these things into how were going to live, how were going to raise our children. You say, Well, I cant do that. I dont have machines. Its true, because youre not next to the soil. But where were going is next to the soil, and youre going to have that, by choice or by force. Were not going to stay where we are.

Our Lady said, July 31, 1989,

tonight especially I would like to invite all the parents in the world to find time for their children and family

Is that happening? If you get together in the living room, and theyve got their cell phones? Are you sitting together? Or are they all isolated on the little island of their little games of what theyre doing?

May they offer love to their children. May this love that they offer be parental and Motherly love

Im convinced that Our Lady is here, first, for the women, secondly, for the men. She gave a message one Christmas that She said, I will bless all the mothers on Christmas Day. Jesus will bless the rest. Why does She do that? Why does She say that? Because theyre special and theyre getting that? No. Its because they need that. Weve got motherhood messed up today. Weve got womanhood messed up today. This whole feminism stuff and all these things are straight from hell. This usurps the whole structure of the family.

And so, here it is, paralleling this other message, Im going to bless the mothers, just Me,

May they offer love to their children. May this love that they offer

Shes talking about parents,

be parental

She didnt say fatherly. She said,

be parental and Motherly love

She slants it to the mother. Why? Because when the woman changes, and she gets more virtuous, more modest, more poised, then the man is not excused by what her behavior is instead of lording over him. And you know all these principles through How to Change Your Husband, and it works, because the Bible works. What the Scripture says is what you have to believe in.

In Romans, it talks about these things. In Romans, it says,

To test what is evil, cling to what is good

We have many, many evil things today with the appearance of good. The appearance of it is good. This is Romans 12:9. And it adds from there,

love one another with the affection of brothers.

In chapter 13, it says, Obedience to Authority. And thats one of the problems in the family today. Its a problem in the whole world today.

Let everyone obey the authorities that are over him

This is the Bible. This is infallible. You have to do this. Whos over you? Whats your boss? Whats your position? Youve got to define the authority. Youve got to know whos in authority. Youve got to go to that. Theres a guy, he did incredible marriage retreats, and he told the story of whenever he goes to these churches, the first thing he would do, he would greet him, whoever it was, and say, Who here is in charge? Take me to him. And then they would go to him. It would be the pastor or somebody else. He says, What do you expect of me? What do you want me to do? Hes immediately submitting himself to that authority, because he doesnt have authority over them. The King of England would not even cross over the threshold of a peasants house without being invited in with his permission, because, as king, I dont have the authority to do that. Weve lost the value of authority. And this starts back in the family. You cant have two teachers teaching the same thing when they contradict each other. Youve got a math teacher that comes in and starts teaching this about equations, and then another math one says, This is the way you do it. And they just say, No, the other one said you want to do it this way. And the next day, they come back in. Theyre splitting the class, and this method is, This is how you go fix this equation. Then the other teacher comes in and says, No, thats not the way to do it. This is the way to do it.

How do we have a husband telling the kids one thing and the mother telling them another thing? Shes got to go with the authority. Thats what caused bipolar personalities, because theyre half the mom, half the dad. If theyre one, theyve got a good personality. And I believe that. Its that simple. Its a split in the family. You come one, find out whos in charge, and the questions, the kid comes to you, challenging the mom, and the dads not there, shes in charge. Shes the authority. And she can simply say by giving the examples of teaching, like the two math teachers, you have one teaching and one teaching obedience. All authority, not some of it, not 99% of it, but

everyone obey the authorities that are over him, for there is no authority except from God

This is from God. This isnt from me. This isnt opinion. This is not some philosophers talking about, Oh, this is the way to run it. God set that up.

[END CLIP]

[JOAN]

And that ends a Friend of Medjugorjes December 10, 2019 discussion on raising children.

A Friend of Medjugorjes philosophies, as youve heard, are based in reason, his own experiences, biblical teachings, and Our Ladys messages. Theyre not always easy to apply, but in following through with his advice, you get good results. Just to look ahead towards next week, a Friend of Medjugorje has a special that hes been working on that we strongly encourage that you listen in. It will be a week from today on Thursday, January 23^rd. Its very eye-opening, so join us next week.

On behalf of a Friend of Medjugorje, Medjugorje.com, Caritas of Birmingham, and the Community of Caritas, goodbye.

[THEME MUSIC]

[ANNOUNCER]

The subject matter contained in this presentation is based on Biblical principles and designed to give you accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. It is provided with the understanding that neither the presenter nor the broadcaster is engaged to render legal, accounting, or other professional advice. Since your situation is fact-dependent, you may wish to additionally seek the services of an appropriately licensed legal, accounting, real estate, or investment professional.

This ends the Mejanomics broadcast with a Friend of Medjugorje. These broadcasts are available as CDs which are sent directly to your doorstep on a monthly subscription. For information, contact Caritas in the U.S. at 205-672-2000.