Marcus Martins, the Church's First Black Missionary of the 20th Century, Bears His Witness of Christ

The stake center in Rio de Janeiro was quiet that evening. A seventeen-year-old stood in the foyer while a church leader explained, gently and with full sincerity, that the relationship would have to end. The young woman Marcus loved was the daughter of Brother Barbosa, and the leader believed that a marriage between them would close the door to the celestial kingdom for both of them. It was 1976. The teenager listened. And then, standing there, he made a quiet decision that would shape the next half century of his life.

He thought about what he knew. He had been baptized by someone with authority. He had received the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands. He was not perfect, but he was striving to keep the commandments. And so he reasoned, with the plain logic of a faithful seventeen-year-old, that God would still have something good in store for him. If not the celestial kingdom, then something good. He was sure of it.

That teenager was Marcus Martins, and the certainty he held in that foyer was tested, refined, and ultimately vindicated across the decades that followed. Today Dr. Marcus Martins holds a PhD in sociology of religion, race, and ethnic relations. He taught for twenty-three years at BYU Hawaii, twice named Teacher of the Year, and served as a mission president, a bishop, and a translator of the Book of Mormon into Portuguese. On this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits down with him to trace a life of belief that began in a religious home in Brazil and reached a moment of history in June of 1978.

A Family That Believed Before They Knew

Marcus grew up surrounded by faith. His grandparents were religious people, and his father carried a conviction that struck the boy early: if there is one God, there should be one true religion. The question was which one. The family visited churches across Rio de Janeiro, and Marcus remembers his father's restlessness, a quest that felt almost like the young Joseph Smith asking which of all the churches was right.

He remembers his mother facing surgery when he was a small boy, and his father promising that if she were healed, he would climb the stone steps of a hilltop church in Rio on his knees. She was healed. And his father climbed those steps on his knees, with his young son beside him and a lit candle in his hand. Marcus noticed that the wind kept blowing out the candles of others on the stairs, but not his father's. When he asked why, his father answered simply: it is because of faith.

When the missionaries finally came, the family was ready. There was already a foundation of reverence, a respect for sacred things, and a longing for the one true church his father had been seeking. The members of their branch welcomed them with a sincerity Marcus never forgot. Young men and women came out to the front yard to greet him before he even reached the door. Some of those friendships lasted for the rest of his life.

The Day the News Came

June 8, 1978 was an ordinary workday. Marcus was nineteen, working as an inspector on the construction of the Rio subway and attending civil engineering classes at night. He came home that evening and saw that his parents had been crying. His first thought was that someone had died. Instead, they told him the news: the priesthood was coming to all worthy male members.

The words did not land at first. It was only later, in the shower before heading to class, that the meaning struck him. The priesthood. He skipped college that night and drove to his fiancée's home in the mountains to tell her. But his first emotion was not joy. It was something closer to dread, because in the absence of correct information, people had filled the void with ideas that were never doctrine. Some had said the change would come only at the Second Coming. So when the revelation arrived, the nineteen-year-old wondered whether the Savior's return was days away, and whether he was ready.

That experience became one of the lessons Marcus carried into his decades as a religion educator. He warned his students to be careful with ideas spoken on a basketball court or at a backyard barbecue and later mistaken for doctrine. The justifications behind the old priesthood restriction, he came to understand, had no revelatory basis at all. The anchor was always the scriptures and the living prophets, not the rumors that gathered around them.

Now I Am a Priest

The week he was ordained, Marcus was driving home from his fiancée's house in Petropolis, down the mountain freeway toward Rio. It was around ten at night. He pulled into a view area, left the engine running and the headlights on, stepped out into the darkness, and felt a need to pray. He does not remember every word. But he remembers saying, Lord, now I am a priest.

Years later, reading the Pearl of Great Price, he found his own experience described in the words of Father Abraham, who sought the Lord diligently and found Him, who rejoiced and said he had obtained the priesthood. Marcus read those lines and recognized the feeling as his own. He had not been able to articulate it on that mountain road at nineteen, but Abraham had said it for him centuries before.

He went on to become the first Black missionary called by the Church in the 20th century, a calling he never sought and almost declined. He had not been invited to the missionary firesides as a young man, and he had assumed the door was closed. It took a persistent stake president, and a wave of criticism aimed unfairly at his fiancée, before Marcus finally said yes and entered the newly opened training center in São Paulo without even a mission call in hand.

A Father's Legacy and a Temple Foyer

Marcus is the son of Helvécio Martins, who became the first Black general authority of the Church. Growing up as his son was not always easy, he admits, because his father was a man who did things by the book and had little patience for those who would twist or accommodate the truth. But Marcus came to see his father as one of the great leaders of the Church in his century.

He learned the full measure of that legacy in a temple foyer. In 2005, grieving the sudden loss of his father and his mother-in-law within days of each other, Marcus visited the Recife temple while on a speaking tour in Brazil. The walk from the recommend desk to the dressing room took him twenty minutes, because at every few steps a brother or sister stopped him to share a story about his father. Stories he had never heard, because he had lived far from his father's ministry for most of his life. By the time he reached the dressing room, he had been lifted out of his grief by the testimony of strangers about the man he called dad.

That day taught him something about the quiet reach of a faithful life. Two decades after his father's passing, people still write to tell Marcus what his father meant to them. It is the kind of legacy that does not announce itself, but settles into the lives of others and stays there.

Key Takeaways

Faith sometimes means choosing to stay when the door appears closed, trusting that God has something good in store even when the path is not yet clear. Marcus learned at seventeen that the opinions of well-meaning people are not doctrine, and that the scriptures and the living prophets are the only sure anchor when rumors gather around hard questions. He learned that the gospel rewards those who study and think, because the more we learn, the more we can see the greatness of God. And he learned that the Lord prepares His servants long before the calling arrives, often through years of quiet preparation. Running through all of it is the truth he returns to again and again: in Christ come all good things, and those who wait on the Lord will not be ashamed.

Thank you for reading this week's blog post inspired by the Why We Believe show. If you are interested in more stories like this, you can check out our other blog posts and episodes at WhyWeBelieve.com.

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