Marcus Martins, the Church's First Black Missionary of the 20th Century, Bears His Witness of Christ
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Marcus Martins joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1972 at age thirteen, six years before any Black member could hold the priesthood or enter the temple. He stayed anyway. He believed anyway. In June of 1978, when the revelation came extending the priesthood to all worthy male members, Marcus was nineteen, working as a construction inspector in Rio de Janeiro and engaged to be married. Weeks later he became the first Black missionary called by the Church in the 20th century, the son of Helvécio Martins, who would become the Church's first Black general authority.
In this episode of Why We Believe, Marcus shares the conviction he held at seventeen when a leader told him a relationship with his future wife would cost him the celestial kingdom, the ordinary June day he came home from work and found his parents had been crying, and the prayer he offered on a dark mountain road outside Petropolis the week he was first ordained to the priesthood. He shares the moment in the Recife temple when grieving members stopped him in the foyer, each carrying a story about his father he had never heard, and the six words from the Book of Mormon that became his anchor: in Christ come all good things.
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