Editing Nico's Youth Group Years (section)

== Background ==

=== Childhood and Atheism ===
Nico Hartung was born on March 17, 2003, to a German father and an Italian mother. He was raised in a secular household where religion played no role. Unlike passive non-believers, Nico was an atheist by conviction—he actively mocked God and dismissed religious belief as foolish. Faith had no place in his worldview.

This changed through an unexpected catalyst: a plane crash.

=== The Germanwings Crash and Conspiracy Theories (2015) ===
On March 24, 2015, co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately crashed a Germanwings Airbus A320 into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board. Nico, then twelve years old, became fascinated by the case and began researching it obsessively. During this research, he stumbled upon a YouTube channel called "Trau keinem Promi" (Don't Trust Any Celebrity), which claimed that German rapper Haftbefehl had predicted the crash in his lyrics. Though initially dismissive, Nico found himself drawn into the channel's content.

What began as curiosity evolved into an intense engagement with conspiracy theories: Jeffrey Epstein, Pizzagate, secret societies, satanic rituals in elite circles. The more he consumed, the more a realization formed: if so much genuine evil existed in the world—people who actually worshipped the devil—then perhaps the devil was real. And if the devil was real, God must be too. After going down these rabbit holes for years - at around, or just shortly before 16 years of age, the convinced atheist had reasoned his way to theism—not through religious experience or upbringing, but through contemplating the existence of evil.

=== Seeking the Right Religion ===
The conclusion that God existed raised a new question: which religion was correct? Nico briefly considered Islam but quickly dismissed it. Christianity seemed more plausible, but which form? The Catholic Church was not an option—in his view, it was entangled in the same dark networks he had read about in conspiracy theories. Then he remembered his uncle Mimmo Tuccillo, a believer who attended a free church rather than the Catholic Church.

=== The Days with Uncle Mimmo (2019) ===
When Nico was sixteen, he stayed overnight at his uncle's home. What began as a family visit became an extended conversation spanning the entire day. Nico asked hundreds of questions about God, the Bible, Freemasons, and the difference between the Catholic Church and free churches. Mimmo answered patiently. By the end of that day, Nico prayed what charismatic churches call the "sinner's prayer" or "prayer of surrender"—the moment when someone consciously commits their life to Jesus Christ. That evening, and again the following morning, he attended services at Mimmo's church: Missionswerk Strahlen der Freude in Pforzheim. He experienced the worship, the atmosphere, the community. Then he returned home.

=== A Christian in Name Only (2019–2021) ===
After this experience, almost nothing changed. Nico now called himself a Christian. He switched to religion class at school. Occasionally—perhaps once a week—he read a page of the Bible before falling asleep. That was all. No regular church attendance, no prayer life, no community, no change in lifestyle. His faith was a mental conviction, not a lived practice. His vague plan was to start attending church regularly once he turned eighteen. Then COVID-19 arrived, and those plans were put on hold indefinitely.