We were spellbound by these stories that were told to us in a calm matter-of-fact way, by a clearly sane and well-balanced family. They told us there were many other stories of miracles, and some wild rumours too, but they were only telling us things that they knew for certain to be true. We were overwhelmed by the kindness of this family. It was only after the first night we realized with huge embarrassment that they had all given us their own beds to sleep in while they slept on the floor. On the following nights of our short stay, no matter how hard we tried, we could not persuade them to let us sleep on the floor instead. The family knew the visionaries well. Marko, one of the brothers, explained to us that he was actually going out with Mirjana, the oldest of the six. They insisted on organizing for us to be there with the visionaries, in the small side room of the church, when they would have their apparition. And, sure enough, for the next two evenings we found ourselves in a little crowded room just off to the side of the altar. Along with the bigger crowd in the body of the church we prayed the rosary together with the young visionaries, who again were of similar ages to ourselves. At a certain point all the visionaries suddenly stopped praying and simultaneously looked up towards the wall. Silence descended. We watched them smiling broadly and talking, but we could not hear their words. They appeared to be in deep conversation with someone we could not see. I was sitting so close to them I could have reached out and touched Marija, as she mouthed words to someone and seemed totally captivated and delighted. This lasted for a few minutes and then the children stopped looking up and became aware again of the rest of us around them. Together we resumed and finished the rosary.
During those few days in Medjugorje, I experienced a feeling of deep joy unlike anything I had felt before. I felt exhilarated. Our Lady had come to tell us that God existed. I believed her with every fibre of my being. I decided to respond to Our Lady’s invitation in my life as best I could.
The rest of our little party seemed to be having very similar experiences. We laughed so much together that week, and cried too. It was as if we were finding out who we really were.
Later in the week, we saw for ourselves the sun spinning and vivid colours radiating outwards from it across the sky. An incredible sight, but by then, given the events taking place in our own hearts, it certainly did not seem like the most amazing experience of that week.
We returned home to Scotland very tired and very happy. Mum and Dad and our grandparents, who lived with us, along with two trusted priests, awaited us armed with a tape recorder and a number of crucial questions, which they insisted we answer before we went to bed. They were determined to ensure we were not being fooled by some mischievous prank, or something worse, and they wanted to thoroughly check our information against the teaching of the Church. Mum and Dad were anything but cynical about this, though. In fact, in hindsight I think that perhaps all of us from the moment Ruth first read the little article in the newspaper at our breakfast table somehow knew in our hearts that this was true. I cannot think of any other reason for Mum and Dad encouraging us to go and see. But now they wanted to be sure, and they wanted to be well prepared to answer the questions that would undoubtedly be posed by others.
They were impressed by the information and answers we gave but, even more, in the days following, the changes they could see that had taken place in us. Their teenagers were now the ones encouraging them to spend time in prayer together – it had previously always been the other way round. They could see something profound had happened to us. Ruth, meanwhile, wrote an article about our experience, which was published by the Catholic Herald. They put our address at the end of the article and we started to receive many letters asking for more information. In fact, over a thousand arrived at our home over the coming weeks and while we headed back to university and school, Mum and Dad wrote handwritten replies to each. One letter arrived from a lady called Gay Russell in Malawi. She explained she was a pilot who flew a small plane across Southern Africa and she asked for more information. Mum sent her a letter. Of all the letters that arrived this was the one we remembered, even though we never heard from her again. The image of a lady flying around Southern Africa telling everyone about Medjugorje became a family joke. We could not know then that twenty years later, in very different circumstances, we would eventually meet Gay, in her African home, and that through that coming together something very extraordinary would happen.
Two months later, having written all their replies, Mum and Dad visited Medjugorje themselves. They had similar experiences to us there and when they returned, also convinced that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was indeed appearing on earth in our own day, with a message for humankind, they felt God was asking them to turn our family home and guest house into a ‘house of prayer’, a place where people could come on retreat and spend time with God. They began to block out some time from the normal paying guests (most of whom until then had come to fish for salmon and hunt deer) and to organize retreats. Our largest room soon became a chapel, the snooker table replaced by an altar, and, after some months, Craig Lodge the guest house, became Craig Lodge Family House of Prayer. As well as a multitude of visitors who came for a day or two, others would stay longer and soon a little community was born (the Krizevac Community, named after the hill of the cross in Medjugorje), comprising young people who came to live with us, who wished to devote time to deepen their spirituality and discern their calling in life, or who perhaps just needed a place of refuge to recover from what life had thrown at them thus far.
So our idyllic, quiet country house became a hive of activity. Having lived in a guest house or hotel since my earliest memory, I was used to others often being in our home. It was also not the first time Mum and Dad had made a dramatic decision that would alter the life of their family. Two years previously we had fostered Mark, a seven-year-old boy with a dreadful skin disease, who had been abandoned in a hospital in Glasgow. At twelve years old I was surprised and discomforted to find myself no longer the ‘baby of the family’. Suddenly we had in our midst a small boy with some serious behavioural problems, prone to spectacular outbursts of rage. We very quickly learnt from this little city kid a whole new range of swearing and ways to insult people. But Mark very soon became our much-beloved little brother and before long we adopted him. Not only did he become a permanent member of our family, but also for all of us an incredible blessing.
But Mum and Dad’s latest decision to open their doors was a new kind of invasion of our family space; a nice friendly invasion, but not one that I always found easy. The stream of house visitors was incessant and the boundaries around private family space were sometimes nebulous. Most of my social life was with friends who I had grown up with in the village of Dalmally, and as I grew into my late teens most of my time was spent away from Craig Lodge, playing sport or in the local pub. In that company I would almost never speak of my faith, the retreat centre or my experiences at Medjugorje. It was almost as if I began to lead two separate lives. I never lost my faith, and still prayed every day, but outside of my family there was no one I would speak to about this. My closest companion was my brother Fergus and together we were part of a very tight-knit group of friends who had grown up together in the village. From an early age we were all fanatical shinty players (the Highland sport with a slightly unfair reputation for violence) and most Saturdays we would turn out for our