Medjugorje USA's POW Prayer Group
By Michael K. Jones

The suffering souls in Purgatory are crying out, we can help with a few simple prayers. For every soul that we help released from Purgatory, we gain another soul in heaven that is praying for us.

I have learned so much from Our Lady in the past 30 plus years of Medjugorje apparitions. On the 25th of every month I can still be found impatiently awaiting the new message of Our Lady much like a child awaiting a special treat.

I have noticed for some years now that Our Lady often repeats her thoughts. Last year I decided to reflect on all the messages and try to figure out why Our Lady was repeating some things over and over again. It seemed to me that there must be some importance which we need better understand.

So I started searching for keywords in Our Lady's messages, words such as grace, faith, prayer, fasting, etc. Every message I found that had the key word I was searching for, I would bookmark. When I had comprised all of the key word messages, I would read all the messages together. It was a very interesting research, which gave me a deeper understanding of the meaning of each key word.

One word that I noted several times was the word Purgatory. It seems most Catholic's think of Purgatory as a place between Heaven and Hell and the subject matter pretty much stops there. Yet after hearing Vicka talk about Heaven, Hell and Purgatory in 1989, I had a deeper knowledge of these places so I knew Purgatory was far more then just a place between Heaven and Hell.

After looking at all the messages of Our Lady on the 25th of each month, I decided to look at the early messages of the apparitions. This was something I had never done before. While doing this I discovered a message Our Lady of Medjugorje gave on July 21, 1982, our Lady say's, "Concerning Purgatory: There are many souls in Purgatory. There are also persons who have been consecrated to God - some priests, some Religious. Pray for their intentions, at least the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be seven times each, and the Creed. I recommend it to you. There is a large number of souls who have been in Purgatory for a long time because no one prays for them."

On earth in times of ill health and sadness, we are comforted by the offering of prayer. Yet Our Lady tells us in Her message that no one comforts the suffering souls in purgatory. When I realized this, I decided that Medjugorje USA's main mission would be to form a prayer group dedicated to praying for the suffering souls in purgatory.