When Dijana's work phone rang, she was standing next to me. Four of us from the National Team were on a break in Baranja. A woman on the other end of the line wanted to help someone seeking an abortion and was asking for our assistance.

I thought, “Nothing new,” as I’d heard of such situations many times. When I heard the woman was from Dalmatia, I figured, “This one’s mine.”

Dijana briefly explained that a woman from the HR department of a large hotel had called. One of their employees, a young woman from distant Nepal, was newly employed through an agency. She was pregnant and wanted an abortion. She had just arrived for work and needed to send money back to her husband—severely injured with serious burns—and to her two-year-old daughter, who remained with him. She had come to ask for an advance on her salary to pay for the abortion, seeing no other way out of her situation. I promised to meet with her the next day as soon as I returned from my trip so we could figure out how to help.

Driving to meet her, I thought how I had a whole hour to pray—not just one rosary, but the entire Rosary. I had no clear idea of how to help her. Normally, I'd have a solution: if a pregnant woman was kicked out of her home, we'd find and pay for housing; if she was a student, we'd cover her tuition; if she lacked food, we'd bring grocery vouchers. But this case was different. This young woman was a foreigner. I knew she was here on a work permit, which depended on her employment. Without a job, she'd lose her right to stay. And yet, how could she manage such hard work in a big hotel while suffering from constant nausea? How could we possibly help her?

As I drove, I realized my only plan was to tell her not to go through with the abortion and to assure her that anything that followed would be better than ending her child’s life. God would find a way. I had seen it happen countless times over the past ten years. Every woman who said YES to life had seen her path open in miraculous ways.



I thought of a woman from a nearby town who had been through our Forgiven and Set Free program. She had four abortions behind her and carried deep regret. After completing the program, she experienced healing and told me to call her anytime I needed someone to share a testimony. When I called her, she immediately agreed to come, even though it was her first day back to work after vacation. But this was a matter of life, and so she came. Her daughter came too, to help with directions. I thought it was perfect—she could also share how devastated she was when she learned she had lost siblings through abortion. Perhaps this could help the young woman imagine how her little girl in Nepal would feel if she knew her brother or sister was aborted.

While they organized their trip, I arrived at the hotel. As I had informed the HR woman that I wouldn’t come alone, we decided to meet for lunch outside the hotel to protect the young woman’s privacy. The pregnant Nepali woman looked terrified and cried a lot. At first, she thought I had come to help arrange her abortion and explained why she couldn't possibly keep the baby, and why she had no other choice. In broken English, she told me how much she already loved her baby, but that her circumstances made carrying to term impossible.

As I listened, I noticed a car parked nearby. Helena and Ana had arrived. But then, to my surprise, Sister Elizabeth got out too, waving cheerfully as always. I hadn't even had time to tell them that the young woman was Hindu, and I worried she might misunderstand a nun’s presence. But the exact opposite happened. She felt nothing but love from all of us, and she especially liked Sister Elizabeth. Her initial fear melted into trust, supported by Mrs. Sanja from HR, who stayed with us the entire time.

We immediately felt affection for the young woman and her baby, and together we began to see a way forward. She wanted the baby but needed to support her family. So, our association offered to send financial help directly to her husband to cover his recovery and feed himself and their daughter. Meanwhile, we'd find her lighter work that she could do while pregnant. Pregnancy isn’t an illness. She could work until the later months, recover, and return to Nepal with her baby.

Her husband agreed. We even met him during that first meeting via video call—a young man in a hospital bed, wrapped in bandages, burned. With tears in his eyes, he thanked a group of Croatian women he'd never met who wanted to help his wife and unborn child, asking what we wanted in return. He couldn't comprehend why anyone would help so selflessly.

There was an added challenge: we needed to find her new work quickly. The tourist season was ending, the hotel was closing, and agency workers were being reassigned. If she went wherever they sent her, she might end up with a job she couldn’t physically handle while pregnant—or worse, risked contract termination and deportation. So, we informed the agency about her pregnancy and asked her to take responsibility for her care, knowingly stepping into legal and moral obligations without fully understanding the regulations and hurdles ahead.

And from that meeting onward, the obstacles never stopped. It felt as though everything conspired against that little heartbeat inside her. But one by one, by God’s grace, we overcame them—housing, employment, doctors, paperwork, language barriers, food, and cultural differences.

She came from the Sherpa caste and had grown up in the Himalayas. She was afraid of cars and unfamiliar with our systems, unable to manage daily tasks like going to a pharmacy without help. All of this happened during COVID-19, which made bureaucracy even harder.

We became her daily, unconditional support. Aware of her longing for her family and homeland, we tried to fill her days with small comforts and presence. When her pregnancy reached its later stages, we brought her to the Bethlehem House, run by our sister association, who cared for her lovingly until she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. She named her Cvita—a Dalmatian name, to honor the people who saved her life.

Meanwhile, Cvita’s father recovered. When we tried to reunite the family, more obstacles arose. We couldn’t get a passport for Cvita without both parents present, so her father had to travel here. It was another mountain of paperwork. Throughout this time, generous people offered them a place to live, and somehow the paths kept opening.

The woman from the HR department who first called us stayed by our side the entire time, taking days off to travel with me to visit our pregnant friend in Bethlehem. She said she didn't even know how we could help, and never prayed with us before, but she walked every day near the hospital in her town when she went to work in a hotel and at prayer vigil, she saw people praying and sign in their hands „You are pregnant? Need help?“ And phone number…That's how she finds us and asks for help…She became not only a dear friend of the 40 Days for Life initiative but also my personal friend. Together, we experienced countless adventures in saving this life and reuniting this family.

Soon, Cvita will turn three. She is a beautiful little girl who often visits the Life Center with her mother. Though Hindu, her mother loves participating in our rosary-making workshops—and now she even leads one, teaching other mothers how to make rosaries.

I truly believe the Lord has poured out abundant blessings on everyone who became a piece of this beautiful puzzle.