pattern and shapes i'm in outer space i'm inside my mind it's how many Welcome back to the Let's Be Friends podcast.

I'm here today with a new friend, Michaela Nikolenko.

She is the host of the Raised and Redeemed podcast.

She's a Christian author and an ex new ageer.

And Michaela was radically saved from child abuse trauma,

substance abuse, ungodly relationships, and the occult.

Now she's an Orthodox Christian, a mom, a wife,

and a storyteller.

And today she's here to share her story her testimony with us welcome to the show

michaela thank you so much for having me cara i just can't believe that i'm here seeing you it feels like

real life you know virtually but talking to you girl to girl i'm so excited i'm so excited too

you like i haven't been podcasting a lot in the last year or so. And this is the first

like testimony really that I've given in a long time for interviewed for someone. And I'm so excited that

it's with a female. And I'm so excited that you're Orthodox now because I just was baptized

Orthodox a month ago. And I'm, your story is just like, like we've been chatting. We've become friends recently off the internet. And just like talking to you, it's so fluid and easy. I feel like I've known you forever. Like, I'm giving you a hug right now virtually. I know. Like, I know. We relate on so much, so much, so many parallels in our stories and in our journeys. And I think it's like us seekers and truth,

you know, we really want the truth and we're the ones that end up coming to orthodoxy. So it only

makes sense that we relate in that as well. Absolutely. And I believe that the saints have brought

us together. That's a huge part of orthodoxy is the saints. And I just like,

because you just came up on my algorithm kind of randomly. Like I'd mentioned I'd recognized you

and I'd probably seen you collaborating in the past with somebody online. But I think you were

Protestant then. And I was kind of coming out of it at the moment and I just like I just was like oh this is cool but

now suddenly you came back up and it was a video of you sharing about the chakras and like an

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