Elaine Beck 0:11
Hi, everyone, I’m Elaine Beck. And this is my show, t’s Not About Us. And because, you know, a long time ago, God reminded me that I’m here to serve Him. And I am so glad that that’s why I’m here. Because there’s so much of the world that wants to creep into us and wants to change us and turn our heads and take us away from God, that I love just being in the presence of God. And I hope you do, too. That’s what our show is about. But today, we have a very special guest. And you know, my favorite word is excited. You hear it all the time. And I’m so excited today, I met this wonderful man I’m going to introduce you to at a Trump event just over a week ago, and it was amazing how God spoke to each of us in different ways about us getting together. And after I invited him to do a show with me, he literally made plans immediately, got a plane flew out, stayed in a hotel came here, we had dinner last night, and we had amazing talk, and you’re gonna get to hear a lot of it. And after we did that, here, we are doing this show for you. His name is Ranko

Ranko Ristić 1:36
Ristić.

Elaine Beck 1:37
Ristić, I knew I was gonna do that. It’s about I like saying things the right way. He told me the way that it said in America, which is Ristic. But I like respecting the fact that you have a name and you have a culture that you came from. And one of the things that I admire about you the most is although you’ve shared with me that you and your family, still follow up with your traditional holiday things and church things that everything is, is very family oriented based on your culture. But you came to the United States, and the very first thing that you wanted to do was learn how to speak English, how to work with the people. And so in other words you came in, and you decided that you wanted to be an American.

Ranko Ristić 2:32
Exactly.

Elaine Beck 2:33
Right. And you’ve honored that ever since then.

Ranko Ristić 2:37
Yes.

Elaine Beck 2:37
And I admire that so much. Because nowadays, we have so many people coming in that think we should honor what they do, and allow them to have, you know, live their lives the way they would in their country. And I’m sorry, you lost your country. Can you tell my audience a little bit about your story and what it was like?

Ranko Ristić 3:02
First, I want to thank you for this opportunity that I could not even believe that I was invited. Because I came to a Trump event, for the first time didn’t know what to expect. I had the opportunity to for just a couple of minutes to tell my story and ask a question, actually, to Mr. Trump. And then after the event in the evening, you approached me, and you asked me to do an interview with you. I was not sure why. But then I remember that, during the President’s speech in front of hundreds of people that Mr. President offer, whoever donate a certain amount of money can come out and speak. And you donated a lot of money with the X amount with a lot of zeros. And I was interested to see what you’re going to say. And the only thing you mentioned was God. So I was very intrigued with who is this person who will pay and donate a lot of money. Just to mention God. That’s why I’m here.

Elaine Beck 4:18
I think that’s so beautiful. That was that humbled me so much when you told me that

Ranko Ristić 4:24
you asked me to do an interview, maybe over zoom. I said no, I will not come and do it in person. I’m gonna meet you again. Right.

Elaine Beck 4:32
Thank you, sir. What an honor. Really. You know, as you learn his story, you’ll see why I’m saying these things. But when he said that I got up and spoke about God. It was God’s prompting that put me up on that stage. Because we had prayed all of my staff and my family and friends had all prayed that if I had an opportunity to get close to the president and share something with him that God would give me the words. And so what you you may not know or didn’t know, before last night, excuse me was that when he offered for somebody to come up over, you know if you’d like to donate, and then come up and speak, that’s when I felt prompted by the Lord, to go up and speak for him. Because that’s what I’d been praying for, what would God want me to say? And so when I got up there, and I shared right there in front of God and everyone, that it’s obvious to me and the Christians across this country, that President Trump was chosen to be the man in such a time as this, and to lead this country and to listen to God, and do the right things, and then went on to talk about other things we should pray about, et cetera, involved in that same thing. And, you know, I walked away from there. And as I shared with you last night, oftentimes God gives me words, and when I’m done, I can’t really remember everything I said, but I do know the effect that God has on people. So what I say, and what response I get from them, is how I know whether it was God or me. And believe me, it was God that night, because at the end of that evening, President Trump came and pointed his finger at me the way he does. He said, You gave the best speech today. So I knew he heard God’s word. And that’s what we want more than anything, is it not?

Ranko Ristić 5:45
yes. And just to tell you about the story, and it began 1973 When I was born right in, in former Yugoslavia. I was born to a Christian Serbian Orthodox family. In a communist Yugoslavia. Communism, unikl Slavia was somewhat different than Russia and other Warsaw Pact countries because Yugoslavia was not part of Warsaw Pact. Right? Right. And you were slightly ahead a good relationship with the with the United States back then. Right. So that allow us a little bit of freedom. And that’s why I grew up listening, Guns and Roses, wearing American brand clothing, and even in elementary school in eighth grade, in the middle school, what they say here, right, I was I had a patch American flag on my on my jacket, and this isn’t your standard. Yes, it was. It was really, United States was very, very popular and the culture of United States was popular within Yugoslavia. Right, right. But we had limitations. We were not forbidden to go to church, but it was not very, very popular. And I did not grow up going to church, I would have the freedom to it was simply not if you if you are a churchgoer you were kind of look at. And I compare this to this situation. Now, if you’re religious Christian in United States, very often you’re labeled as extremely store or exactly. So that’s the comparison. But I see a lot of similarities between situation now in United States and in Yugoslavia few years before the war, right.

Elaine Beck 7:25
this, this, if I may interject, I want you all to know, this is the reason I know that God prompted me the first time he spoke right there at that roundtable with President Trump, that God prompted me to tell your story. Because too many people out there in the country have been lied, and lied to. They’ve been brainwashed to believe in, in all of the stuff that’s going on now that it’s all good. And that that were the bad people that the Christians and the the white people, the Christian people, the people that want rights, right and good and standards that are Do unto others as you would have them do unto you and things like that, that were looked down upon. And you’ve already lived that in another country. And you know what that feels like? And I loved how you. You stated it that night, when you talked about how we should feel in the United States. Can you share that with us now?

Ranko Ristić 9:46
Yes. These days. Immigration is is a big subject, and we are witnessing a lot of illegal immigrants crossing the border to United States. Aliens, right? And under excuse why they are doing it legally is because in their own countries, it’s a very bad situation in Bosnia in 1995, from 1992 to 1995, was really bad situation. Yes. And refugees from Bosnia, did not just cross the border. We waited in line, all three ethnicities in Bosnia, we had Croatians, Muslims and Serbs. We all waited in line went through medical checks, FBI background check. And then we were allowed to come here, right? We even paid our own airplane tickets, right? We were given by United Nations the credit that we paid back. So even that was paid by by refugees. Sure. And then when we came here, for me, personally, I came confused. Because during the war in Bosnia, the media mainstream media favored only two other sides and Serbs were always labeled as a as a war criminals as the bad guys, right. And here I am now, a bad guy scanning to United States. A guy who had the American flag in school, on my jacket, right? Well, listen, America music who love America? I came here confused, because I didn’t understand how come that United States at that time was helping back then our enemies, right. And then I learned very quickly that there are two Americas. There is a government that doesn’t always represent what American people and the interest interests of American people. Right, very quickly, I met people who think same way like I do. And they were born here. Right? And that’s when I became an American patriot. Right, right. And today being after 27 years being an American patriot is again, you are labeled as extremist. Yes. So that’s why I think I’m here.

Elaine Beck 12:17
I believe it too,

Ranko Ristić 12:18
because more than half of my life I spent in in another country, right, that fell apart. by war, right. And I can compare, not a lot of people can do that. Well,

Elaine Beck 12:33
you know, we’re getting running out of time on this segment. But we’re going to do several more, you can come back as the day’s progress, and you’re going to hear more. But getting to this point, I think it would be nice today, if we end on this note, although it’s harsh. It’s very harsh. Y’all live where we do in America. And you’ve heard there’s two different parts of the government are two different things in America, the people and the government. And he has already lived through that. And what he got out of it was this. The same thing could happen here. America, you are free, you’re safe. You feel like as if you still have your freedoms, although the walls are closing in, and the evil is on the verge of doing what happened to his country. Where’s Yugoslavia now?

Ranko Ristić 13:39
he was Slavia fell apart, there’s doesn’t exist six countries with their own borders. Yugoslavia was very alike United States, maybe the most similar country in the world was Yugoslavia with a lot of different ethnicities, we had six republics, states has 50 states. But the difference is United States is a melting pot. Right? You were slider was a mosaic that fell apart along those lines, right? So let’s hope that this melting pot continues to live. And I really hope that I or my kids or any other person, United States won’t have to fight the war,

Elaine Beck 14:24
right or lose their country because the country is their home. I mean, we see this in the news. As a feature, a picture of people shooting at each other or whatever. Reality is different. reality isn’t a movie. reality isn’t even the news where they’re saying this is live and happening now. So many of us are guilty of seeing it so often, that we’ve got this crust around us to protect us and we We’re not realizing that it’s happening here that things are not right. So I hated this end on this note, but I want you to think about that. And we will be back with our next show soon. And thank you again for doing this segment with me and I’m looking forward to the next one. And thank all of you for joining us and see us on our next show because we’re going to tell you more of the story. God bless you all and as you know, I pray for you always talk to you later.