But then Satan then taints your mind.
So you start finding these things very
lovely.
Like, not lovely, but like you were.
You find the dark things beautiful in a twisted way,
like you romanticize death, you know, you don't see it as what it is.
You see, there's some people in nice black dress,
white in forever frolicking through the forest.
I don't know how to say it, but, yeah, it's not the real thing
at all.
Susie,
welcome to the Anabaptist Perspectives podcast.
You're originally from Slovakia, I believe.
Which isn't where we are right now. We're actually in Ireland.
But there's a story there, and we want to capture some of your story
of how you came to Christ and the journey
you've been on over the years, and so, I guess, to start off with.
Yeah. Where were you born? What kind of
did you have?
A religious upbringing, you know? Yeah.
What was the environment you were born into?
Well, I was born in Slovakia.
I'm from Bratislava, which is the capital city,
and I grew up in the most densely populated district,
which was called Petrarca, which,
has a lot of, concrete
blocks of flats, like the typical Russian ones.
Oh, that's true, because they'd been Soviet Union before, Yes, yes.
So, yeah, it looks very, very similar to that.
And, yeah, I lived in one of those buildings with my mom and dad
and my brother and we were just like a typical family.
We went to school, my mum and dad were working
Yeah, I had no religious upbringing at all
because during the Soviet times, religion has been banned.
So there was like, you couldn't have any, religious
ideologies, like not just Christian, but any other ones as well.
So Christianity really kind of disappeared from from Slovakia at that time.
So no one was getting baptized, no one was going to church or,
you know, people were
learning more about what the party wanted them to know.
And so, yeah, when I was born, the communism fell.
the world had started changing.
I when I became,
when I went to my first grade.
That's when the religion started to get back again into the country.
They opened the first religious class.
It was a Catholic class.
And, I only knew about Jesus from Christmas stories.
a lot of the children went to this religious class,
but I didn't, and so you didn't. So why?
I don't know. I just didn't know what to do. There.
And my parents were not interested.
So I just was out with the teacher because it was after school.
So it was like an after school thing that you can choose to go to or not.
But I was very bored, so I was like,
all my friends are in this class and I want to go there too.
And I want to learn about Jesus.
Like it would be nice to know what what is it about more.
And he's a nice guy.
Just those little innocent thoughts.
And so I ask, mom, can I go?
And she was like, okay, she just let me go.
I don't really remember any details.
Like, did she have objections or not?
But then it turned out that this religious class was about
children getting baptized
because children were not being baptized back then.
So they wanted new people to start attending church and stuff like that.
So yeah, I was ten years old
and I asked my mom, can I get baptized?
Because I started to like Jesus.
He became my friend in a way.
I learned how to pray.
I was going to church with my friends.
My family didn't go to church because So just you then?
Yeah, it was with your friends. Yeah. And again, this is Catholic.
This is Catholic, Yes.
We just had church very close to our house,
so it wasn't a problem to go there with my friends.
And,
Yeah.
And then I ask, mom, can I get baptized?
And she didn't want me to get baptized because she didn't believe in it.
She didn't think it was necessary,
or she was worried that I was going to deep into it or something.
And she told me that I had this look of horror
on my face that I didn't want to go to hell
and so when she saw my face, she said,
okay, you can get baptized.
And I started the process of getting baptized.
I was,
we had several
meetings with the priest and,
yeah, he was just preparing us on the journey, and,
yeah, I got baptized and I still believe in God.
I still attended this class.
I was way older.
And then you go to your first communion, and then you go to confirmation.
And that was when I was in my teenage years.
I was about 13 or 14.
And then the priest said
that if you want to get confirmed, you have to be very serious
about your faith, because that means you were beginning your journey to live
like God wants you to live, and to follow the Catholic,
how would say faith
and, you know, like the rules and stuff
not just the basics of the Christianity, but like what the church would say, right?
Like what the Catholic Church would, would ask you to do.
Yeah. Okay. But I started having different,
different I
would I say interests, you know, teenagers.
They're influenced by television and music
and magazines and your friends especially.
And so I said to myself that, you know,
I am not serious and
I don't think I will be able for it.
And I would not be honest if I went ahead and got this confirmation,
and I told that to the priest and he was very disappointed.
But maybe he felt like, you know, better,
to be honest, than doing it and then just do it for the wrong reasons.
And yeah, ever since then I just abandoned the whole
like I didn't like I did like Jesus still,
but I just got deeper into other things.
So Christianity
kind of falls out of your life so to speak.
Right.
It just regular life starts happening
and you get involved in other things and just, it just kind of disappears Yeah.
In a way.
Yeah. Especially when you don't have it in your family.
It's very easy. That's true. Yeah.
So so like you so you had a sibling, you know, and your parents.
So they never really got involved in any of this.
No, no, I my brother used to make fun of me a lot about it.
So, you know, I was like, oh, okay.
I didn't find it.
I know, I guess I didn't have a relationship with Christ at the time,
and I just knew it from the Catholic point of view.
I didn't really read the Bible.
There were just the songbook that we had or whatever.
How the mass goes every time.
And it's always the same here.
And I didn't know much about how Christian lives or anything like that.
So I find other things to do.
I got into sorry.
So Yeah, that's what I was going to ask.
So what happens to you at this point?
So you're in your your teenage years? Yes. Yeah.
So life continues on.
You get involved in other things like. Yeah.
Where do you go then from this point?
Well, I started being interested in subcultures.
So subcultures as in the music subcultures,
either the alternative
scene where there was a lot of it was kind of new
because, yeah, the 90s and the early 2000s were like kind
of like the boom in the Western culture coming into the country.
Oh, true.
Because again, the fall of communism in 89,
I guess, is when I would have or 89, 90 when that would really start up happening.
Yeah.
So there was a lot of new music coming in and
I really liked it at the time.
Like I like the rock music and different things you know, the different bands.
And I got different friends.
And then you know
there were interests like in different like paganism
was very like hand in hand in with the subcultures and the music.
Oh, interesting.
So okay, I wouldn't have I guess that kind of makes sense now you say.
I just have never thought of that before.
So when you started getting into the music scene, did you start getting these other
ideas, world views, I guess getting pulled in with it.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
And everything just started to be so interesting and even
the television started being like, like the Harry Potter came out in the 2000s.
And then there was like the different like the witching movies.
It was a lot of them in the early 2000s and and on.
But like a lot basically with almost a a genre It was in a way.
Yeah.
And so that was like well I wonder you know the internet came out.
Yeah.
You know
it was very dangerous times I guess for it for, for, for kids at that time.
So yeah there is different
people meeting in different places and that had the same interests as you.
So you learn a lot of different things that you don't want to learn about.
So you then find out that, you know, witchcraft is true.
I like what if we could, you know, look into it with their parents.
Sure. What can you do?
We didn't know the real witchcraft. Where
people hurt other people.
But just like this watered down, like, a pop culture
where witchcraft is kind of for entertainment witchcraft.
I like Harry Potter, for example, and that's an entertainment thing.
I mean, it's a movie.
Whatever It wasn't serious in any way, because I knew that there are
demonic forces from from, like, the movies, but whatever.
But I believe in them.
And so I didn't want to go deep into that kind of thing.
Yeah. So then there was like the white.
The white, they call it like the white witchcraft or whatever.
It's all the same.
But like, you know, the Celts and the Vikings and their, their pagan
things and death, you know, the druids and the herbs and things like that?
That was very interesting.
But I again, I only saw it as I was just romanticizing it.
You know, it was just in that kind of like
the culture, the music, the clothes, the people, how they used to live.
That's what drew me to that.
So how how deeply involved then did you get into this, did
this turn into a major part of your life going forward,
you know, through your teens, into your 20s?
What did that look like for you?
because I was from the capital city.
There was a lot of places where you could meet
with people that are interested in this.
Different things.
Like there were people that were doing, like, historical reenactments.
And so they were very interested in this mythology and whatever.
Then there was this Gothic subculture, and they used to have like,
like different pubs.
We used to go to different pubs, and we used to have this thing called bat caves,
which were like kind of like a discotheque,
which was like underground and in
a, like a dungeon.
And it was.
Yeah, it's a bit embarrassing.
Sorry.
No, no I understand though because there's, this is a significant
undercurrent of culture. Right. In a lot of places.
I mean there's a lot of people
that get involved in this or become part of it, whatever.
But then Satan then taints your mind.
So you start finding these things very
lovely.
Like, not lovely, but like you were.
You find the dark things beautiful in a twisted way,
like you romanticize death, you know, you don't see it as what it is.
You see, there's some
people in this black dress, white in forever frolicking through the forest.
I don't know how to say it, but,
yeah, it's not the real thing at all.
Yeah.
You just go on tours like the horror movies and, you know,
then, like, it's like
it's like Satan is working in your mind, but you don't know about it.
You know, nothing
significant is really happening, but you find yourself getting, like,
depressed or you're not doing well at school,
or you don't get on with your parents very well.
You're a loner.
You just want to be with your friends, or you want to drink or you want to smoke.
You know, these kind of things.
So that's where a lot of my friends went down that road.
You mentioned Gothic
previously was that also part of the picture.
Oh yeah. Part of the story.
Yeah.
That was very much so like you would have identified with that at an for a while.
Yeah.
Oh yeah I would, yeah I would, we would go to,
we would
go to cemeteries and drink there and it would be just
that would be our pastime.
And we just love places like that.
Abandoned houses and just things like that.
There's that is
I don't I don't fully understand all the, the forces involved, obviously, but,
you know, Christ coming in and defeating death and conquering the grave.
And, you know, either the core fundamental doctrines of Christianity
about how death is a great evil that, God has conquered
and Christ has conquered, but then you have these other groups,
Gothic, you know, neo paganism, I guess, you know,
some of these groups that are say, oh, well, no, that's not that.
They reinterpret what death is and turn it into something that's they glamorize it.
Yeah.
There you go. That's maybe the word I'm looking for.
And I as a Christian, I've never understood that.
They just seems I don't get it at all.
But hearing what you're describing.
Wow. That's actually starting to make sense.
You know how someone could get into that? Yeah.
You know, if they don't have the Christian framework
of how death is viewed through, you know, in the lens of Scripture, they say that
they see it as a bad thing, like they don't want to live in the world.
Like, for me personally, I didn't like the world that I was in.
I thought people were judging me.
I couldn't identify with people.
So I thought, well, well,
these people understand me.
It feels good to be when you are down and like they're
the loner stage of life.
It it is just appealing to, you know, I don't understand it.
Now either,
but yeah, it was just some
it was just, I don't know, it was different.
And you can escape into that.
Reality almost like, like escapism.
I hesitate to use that term because I'm sure there's more involved.
But escapism is very real for a lot of people.
They just want to get out of whatever situation they're in.
You mentioned loneliness too.
It feels like that's an important part of this story.
Like looking for friends, looking for a place.
Well, yeah. Looking for a place.
A place to belong. To be a part of.
Would have that...
Maybe at the time, you couldn't have articulated like that.
But that would have been a one of the driving factors for you, I assume.
I suppose, because I don't know, was I too emotional or a deep thinker?
But I felt like that subculture in particular understand me.
Like when children are sad and then they hear sad music.
And I was like, oh yeah, that's exactly what I'm going through.
Even though it was just a really.
Teenagers really sometimes have silly problems. But anyway,
yeah, I guess that's what gets you.
These people understand me.
They know exactly what I'm going through.
They're not trying to help me. They're just being. Misery loves company.
And that's how it was when we were sad together.
You know,
was there any particular worldviews that you would have started associating with?
I mean, you mentioned the Gothic scene.
Were there others like, you know, New Age,
different forms of the New Age, movement, and
there's different spiritualist movements and so forth
that tend to get wrapped in with, as you mentioned, paganism.
But were there any in particular that you would have said?
Yeah, I identify with that.
I'm a part of this group.
Maybe later on when I met my husband.
Okay.
So that story goes well in my 20s then,
because I would still was in the subculture until like the 2012
when, like the end of the world and the Mayans were you in on that, a little bit.
Yeah. That. Yeah.
That was I looked into that a little bit.
And for those listening, I may not have a clue what we're talking about.
Yeah. That was really a thing.
Yeah.
You know, because the Mayan calendar supposedly ended in the year 2012.
And so that means the world's going to end or something,
or there was all kinds of different interpretations.
So I read some of the literature on it.
Just be like, what what is going on?
And yeah, that was that was really a thing for a while.
Obviously it's not anymore because that has come and gone and
but yeah, so
it was that,
it was that kind of a turning point for you, like it was supposed to end
and it didn't,
it was more that it was supposed to like transition into, like this better place,
like the world was supposed to be a better place or something like that.
well, that didn't happen. No, it did not.
You see, when you when you strive for your problems to disappear.
And the easiest way would be for the, for the world to end
or just to transform into a better place.
Oh, that is profound.
Yeah.
Yeah, that makes so much more.
And then, you know.
so no wonder a lot of people really probably latched on to that,
to looking for hope.
Yeah, It's like, oh, well, I don't have to.
I know I'm
in so much debt now when this world ends, or if we go into the four dimension
or whatever they were calling it, I'm not into that anymore, I am.
Everyone's happy.
I can start over.
I don't know, things like that.
So that
that was a pivot point then for you that year.
Yeah. Because at the time then I know
my now husband and we were talking a lot about it.
So I guess we were learning the different
spiritual
things about New Age, like how there is, I don't know,
I don't want to go into details because I don't want to influence anybody.
So but that that's where the new age element starts coming in
which, which also for anyone listening, we did interview your husband as well.
Got some of his story.
So Enda yeah, his his name and I'm not sure which order we’ll release.
Which one will come first.
But anyways,
because he was describing some of the new age and its appeal,
you know, to, to people and, and I can I honestly, I can see that
like if you didn't have a community or a,
the Christian setting or, you know, close friends like that,
you're looking for something, you know, well, okay.
To back up a little bit because he's, he's Irish, you're Slovakian.
How did you all meet and then start doing this new age thing
and yeah, walk me through that
because those two countries aren't exactly close to each other.
Yeah.
Well, I wanted to learn English,
I went prior, I met him, I went to England for two months,
and so I wanted to kind of push off and to keep going.
And so I just was looking for
like some sort of a chat room that with native English speakers.
And that's where I met my husband,
and I was 16 at the time,
and he was 19, and the year after I went to Ireland
and, yeah, we met as well.
In Dublin.
We met twice, and then we kind of just, had a relationship online mostly.
So it was a long distance relationship.
And it went on, I was going to Ireland
every summer holidays, and then I will come back.
And then eventually
my husband would come to Slovakia for, I think, about eight months or so,
and we would just go back and forth until 2014.
That's where I came to Ireland permanently.
Yeah.
again, this is where the new age element starts
coming in right after this
point after the 2012,
thing, you know, and, and so that gets involved.
Were you doing this, you and your husband together?
I assume there's that element.
Yeah, yeah,
yeah, because there was this lady that we were influenced by and she had some,
Now, when I think about it, it was.
It was real.
I'm not saying it wasn't, but the things she thought she was talking
to was not,
some ascended master aliens up in the sky,
but they were demons,
basically, she was channeling and she didn't know about it.
She thought she was talking to, like a
like a group.
How would I say a group
awareness of some sort like the, there's.
Yeah, there's teachings on that, like the divine conscious ness of whatever,
you know, it might be.
And we can access it through different, different means.
And that would that would be very part of the New Age movement.
Right?
They all get jumbled in my mind.
Yeah.
You know, But the basic theory about that,
like everyone is a part of this consciousness and,
and you are here to raise vibrations or something like that.
And it's very selfish, self-centered religion.
It's basically,
you are a god in a, in a center, a part of your part of the divine.
Yeah.
Do you have the role to to help people to to be enlightened or something.
I don't know.
But it's very it's a very self-centered setting.
Yeah.
But again that just strikes me as
you know you were searching,
you were searching for something and
without guidance or, or the right people in your life it's easy to, to.
Well we should try this.
Well and you know you're trying things like okay is this it,
is this the real thing. You know.
And I'm guessing this, this lady
that, you were connecting with probably had many things
that she did that sounded really convincing or or were very convincing.
Maybe they were the real.
They seemed very real.
I don't know if you want to speak into that, but,
because if there's dark forces involved, I'm guessing there's
there are elements that are quite convincing.
Very, because we got so deep into it that we wanted to do it as well.
So we paid a lot of money to get the course.
And she then she had like an, an, a private recordings of these things.
And,
she would
interview somebody in this state and then she would
interview somebody in a different state, somebody completely different.
And they will talk about what that person left off.
So it was very convincing.
But she thought she was talking to something that was good.
Here she was channeling the same force,
the evil force.
And the penny dropped.
And later on, when we found out
that they told her that she would live into a certain age or whatever,
and she didn't, she actually die quite tragically.
And that was just like, oh, wow, they were just playing with this poor lady.
The whole time.
It was very sad.
But I would say we were seeking a lot, especially because my husband's
sister was very sick at the same time, and we wanted to help her.
We thought this would help her. Didn't.
So, yeah,
there was there was a hard time,
Yeah I think
humans are and have this
drive to try to understand things
or to cling to something that will give them hope.
You know
I'm guessing you can you, you and your husband
would have been able to very much relate to this and during that time.
Yeah. Looking for something?
Oh yeah. We want because we wanted something good.
We were also at that stage I was just really tired of the whole
the things that I used to like
the ugly and the like then
and this poor sister passed away and then I seen the real face of death.
And that it's not so glamorous and so beautiful.
It's actually really horrible.
And that made me feel like, you know, I'm not immortal.
Yeah.
She was very young. And look at me.
I thought it's just old people that get sick and die, you know?
There was very.
That impacted me.
Really deeply.
And that made me want to I, I just started to dislike
everything about it, and I just wanted something nicer.
Something better.
But again, we were still quite blind
at that stage because, yeah, that's.
After that, when we were with Enda’s, my husband's mum for a little while
just to support her, and that's when the,
the paranormal started happening in the house,
where we were, and I was there.
Do you want to talk about that.
Yeah. Yeah.
Like what. Like what.
What was that like. Because.
Okay.
So in in America you know in Hollywood they like to make movies
about these things and oh, the paranormal, the ghosts that.
It's that. Yeah.
And on, one level, it's marketed as entertainment.
Right. It's just entertainment.
But on on another level for a whole, for another group of people.
It's not. It's real for them. Yeah.
And it's pretty easy to just be like, okay, that's just kind of Hollywood
trying to make money or whatever.
But there is an element to this that I think we can say is very real.
I mean. Yeah.
Like from what you all experienced,
but yeah, if you want to describe that for us Well, you see,
I knew that there and Enda was mentioning a venue was even when he was younger
or when they were just living there, things would be happening to them.
And I was like, okay.
At the time I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. You know?
As silly as I was, because I couldn't understand the whole
I couldn't imagine it. It didn't happen to me.
I don't think I even
experienced anything when I was in Slovakia.
So it was pretty new to me.
Like I knew these things happened, but I didn't quite seen it in real life.
And so yeah there were a few instances like I remember
like the knocking on the window, like when we were just, just chillen
in, in Enda’s room and next thing
it was dark and I think his mom went somewhere
and we just heard this real three knocks on the window, and it was a split second.
He opened the window.
There was nobody there, and there was nothing outside.
So that was quite scary.
We couldn't understand it because we knew that demonic
always does things in threes.
So the three knocks. Was this like, okay,
next thing,
we had the kitten at the time as well.
We clearly see a kitten climbing up on the bed,
just like the how the claws.
I just trying to get up.
And then I look across the room and the kitten sleeping in the bed,
its own bed, fast asleep away from the bed.
So there was like, okay, well.
And it's still, you know, I still kind of like, you know,
I wasn't too scared about it, but I started to be kind of curious
in a way.
Then Enda’s uncle's picture
that he passed away was turned to the wall,
and no one turned it around.
And his mom was very upset about that hanging on the wall.
No, it was it was...
but it was just me and and his mum.
And no one touched the picture and it turned itself.
I was turned to the wall facing the wall and she was very upset about it.
I was like, I would not dare to do that.
You know, that's very disrespectful.
And then another instance
was I heard Enda’s mum calling him
and he just would not go.
So I just wanted to like, why don't you go and like your mum is calling you
and he said she's not at home.
And at that point I was like, okay, well there is something going on in here.
Yeah.
And ya’ll both heard that No, I asked you just I heard it and I came to Enda
and I said, why aren't you going like she's waiting for you?
Oh my. Okay.
That must have been, that must have been terrifying when you realized.
Wait.
She's not even in the house. Yeah, she wasn’t in the house.
So somehow like then starting to be
instead of, like, not be in the house.
We started to get interested in the whole paranormal thing.
And I know there were different apps on the phone that you could download
and like,
you know, ghost boxes and isn't like, like ghost hunting
and some of these things like it's
actually a thing like I thought it was a joke.
And then I started looking at I was like, no, people take this very seriously.
They do all you can get all sorts of equipment for that.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
I mean, in my naivete, I just kind of a, you know.
Okay. Yeah. I mean, nobody takes this seriously, but.
Yeah.
Oh, no ghost hunting and all the equipment that comes with
it is very much a real thing, which is terrifying.
And Yeah.
But some people just get some sort of how would I say
not enjoyment, but it's like an adventure.
It's kind of like curiosity.
Yeah.
Like this is but but even you said like before you went
and experienced it yourself. You're like, oh, okay.
Like it didn't really it didn't. Yeah.
As as something, wait, this is actually horrifying and not okay.
Because you might think
that maybe it's just ghosts and they may want to say something,
you know, because I knew they were demons, but I thought demons were different.
I thought demons
do worse things
than just knock on windows, you know, like, yeah.
Now, now, you you would have known there's demons.
Like, why is that?
From your experience, going to church right early on or the music
or something like that, but.
okay. But you didn't put the two together that.
Hey maybe, perhaps the demonic element is behind
these things with the new age stuff you're involved in and, and so forth.
The connection hadn't been made yet for you at this point.
no, I didn't think that at all.
That's in it.
That's it.
That's I think a very important piece I think because I know
there have been plenty of times in my life
where I just thought, oh, anybody involved in this stuff
must clearly know that they're involved with dark forces.
And I've been hearing more and more.
No, it's actually deceives like, it's deception.
Yeah, yeah.
Again, when I was interviewing your husband,
he was saying we were trying to we thought we were trying to do
good things, and we were completely off, you know, I mean, very dicey,
you know, just just, you know, clearly had it wrong.
But at the time, it felt like we were trying to do what was right, you know,
Wow. Wild.
Yeah. Yeah.
Now, I think that these are really important pieces because it's so easy to,
misunderstand these things
or maybe not take them seriously or whatever the case may be.
Yeah.
So with the paranormal, situation like the.
Yeah, that must have.
Did that have a pretty big effect on your worldview and,
and how you thought about these things. Yeah.
Because it introduced me to like, oh, wow, the spiritual world is true is real.
I still didn't think of God or heaven or hell,
but it just opened the possibility of of life after death.
You know that there, there, there is more to life.
Like you just
made it, did it.
I believed, like I just had an idea of it.
But now I believe that there is like when you die, you, you,
you are still going to live.
So we were then going
into deeper into the paranormal because I don't know why I was so curious.
But yeah, we watched hundreds and hundreds of them,
and then we started
to see a pattern in how these things operate,
how they just subtly start with just making
people argue or,
you know, sometimes
paranormal things or, or demonic forces don't just necessarily move stuff.
They usually work on your emotions and they separate people
and, yeah.
So start to see different patterns and then different ways that help people
who are dealing with these things, how they were trying to get rid of them.
So our mission was to get rid of it.
And so, we started to see that,
like these people, they were smudging the place with sage and things like that.
The things always came back.
So we abandoned that idea with a straight away.
And then and then this man,
he was he was like a self-proclaimed exorcist.
But he was a man.
Like he believes in God, you know, we know him. We know him.
he started ordering
these things in the name of Christ.
And I was like, that's very interesting because Jesus was in the new age,
but he was just like an ascended master, you know?
Oh, so like, not divine in the sense that Christians would say he is and so forth.
Yeah, he would be divine, but more
with the knowledge that he had, rather than him being the savior of the world.
Okay, that's a critical difference. Yeah.
Yeah okay.
And then we were like, well, why weren't they saying,
like, in the name of Budha or somebody else?
It has never come up in any of those videos that we were watching.
There was nobody there was called.
They were either doing this shamanic stuff or they were using Jesus,
but nothing else.
Like at least what we have seen, there was nothing else
but the name of Christ was working, you know?
And so I was like, wow, that's that's very interesting.
And at the time, we had this friend that used to work with us
and he was the, he is a Jehovah's Witness.
And, you know, he kept telling Enda that, you know,
these are demons, you know, and they're like, yeah, okay.
The ghosts, they're not demons.
And, you know, and then so and there was on the mission to prove him
that he, he started reading the Bible.
And,
then he got interested in Christ more and more.
Oh, was he was he started reading the Bible to.
I want to prove this. This person wrong. Right?
necessarily that wrong but I just want to learn more and yeah to have a debate
because he, he loved to debate, you know that friend in particular.
So Enda wanted to be ready for him.
So the more he wants to debate the more Enda read the Bible.
Oh. That's incredible.
What what a, hey, it gets you reading the Bible.
That was.
That's amazing. Yeah. You know, that's amazing.
So, you know, it says every knee will bow in the name of Christ.
And it did.
And we went.
And then, we heard that the paranormal activity
which came back to in this mum's house again, she was experiencing things.
And so we said to her, well, you know, maybe you can say to it
to leave in the name of Christ,
which is say, say, go in the name of Jesus
and really believe it.
And so she said, okay.
And then one night she rang us and she said
now, I don't know, sorry.
But she did see, like a figure,
appearing from underneath a blanket or something.
And then she seen this hand put towards her
or going towards her, and she was so scared she couldn't speak.
And but she remembered what Enda had said to her.
And she did say
eventually for it to go away in the name of Christ.
And she said it just went like.
Like that was she she wasn't a Christian? No.
At the time. She wasn't a Christian.
But she believed in the power that God can do it.
It's almost like, do you believe that I can do this?
Yeah. Oh, that is that is amazing.
It's incredible.
And at that point I was like, wow, Christ is real.
You know, God is real.
And it was like, oh, we need to come to church.
We have to find church.
And we were just so shocked
that that's where the Christian journey for us started.
that is kind of
phenomenal to me, that the paranormal or whatever you want to call it,
and it's response to the name of Jesus is really
a significant part of you all starting your journey to Christianity.
Yeah, well, that's not the normal path people take.
Christianity.
But it connected with you.
I I'm getting a sense it connected with you and your husband
because you had been in this world before.
This probably was really stuck out to you as whoa, We've never seen this before.
No. And it was just so incredible.
Especially the way I believed her when she told me to start.
Because I knew, you know, why would you?
Why would she lie. Yeah. She.
Yeah.
Like, I have experience it myself, I know. Well.
And at the time, she was in such a bad place
that I think that it was manifesting in a bad way. So
it it confirmed her like it converted her to really.
So she became a Christian then?
Yeah, but we were very.
How would I say not a like we were Christians,
but we were we'd still we're like at the very, very, very beginning.
So we still were in our old ways.
Well, I was I, I don't think I was reading a Bible at the time much.
I just know I got inspired by my husband reading it.
And so we were kind of
going on that journey together.
And then after this, we found a church.
And because we wanted to learn more about the faith,
but I didn't want to go back to the Catholic Church.
So any church will do at that stage,
and it was very charismatic church too.
So it really helped me to build that relationship with God and Christ.
But then,
we were learning more about the Bible,
and then we seen the heretical teachings
of that particular church that we were in involved with.
So that was disappointing.
There was like this whole Christian world that opened up
with all these different denominations that we just were.
So we were lost.
oh, that must have been incredibly confusing.
Very confusing, because neither you or your husband
had interaction really with Christianity to this point.
I mean, not not to a meaningful level, at least.
So you're coming in with
having read the Bible and some of the things that a Jehovah's Witness told you.
And that's
and a little bit of Catholic background, so you don't have much teaching
or context, I guess I would say for Christianity to begin with.
Yeah, that must have been hard.
Yeah it was, but my husband has such a great ability to research.
Yeah, yeah.
There's he had.
Yeah, he
could, he could discuss with this friend for hours.
Why what he believes in some certain things is not
the way the Bible says it.
You know, because the Jehovah's Witnesses have their own Bible.
And then there is
the other Bible, like, Oh, I bet those were some interesting conversations.
They were very long ones, too.
But, you know, it was good for something like it
was it definitely helped us in our, our Christian journey.
And then we had the problems with this church that we were part of.
Yeah, we were learning.
We were still learning.
We were still looking for answers.
It was very difficult in that church for us.
Well because, because then that, that must have started you on a journey of okay
you've, you've read the scriptures, you've become convinced that it's true.
You're starting to follow Christ
now like you said you're in the very very beginning.
Yeah. Steps. You know, of that journey.
And now you have a pretty, complicated
process of, okay, what does church look like for for you?
I can't even imagine what that would be like coming in with
with so little context about Christianity, you would have so much to learn.
That must've been quite the process.
was a lot.
Yeah, it was like the church where we were part of it was still kind of
bells and whistles, like in the in a way that you still felt like the
it was like from going from the new age on all the, the wonders and the
and the paranormal and everything where you could kind of see and hear
and touch and so, you know, it was
it was very similar in to that charismatic church to, you know,
people were speaking in tongues and there was music
and people were spontaneously laughing.
And it was, you know, but it was not in their eyes that that was that was God.
There was the Holy Spirit, there was the opposite.
But I started feeling like, well, I don't feel that way.
I don't feel like bursting out laughing, or
speaking in tongues or am I not believing enough?
You know, if I, I, I started just feeling that way.
It's like I just couldn't feel what those people were feeling. Ooh.
And that that must have been disorienting.
Yeah. It was. And so I was kind of like
how would I say I just had to go to God.
Like how do, how do Christian live.
Like I know there's Muslims and they have their communities
and they have their different clothes and they have their culture
that they had their faith, but they live in it all the time.
I go here, and I feel good for the Sunday.
And then I come home, back to my own bed and my life, you know.
Yeah. And I wanted something more.
I wanted to live it every day because it just felt right at that time.
It's like, God takes
the the darkness out of your eyes and the
you want him more and more and you don't find you love.
I used to hate color.
Like I was always wearing black and stuff, and
it just I started to enjoy things.
I loved flowers, everything lovely and colorful, and I just wanted to be in that.
And it wasn't when I came back home from church, like we had no community.
Those people just went back to their own work.
And yeah, we
then had a very complicated relationship with the pastors and the people in there.
The more we knew and the more we were questioning.
So and I was asking God about how to Christian live
and so, yeah, I seen people head covering.
Then when I was trying to figure it out, I think I just stumbled across
one lady and she said she was a Christian and she was head covering where
I was on YouTube.
Sounds like rain.
Oh yeah. Yeah, well that lady. really. Okay.
So just searching.
Yeah. On the internet and you just find things.
Yeah.
So I was like, all that is interesting.
Were they.
When I looked at their vlogs, they were a Christian family.
They had their community.
They talked about God all the time.
They had all of this music or whatever.
And I wanted
and I, and I so I learned why she's head covering
and I wanted to I felt like I want to do it too.
And but I couldn't find anybody in Ireland doing it.
Like even in our church, no one was talking about head covering.
If anything, it was more like, I don't know what they were thinking,
Because Ireland would be
at least nominally very Catholic.
Right.
But beyond that it's actually just pretty secular.
Right.
And there isn't that much no Christianity as we would think of it.
Right. The kind that’s lived out.
And and so forth.
It's almost more like a box that's checked.
You know, I'm a Christian, kind of like.
Is that a fair assessment? I don't want to.
Yeah, there is,
but then when you're like in the, I would say in the Pentecostal circles,
you do have churches like that,
but I never like I did look like I told you, it's not too bad, you know,
but I just couldn't find anyone that head covers, and that was my requirement.
Like, if they do obey this from the Bible, I'm sure they will obey way more.
And they would take it really seriously.
So are we just searching on the internet?
Like, I don't know, head covering Christian in Ireland and things like that.
Nothing came up.
And but then when I wrote the head covering
a bunch of Anabaptist people came up.
So, there was.
Yeah, that's what, that's what that's what opened the door to all everything
through all the struggles we had and the searches of the searching
of the different churches and denominations. And we can be part of.
And I really,
I found this particular lady that I really enjoyed watching her vlogs
and the way she was presenting herself and the.
Like, she was wearing a cape dress and she was wearing a head covering.
And I was really interested in that.
I was like, that's very nice.
and presented it to my husband and just like, what do you think of this user?
I think she was like, she's a Mennonite.
And then,
so I was like,
I wonder if there's any Anabaptist in Ireland.
And sure enough, there was and I just could not believe it
that there is church in Dunmore East.
And so we have looked in their website and then there was,
listening to their sermons as well
as you were trying to figure out what they believe in,
because we were just like going from denomination to the other,
and they believe in this, but they don't believe in that.
And these go to war and these, you know,
so but then the Anabaptists, they,
they value the Bible so much.
We really like the way
it's not just about the outwardly appearance, but like even the, the,
the nonresistance was very is like, wow, they, they, they're even non-resistant.
And so yeah.
And they had, got a contact with the pastor Dan
at the time and
they became really good friends and he helped us to answer questions
that we had that we couldn't talk to our pastor about.
And, yeah, we then decided to leave the church
we were in, and we came to visit here
and this church here.
And then that begins the whole that, that next part of the journey.
Right.
Because ultimately, had to move that I'm assuming from a different place
to join the community here and, and so forth.
I'm guessing that this whole process, this is probably a pretty long process
from first coming to Christianity to begin with, to ultimately
where you are now here in the south of Ireland, now in Dunmore East.
That was
probably a long process about how many years was that?
I'm trying to think I was pregnant with my first child, so that was 2020.
So I think we kind of made the contact in 2019.
And since then we, we, we were maintaining our relationship with the church.
And because we lived so far away,
we tried to make it our business to come every two weeks.
But it wasn't it just wasn't working out.
Yeah.
And so we were like, we know we have to make a decision.
Do we want to stay.
And who knows what Yeah, we will be doing?
Or do we want to join this church that we want so badly to be part of?
Because we we, we liked not just the community,
but just the you live Christ every single day.
And I just really, really liked that.
And it was like the answer to my prayer that I was talking to God about,
about how the Christian lives.
And this was the answer.
Wow. And, yeah.
So we decided to move over to New Ross.
At first because for a very long time we couldn't find any house to stay in.
So the the move was very dramatic,
especially,
Enda’s parents were not very happy about that.
So yeah, that's we moved there.
And then we got baptized in 2022.
So what a what a journey.
You know from Slovakia you know and
some interactions early on with the Catholics
and then on to these other things you were part of, and then ultimately
finding the scriptures and how that completely changed your life.
Yeah. Just completely. completely. Yeah.
It is just a testament to how powerful God's word is.
Very, You know. Yeah.
So I'm, I'm guessing there's people listening to this episode
that are on different points of maybe a somewhat similar journey.
You know, they're trying to find maybe they're testing.
Is is Christianity true or what what church should they consider joining?
You know what community should they what should they join in?
And these journeys are sometimes long
and not always a straight path, you know?
But what would you say to to someone in that position to encourage them,
or any advice you would like to give to someone like that?
Well, I’m not the source of wisdom or like, you know, not very good
and encouraging people, but I would definitely say that
please keep seeking and there is no wrong questions
and that God meets you where you are and he
he gives you.
If you are serious about your journey and if you're
serious about looking for God, he will show himself to you.
If you're doing it for the good reasons,
then he will meet you where you are.
Be being in a Pentecostal church, being out in the world somewhere.
He will meet you there and he'll lead you home.
And just don't give up.
Sounds like, faithfulness
to what God is calling us to is one element, but also patience.
Yes. Patience.
Yeah.
Because it didn't happen just immediately for you.
Yeah. This was a long process.
Yeah, definitely.
It's nothing radical like I always thought it would be.
Just this profound. Radical change.
But now I just see it's not.
I don't think
people would really handle it that well if it was a radical experience.
And yeah that's true.
I hadn't thought of that.
It’d be almost too much of an adjustment all at once.
I'd say. So.
I think people just need time and God knows that.
He knows everybody intimately, and he knows what works with other people.
you know there's a there in revelation it talks about how,
Christ followers overcome
through the word of their testimony and through the blood of the lamb.
And then you've definitely shown us both of those today.
You know, on, on this episode, you know, that our testimonies,
our stories have power, because of what Christ has done.
Because because of who he is, not who we are.
As we bring this, this story, you know,
pull this package together and, and bring this episode to a close.
Is there anything else you would like to leave with the listeners?
I just pray that everyone will find what they're looking for.
Yeah.
If you're if you're struggling, I do pray that you will get in.
You'll have peace.
But God is good.
And he sees you when he sees your pain
and he will lead you home.
Just be faithful.
Well, Susie thank you so much for sharing with us today.
Thank you.
Thanks for listening to this episode with Susie.
If you found this interesting, you should go to our website
at Anabaptistperspectives.org where you can find all our content.
We've recorded a number of other life
stories on this podcast and I hope you find those interesting.
Thanks again for listening and we'll see you in the next episode.