The John-Henry Westen Show - October 03, 2025


‘They Treat Kids Like Gold’: Catholic Family FLEES to Russia?!


Episode Stats

Length

35 minutes

Words per Minute

165.15996

Word Count

5,834

Sentence Count

485

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

30


Summary

Joseph and Anne Schutzmann moved their family from America to Russia in order to escape the harsh winters and harsh winters of the Great Depression. Joseph describes the joys and hardships of living in Russia, and how he and his family adapted to the culture.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I've been asked on many different interviews, what's your favorite thing about Russia?
00:00:04.080 And it is absolutely, Russians treat children like gold, like gold bars. That's how they treat
00:00:09.700 children. Hello, my friends. Welcome to the John Henry Weston show coming to you from Moscow,
00:00:16.520 Russia. We are here in the home of Joseph Schutzmann and his family. Thank you, Joseph,
00:00:22.400 for inviting us. It's our pleasure, John. Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.
00:00:26.540 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Joseph and Anne Schutzmann,
00:00:33.480 thank you for having us. Would your children care to introduce themselves to us? Of course.
00:00:38.460 I'm Luther. I'm Marie Tornet. I'm Joseph. This is Wolfgang. And this is my first Russian son,
00:00:46.500 Misha, or Mikhail. I'm Florian. Florian, good to meet you on camera. We already met before. We've
00:00:54.700 seen each other around since you accompanied your dad on various things. Now, I was most impressed the
00:01:02.380 other day when we went to a very long Orthodox service with the Patriarch Kirill. And then we
00:01:11.040 went to Mass. It was Sunday. And so we went from the one to the other. And it was an Armenian Rite Mass.
00:01:17.940 And you stood and stood and stood and stood and stood for many, many hours. So that was very
00:01:24.980 impressive. Now, you also wrote a beautiful birthday card for your dad. In the birthday card,
00:01:32.100 you expressed he wasn't with you on his birthday, which was kind of sad. But what was he doing,
00:01:36.720 did you say? He was doing Our Lady's work on her day. Isn't that beautiful? And what day is that?
00:01:43.200 Wednesday. And what day of hers is that? Our Lady of Ransom. Oh, beautiful. Do you remember
00:01:49.240 living in America? Yes, I remember some memories. She was cooking with this wonderful straw that had
00:01:54.780 these lovely sandwiches. Do you enjoy living in Russia? Yes, I do. You do. What do you like about
00:02:00.440 it most? The friendly children. Ah, the friendly children. Are there many children here that you
00:02:05.900 get to play with? Not in this village. But we sometimes see adults passing by. But it's usually
00:02:15.600 when we go out in Moscow. And you guys attend a Mass in Moscow every week. And where is that?
00:02:24.700 We go to the Armenian. We go to the Latin. Okay, so you go to the Armenian Mass and to the
00:02:29.880 Latin Mass. So are you learning Russian already? Yes. Chuchot. Okay. I don't know what that means
00:02:36.920 yet, but that's okay. What does it mean? A little bit. A little bit. Okay, very good. Chuchot.
00:02:42.620 Chuchot. That's going to take me a long time. Last thing for you. Why do you think you are here?
00:02:50.040 What's the mission? To do Our Lady's work. Beautiful. Thank you, Fleurie. It was great talking
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00:03:26.320 for your support, and may God bless you. Joseph, Ann, thank you so much for having us. You moved from
00:03:32.980 America to Russia. You had six children when you moved. How old was the oldest when you moved?
00:03:40.180 The oldest was Fleurie, and she was six years old, I believe. That's correct? Yeah, it's six under six.
00:03:45.360 Most recently, we were living in Kansas. I'm from Texas originally, but Ann is from Australia.
00:03:50.900 Everybody's going to be asking, why would you do that, and why Russia?
00:03:55.600 You know, we did talk quite a bit about this. This ironically actually didn't start about
00:04:00.800 by moving to Russia. It was first and foremost about leaving America. You know,
00:04:07.760 Ann had already left her family to marry myself. Had the six children in America, so she already
00:04:17.860 abandoned her country for myself, but then we kind of re-evaluated the situation, the direction in
00:04:23.960 which things are going in America. Certainly the way that things were going in America, I believe it
00:04:31.100 still are going in this ultimately horrible direction. And, you know, a lot of people,
00:04:39.000 when they're kind of thinking about this and the environment for their children, they're thinking
00:04:42.620 about the here and the now, not what's actually coming. And I don't mean the apocalypse. Certainly
00:04:50.180 it's always coming every day, but what happened during COVID destroyed a generation of children.
00:04:55.280 It was already being destroyed, certainly the schools as they are now today, particularly the
00:05:01.580 public schools and whatnot. But after the whole COVID thing and people lost their ever loving minds,
00:05:08.280 we saw an entire generation of children that was destroyed. They were behind and so far behind in
00:05:18.000 their school, loss of focus, lots of experimentations on things that children should never
00:05:24.500 ever be exposed to. And not only are those the children that came back out after COVID, but
00:05:33.380 those are going to be adults one day. And my children will be adults with them and they will
00:05:38.560 live in the world with those children. And that's what we did not want for our children.
00:05:45.440 So you took it upon yourselves to come to Russia. Many people are going to say, but there's other
00:05:52.920 places in the world. Why are you Russia? Aren't they anti-Catholic? And it's not even one of the
00:05:59.100 official religions. And you guys are Catholic. In fact, you're traditional Catholics. What are you
00:06:06.320 doing?
00:06:06.800 You know, we talk a lot about the divine law. We talk a lot about the laws of the church.
00:06:14.200 As Catholics, as traditional Catholics, we have several laws that are, of course, built one on top
00:06:20.040 of the other. But I think that people too often forget that the natural law, all the laws,
00:06:28.120 the original ones and the ones of the Catholic church are created or inspired directly by God.
00:06:36.200 The natural law was the very first law that he imposed on this earth. And if you abandon the natural
00:06:44.040 law and it's come to that, everything else kind of falls apart, falls by the wayside because you've
00:06:52.120 undone this thing. Even though it is written in our hearts, it can be destroyed extremely early in a
00:06:57.680 child. And so with regards to that part, we did do the globe thing. We were looking at like South
00:07:06.440 America. We were like, got a little crazy and like looking at like Mauritius, like, well, what's down
00:07:12.360 there? That might be interesting. You know, the Institute of Christ the King is down there,
00:07:15.720 for example, right? Like maybe we could go there. Where are you going to go? We're not going to go to
00:07:19.560 Canada. No offense, General Henry. Europe is worse off than North America.
00:07:26.040 We had these conversations with friends who are also planning to leave America. You know,
00:07:30.280 they actually told us first that they had planned to leave. And we had had similar conversations
00:07:36.360 between ourselves and like, oh, wow, we didn't know they were thinking about leaving too. Like,
00:07:40.040 oh, like, we're not the only ones. And since then, we've had a lot more conversations
00:07:46.360 with other people planning to leave. But they were planning to come to Russia. And we hadn't thought
00:07:53.080 about Russia first. It was very surprising to us. And we had looked at the globe and we just,
00:07:58.760 you know, at dinner, Florian got the globe for Christmas. And we were just spinning around
00:08:03.000 like, oh, what's it like to live there? And then our conversations became a little bit more,
00:08:07.400 you know, you know, serious, which actually, you know, we, and every week, you know, we would run
00:08:13.640 into something that was, you know, morally harmful in the raising of children, like just the playground
00:08:21.160 down the road, having to deal with, you know, same-sex couples who came to the playground and with
00:08:27.960 the, you know, child and having to kind of, the children are asking questions, you know,
00:08:34.120 why does this boy say he has two mommies? And it was in our face all the time. Every week,
00:08:39.000 there'd be two or three incidents that we had to always kind of try to manage or
00:08:45.080 explain or try not to explain and just, and we found that it interfered with our daily lives.
00:08:50.600 We could not fit. We felt that we were starting to live in a bubble because we stopped taking the
00:08:55.320 children to the grocery store because of all the filthy magazines and just the spirit there.
00:09:01.160 There are continually even more and more problems that we ran into just, you know,
00:09:07.160 Yeah. And people dressed terribly, you know, in the park.
00:09:11.880 And so the, the, the conclusion is, is, you know, the, you start eliminating continents pretty quickly.
00:09:19.960 Right. So finally we're just like, okay, so you got Russia and China is basically left.
00:09:26.440 Australia is out. Right. I mean, so again, it's the process of elimination. You're like, okay,
00:09:31.320 yeah. There's like this China thing that doesn't work for us. Russia is what's left. And matter of
00:09:38.840 fact, haven't we been as traditional Catholics, have we been praying for Russia every day for
00:09:44.600 our whole lives? You know, I, you know, I don't believe the mainstream media, for example, right.
00:09:49.880 Except when it comes to Russia, that was certainly entrenched. Of course, at least they must be right
00:09:55.240 about that. I mean, that's common knowledge. We've been saying that for decades. Why would they lie to us
00:10:00.600 about that? But then it was like, well, at least Russia has a future. We do know that.
00:10:07.080 We do know that Russia has the future. It's promised by our lady specifically.
00:10:13.400 Maybe that's an option. I've been listening to, you know, the president Putin speak for
00:10:19.800 many years, you know, and, and again, we're told that Russia is evil. So at the very best, if you,
00:10:26.760 if it happens, what Putin is saying seems to somehow resonate with you, at the very least,
00:10:34.200 it must be a trap. They're, they're just trying to trick us into believing that they actually mean
00:10:41.640 this. But then again, you know, you've, you've been here for a week now. We talked a lot about
00:10:47.720 Potemkin villages, Potemkin steaks, Potemkin furniture. I mean, there's a lot of Potemkins,
00:10:55.320 you know, around here. The problem is when it went from facades in the real story to the huge
00:11:01.000 metropolis to we went four hours away to another town and there's others and more and more.
00:11:09.240 So it's like they're building a Potemkin country filled with all the good things. And then I don't
00:11:14.280 know what it is anymore. The popular perception though, is everything Putin says is a lie. And,
00:11:19.080 or you don't even know what he's saying because it's Russian and they're just dubbing over it and
00:11:22.760 making it up. Also, of course, they're anti-Catholic because of course, Russia doesn't
00:11:27.960 allow Catholicism. It's not one of their official religions. Therefore it's out. And that's weird
00:11:33.160 because you guys are here and you're going to Catholic mass, a traditional Catholic mass. In fact,
00:11:38.360 how does that even work? You've got to dispel for us some of this very popular notions. Because you
00:11:44.920 have to remember, people honest to goodness don't believe that there's a pro-family attitude in Russia,
00:11:52.920 that they're more pro-life than anyone else, that they are. Because we've heard these things,
00:11:57.720 you know, in the news, oh, Russia made LGBT propaganda illegal. And most of the Catholics would
00:12:03.880 say, good, but it's Russia. Good, but it can't be real because it's Russia. And maybe it's mean
00:12:09.000 because it's Russia. It's that bad. You've lived here now a couple of years. Have you been like,
00:12:16.840 oh my gosh, they were right. It's, it's actually secretly bad. What's life like here?
00:12:24.520 Shockingly good. We were so relieved. Remember how relieved were you like, oh, I have muscles that
00:12:32.280 are loosening in the back of my neck. I can move my head. It was true. It was true. You're living in
00:12:38.040 a country where people treat, I've been asked on many different interviews, what's your favorite
00:12:43.480 thing about Russia? And it is absolutely, we're just talking on a very pragmatic, practical level.
00:12:49.560 The Russians treat children like gold, like gold bars. That's how they treat children.
00:12:56.520 And you know, and when you come from a country that doesn't value their children at all,
00:13:02.840 right? And they don't realize that supporting a large family, even just encouraging large family,
00:13:13.160 I mean, like the normal people out on the street, when you're walking around with your family
00:13:17.000 and you walk around in America. I know if somebody might come up to your wife and ask
00:13:21.080 her why she doesn't watch TV or does she do anything else with her time other than make kids,
00:13:27.400 you know, on one hand, where you come here and you have like people like shouting from across the
00:13:32.040 street, like, well done, keep going, more children. And it's like welcoming smiles. People are happy to see
00:13:40.920 the large family. When we first came and had to manage public transport, it was very hard to have
00:13:47.400 everyone getting under the trains and the buses. And everyone, like, the hearts are warm here.
00:13:54.280 People are quick to help, you know, back in America, or even in Europe, I remember traveling,
00:13:59.240 everyone just is in their own little bubble, and they're afraid to step out of it, even to,
00:14:03.480 you know, show charity. But there's such a warmth here, people will just reach out without
00:14:07.080 asking about the stroller. And the old ladies would come off the train, and they would quickly
00:14:12.520 grab all the hands of the little ones and be like, Davai, Davai. And we didn't know these people,
00:14:17.880 but there's a sense of trust between, you know, humanity is, you know, warm and alive here.
00:14:24.120 They would find children's seats, and we'd walk into the train. And if there were, you know,
00:14:29.160 men and women sitting down, they would, they would, they would get them all to stand up.
00:14:33.160 And then let's see. See, this is a large family. You know, they must sit together. And I remember
00:14:38.200 someone was slow to move once, and she was very sharp with him, and she told him. But you know
00:14:43.320 what? They all respected her because there's, the natural hierarchy is still here. The man deferred
00:14:49.240 to the lady and apologized and bowed his head, and he moved. And he had his earbuds, and he didn't
00:14:54.360 know, but he wasn't moving fast enough for the babushka. And she, she told, she told him what for.
00:14:59.160 And he was polite to her as if it was his own grandmother. We were just so edified with the
00:15:04.120 way that, you know, everyone relates to each other. You know, the women are respectful to the men.
00:15:09.480 And, um, everyone is respectful to the babushkas because, you know, that's, that's how it is,
00:15:16.200 and it should be. And we just found it, um, you know, remember Jean-Jacques didn't have a hat.
00:15:23.400 Yeah, that's right. He threw off his hat, and it was a snowy day. And we looked down in the stroller,
00:15:28.200 and we were on the way to the next station. We were walking, and he didn't have a hat.
00:15:32.920 And he, and we were wearing his hat. It's a mortal sin, by the way, in Russia.
00:15:36.200 Yeah. If, if, if your children doesn't, he's not wearing a hat in the middle of winter,
00:15:40.440 let's just say it's less than, you know, maybe 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
00:15:44.520 It was just freezing. It wasn't, like, negative.
00:15:47.160 Yeah, he was bottled up, but he still didn't have the top of his head covered.
00:15:51.320 Man just reaches down. It's like, he doesn't have a hat. Give him my hat. Old man.
00:15:57.560 And he put it on the child.
00:15:59.160 Yeah, he rode with us, and then he was, like, getting off,
00:16:02.760 and we were, like, trying to offer him his hat. And he's like, no, that hat is his now.
00:16:06.120 That is his hat. I can get another hat. That's his hat. And then we ended up exchanging contact
00:16:11.960 information, and he came over and, like, cooked food for us in our home. Like, like, weeks later,
00:16:17.880 right? I mean, it's just. Well, we saw him after that incident. He moved on, and he didn't expect
00:16:23.000 anything from it. Yeah. We saw him at the station frequently on a Sunday because he was traveling
00:16:26.840 at the same time. So after some weeks, he did come over. But he, he would have totally just given
00:16:32.920 that and moved on with his life and not looked for anything. It's really phenomenal. You know,
00:16:37.320 we were sitting the other day talking. I've got eight children. Joseph has seven. And his friend
00:16:43.800 here, Fabrice, has ten. And we're all from different countries. I'm from Canada. You're
00:16:48.920 from America. And Fabrice from France. All of us had the same thing happen to our wives. Almost
00:16:54.760 identical. My wife was yelled at while we had all our little kids. And he said, you know, you're harming
00:17:01.960 the planet. You're so selfish. I can't believe it. And this was a woman. It wasn't a guy. It was,
00:17:06.520 it was another woman. And I was there. What even is going on? It's insane. But it's really insane.
00:17:14.680 Fabrice said the same thing. And Joseph said, you've experienced the same. So this is not uncommon for
00:17:21.640 large families in the West. Not uncommon for large families in Europe. I traveled to Germany with five
00:17:28.600 kids once upon a time. And they called us the crazy family. And here you're saying it's the opposite.
00:17:37.560 It really is. The Russian people are really an incredible people. There's a lot of history there,
00:17:44.040 right? Of course, us as Americans, we only know basically what happened from 1917 till 1980 something.
00:17:53.480 Um, if, if you actually went to like a decent college, you might understand just kind of a
00:17:59.800 highlights of that period of time. And that's about all, you know, about Russia. Nobody knows that
00:18:04.920 Russians had a victory parade defeating Napoleon's troops. They had a victory day parade in Paris.
00:18:11.720 Russians were marching through the troops during this period of time. Nobody knows that the Poles
00:18:16.280 took Moscow and stayed there for a year, right? There's all this historical buildup,
00:18:21.080 right? In these countries of Europe that actually do appreciate the relationship,
00:18:25.560 or at least the history and understanding of the history with Russia.
00:18:29.080 Yeah.
00:18:29.480 I mean, as Americans, the most removed history that we have somewhere, China, Russia,
00:18:33.960 it's just, but these are like the Europeans that got kicked out, out, out into, you know, the cold,
00:18:40.840 so to speak, before the communists, just for the record, right? These are just people that have been
00:18:45.800 excused from history and they're not important. The only reason why they might be of any relevance is
00:18:50.600 because they're evil. And they're the most human people that I have ever met as a country. They're
00:18:55.720 the most human people that I have ever met in my entire life.
00:18:58.360 Well, they have a rich history. People judge Russia just on the past,
00:19:03.560 how many years, in the last hundred years, for example, they have a thousand years of history and
00:19:08.360 traditions that were maintained. And yes, unfortunate things have happened in the country. I'm using that
00:19:15.560 word because, you know, I'm not going to open that box right, right now. But everyone judges
00:19:21.000 Russia as a country on just a small part of what their history has been. People forget that they
00:19:26.120 have a Catholic history too. And Catholicism has been here since the time of St. Olga, St. Vladimir.
00:19:33.160 And it's, it's been in the country, in the country. It hasn't been stamped out. People were practicing.
00:19:37.960 You can't judge all the Russian people because of events that happened in the cities, you know.
00:19:44.120 And it's, it's amazing how people hold the whole country accountable for what happened in the past.
00:19:49.800 Whereas, I mean, if you're going to take that approach, then everyone in Germany should still be,
00:19:55.320 um, you know, punished like everyone's punishing the Russians. Why, why do, why do people say that
00:20:01.160 Russian citizens are guilty of things that they never, they never allowed or wanted? And you know,
00:20:07.960 the other problem is still this, I'll call it Western, but the West as a collective has a general
00:20:14.920 feeling of exceptionalism. That somehow we're the smart ones, we're the intelligent ones,
00:20:21.560 we're the victors of and heroes of history. When in reality, we have to share this with the rest of
00:20:28.120 the world. There are a lot of other countries, Russia, not the least of them, certainly,
00:20:34.360 that had a tremendous amount of history that protected Europe from the Turks for 230 some odd
00:20:40.840 years. I mean, we, we talk about Charles Martel, we talk about Charlemagne, we talk about El Cid,
00:20:46.440 we talk about all these great Western heroes, but we don't really think about whatever happened east of
00:20:51.560 that. The Russians were living with the Mongols and fighting with the Mongols for hundreds of years.
00:20:56.680 They were fighting with the Turks for hundreds of years. They actually died stopping these these
00:21:02.840 hordes from coming to Europe. Again, about the actual Russian people, I think one of their greatest
00:21:09.400 superpowers that is something that we could learn tremendously from is that Russians as a people
00:21:17.080 separate and judge separately the people of a country and the government of a country.
00:21:23.720 They somehow are able to do that. That's not something that I ever understood. People sometimes
00:21:31.240 have told me when I've told that story, they're like, Oh, no, no, I, I separate the people in the
00:21:36.280 government. Like, yeah, about 30 seconds ago, when it became relevant, because you didn't think about it,
00:21:43.640 because everybody just says the Russians, and those bad people, and how dare they attack
00:21:49.160 this country, and how dare they? And how dare they? You know, we have a tremendous amount of national sin
00:21:58.360 to account for. In America. Right. Absolutely. You think that it's okay that, oh, well, back in this year,
00:22:06.680 that the Russians had this abortion rate, but we had a better year in 2000 and whatever. So that makes you less bad,
00:22:13.160 less bad because you killed some less babies. You're better than they are because you killed less
00:22:20.600 children than them. That makes no sense whatsoever. But as people will see in your interviews, there's a
00:22:27.640 lot of interesting data even there. There is, there is. One of the things that is really strange
00:22:33.480 is for the past at least five, seven, eight years, the internet has been alive with videos of President
00:22:43.160 Putin speaking. And almost without fail, he's saying all the things that conservatives want to hear.
00:22:52.440 He's talking about God as a president. He's talking about pro-life. He's talking about pro-family,
00:22:58.680 especially pro-family. He's talking about keeping Russia, Russian, the way we talk about keeping
00:23:06.920 America, American, in a good way. And yet it's heard so differently. Half the people who really
00:23:13.640 love it think, oh, it must be dubbed over fake. That's not real what he's saying. They're just
00:23:17.960 making it seem good. The people who know more about it and realize, oh no, that is what he's saying,
00:23:23.160 are like, yeah, but it must be fake. He's just putting on a show for America. It's that bad.
00:23:27.800 And it's that bad also for Catholics. And that's why I think you guys are so interesting because
00:23:35.720 you're Catholics and you're here and you're living here as Catholics. I'm sure many people would have
00:23:44.040 said, oh, well then you're going to be Orthodox then. And are you comfortable being Catholic here?
00:23:50.840 I've given many interviews across the board, both Western and Russian sources. And I don't, I mean,
00:23:59.000 I'm talking about the New York Times. They didn't publish my interview. Wall Street Journal, The
00:24:03.560 Spectator, these kind of outlets, and then RT, TASS and these other ones, right? It's my calling card
00:24:09.480 whenever I give these interviews or they come into our house and they see what we have, our statues,
00:24:16.040 our faith. We wear it on our sleeves. We're very proud of our faith. Very, very, very comfortable
00:24:21.640 with the faith that God has given us. And it's really sad to talk to several people that I communicate
00:24:32.840 with online that I've known for decades and they somehow, I've all of a sudden become a Putin
00:24:39.640 stooge because I actually went to a different country and experienced what it's actually like
00:24:46.680 on the ground. We've been treated with nothing but respect. Met with many Orthodox people,
00:24:53.320 many Catholic people. You've met several of these people already. It's not like you're just,
00:24:57.960 oh, well, we're alone and we're just living here amongst all the Orthodox. No, there's a lot of
00:25:03.960 different people, but even the Orthodox people are good and wholesome people. Some of these people
00:25:10.200 that we know, some of these people that you've met, sad to say, sad to say, much better people than
00:25:18.280 many other traditional Catholics that I know. Does that make me think that what we believe,
00:25:24.200 what how I leave my family is not the truth? No, because it doesn't have to do with the people.
00:25:29.640 You know, everybody is so tired. People my age, people are older than myself. Many of these poor people
00:25:37.000 are just tired and they're just dying for some normality. And you know what? It's interesting.
00:25:44.520 I only thought about this just this moment, actually. This is really crazy. These people who've been
00:25:49.960 fighting the faith, fighting for their faith, fighting for tradition, have been fighting for it
00:25:57.640 for so long and they're exhausted. But the world got worse in the meantime. Many families are seeing
00:26:05.560 their children get lost to horrible perversions in this world. And they're just they don't have anything
00:26:12.040 left to hang on to. Where where where am I supposed to tack on? Yes. Where am I supposed to do that?
00:26:19.160 I'm tired. You know, you come over to Russia and all of a sudden you can breathe again. You're like,
00:26:24.040 hey, I'm ready for round two. Let's go. This is exciting. You can focus on raising your children and
00:26:29.960 you're not afraid about what's going to happen to your children when you're walking down the street
00:26:34.920 or who it is that they might bump into or who it is that they might speak with. You met Florian
00:26:40.680 earlier, for example. She loves talking to people and people have high and like conversations with
00:26:46.440 her Russians here and they just absolutely love having these conversations with her. They want to
00:26:53.560 hug our children. They want to embrace our children and bring us into their tribe. I love that. That's
00:26:59.480 that that's something to motivating to wake up to in the morning. Last question for you, because this is a
00:27:05.480 big hurdle. Language. So this is you come here and I came here and I go to mass every day and I
00:27:17.640 have my phone and I was trying to find the and none of the letters correspond. Pectopause, the only one
00:27:23.480 that works. All the Russians will get that, but nobody else. But anyway, how challenging has that
00:27:30.680 been for you? And what are your suggestions for people? We came before there were courses available.
00:27:38.920 We were one of the very first families. So we've had a more difficult time to catch up to the language.
00:27:43.720 Our children are homeschooled with the influx of immigrant children. The Russians are protecting
00:27:51.320 their Russian language and their school system. And you have to learn Russian before you enter
00:27:56.680 most schools. So we're learning it at home. We had a tutor. Florine has caught on very quickly.
00:28:03.720 The other children, we were in the in the playground, my one and two year old and three year old.
00:28:09.560 They speak Russian to the children. I don't know what they're saying.
00:28:13.480 We arrived. They're on their scooters. They just pick it up like that.
00:28:16.760 They haven't. It hasn't been a problem. Wolfgang, the Russian mothers will speak to him.
00:28:21.720 And he was just a newborn when we arrived. And he will nod and do what they say and
00:28:29.480 he will have a little conversation. So they're fine. They just they've had total immersion since
00:28:35.000 the middle children have been slower like Clotilde and Antoinette.
00:28:38.600 They're still learning syllables right now. So they're reading very couple years lower than
00:28:43.320 the Russian children their age. But they're catching on fast. Yesterday I had them doing
00:28:47.320 syllables and Russian pronunciation. They know the alphabet. It's not as fast as we would have liked
00:28:51.800 it to be. But it's not slow either. So I started Russian for only 4 months. I have a lot of lessons,
00:29:03.080 a lot of words, but I have a lot of practice. So any of your viewers can give some feedback
00:29:13.480 feedback to you in your comments about what it was that I said. But the fact is, is that it wasn't
00:29:21.080 perfect Russian, but generally expressed the idea. There's also translators and all this sort of stuff
00:29:26.760 that you can use electronic translators. I will never lie to anybody and say it's an easy language.
00:29:31.720 It's a very difficult language. But if you're doing it for the right reasons, and you pray particularly
00:29:37.880 as we do every morning to St. Jude to help us learn our language. Yes. You can pick up the phone now
00:29:44.840 and talk to somebody and understand them basically what's happening. Yes, yes. And okay. Yeah. Now,
00:29:51.320 it's not like you just picked up the phone. You're like, somebody's calling me. I don't want to,
00:29:55.640 don't pick that up. I sound like a cavewoman. That's probably what it's like. You know,
00:30:00.200 I can put words together and I can get my wants, you know, across. But it's faster now.
00:30:06.840 I started a new method, which one of our very good friends, Mr. Bosman. Yes.
00:30:11.480 Charles Bosman has a new method called the Blitz method. Well, it's not new because it's the method
00:30:15.880 that he used to learn Russian very quickly. And I've made more progress in the last month than I
00:30:22.360 have in a whole year. And his, instead of focusing on grammar first, like intently, because the grammar,
00:30:28.840 getting caught up with the grammar is really confusing. Just start memorizing lots and lots of
00:30:33.240 vocabulary. So I was memorizing 20, 30 words a day. And every time I come across a word,
00:30:39.000 I have a big whiteboard and I write it down and I don't have time to be on my phone. So I put the
00:30:43.560 whiteboard in the kitchen and he has great other suggestions as well. So we started using that with
00:30:47.880 the children. And yeah, in the last month, we've really, really made a lot of progress. So I wish I had
00:30:52.760 done that earlier. Just focus on memorizing vocabulary. It's a great point as well to remember that
00:30:58.920 America was, as I understood, founded by a bunch of Europeans and including Russians.
00:31:05.960 And I think it's interesting, again, plenty of Russians moved to America and they figured out
00:31:10.280 how to work an alphabet that is more or less opposite their own. So what is possible? It is
00:31:17.480 possible. I did want to mention Fulton Sheen's writings about Russia, which seem to have been buried.
00:31:23.240 People who love Fulton Sheen should read his writings about Russia. That's very important.
00:31:28.920 Second thing I wanted to say was when you asked us why we moved here, Russia is very,
00:31:33.560 very dear to my heart, especially my family, because Robert Bergen was my uncle. So he was
00:31:41.720 a great champion of the Fatima cause and worked with Father Gruner. And yeah, we still pray for him.
00:31:46.680 And he was buried in Fatima. And I just, the Fatima connection is very strong with the reason why we
00:31:54.200 came to Russia. I think Sheen's main point in there was to separate, as you were saying before,
00:32:00.920 Russia from the Russian people from communism, because that tends to, in people's minds, just
00:32:07.320 be together. And it's sort of like not turning apart. It needs to stop. Especially now, since they've
00:32:14.760 they've sort of left it behind in there. Interestingly to me, it seems that while the West is still,
00:32:20.280 we're all still burrowing our way down, these guys hit the bottom and coming back up. So...
00:32:25.800 I think the final thought that I would leave with people, there are plenty of people out there who
00:32:31.640 would like to monetize on Fatima. And part of that monetization strategy is reliant
00:32:39.160 on making sure that people remember the message that Our Lady of Fatima gave a hundred years ago,
00:32:48.440 and said that Russia would spread her errors throughout the world. If that hasn't happened yet,
00:32:56.120 um, I don't know when it happened. Because that did happen. But the emphasis is on the past tense.
00:33:05.160 It did happen. It did spread throughout the entire world. The entire world is literally crumbling
00:33:12.840 at its foundations because it did spread. It's not spreading right now. No, Russia was all but destroyed.
00:33:25.400 The president, President Putin took his country, and you can say whatever you want about Putin,
00:33:30.840 the president. But he actually has things to show for what he did. And that's why the Russian people
00:33:37.160 respect him. And the rest of the world is literally suffering because they're already infected and
00:33:42.840 they're dying. Russia all but died and was brought back from the grave. So if I may be so bold to issue a very,
00:33:51.800 very important warning that people who think that they can keep their dream alive and their monetization
00:34:02.600 alive by saying that Russia is still spreading her errors throughout the world instead of
00:34:09.800 It already did. And you are the ones who are leading the sponsors of the evil in this world.
00:34:18.600 There will be hell to pay for that. There will be hell to pay for fighting against Our Lady's wishes.
00:34:24.120 And the people who think that they are the champions of Fatima and literally every day spend their time
00:34:31.640 hating, not seeking understanding, not seeking the consecration of Russia to Our Lady's Immaculate
00:34:38.760 heart. There will be hell to pay for that. Wow. Joseph Schutzman. Ann Schutzman, thank you so much for
00:34:44.120 being with us. God bless you. God bless you. And God bless all of you. This is John Henry Weston from Russia.
00:34:50.440 God bless you.
00:35:15.400 God bless you.