Since I was a little girl, my dream has always been to be a writer. At 15, I wrote novels and poetry. At 18, I had my first encounter with God during a colporter campaign. I told Him I would give up my dream of being a writer to live His dream for me, and I would dedicate my life to the mission if that were His plan for me. For that, I wanted to study psychology, as I was studying to be a teacher then.

Many years passed, and I completely forgot about that prayer. A lot of things happened, one of which was that I won a scholarship to study psychology for free.

During my last year of college, less than two months before graduating, the AFM Brazil president came to my city. As he spoke about the mission in the 10/40 window, God reminded me of that almost-12-year-old prayer. I could clearly hear God saying, “You already have a psychology degree. Now what?” I started to cry. When I went home, I told Geovan, my husband, what happened.

Before we married, I had told Geovan that I wanted to be a missionary. Then life happened, and we never talked about it again. We had a comfortable life, good jobs, and a great salary. When I brought the subject up again after listening to the pastor and then hearing God remind me of my promise, Geovan answered simply and directly, “No.”

In my heart, I was not very willing to give up that comfortable life to be a missionary either. So in my mind, I prayed, “God, if you really want me to go, convince him. I won’t insist.” I am an insistent person. But I just washed my hands, like Pilate, and told myself it wouldn’t be my fault. I would obey if Geovan wanted to go.

A month later, without me saying anything else, Geovan approached me and said, “If you really want to go, I will go with you.” We registered with AFM and went through the fundraising process and training. God led everything. He took us to Guinea Bissau to serve as short-term missionaries in 2022.

Geovan usually says he fell into missions because of me and never dreamed of being a missionary outside our country. But today, he can no longer imagine himself in a place other than the mission field, wherever God sends us.

Now, God has called us to lead the Tonga project in Mozambique as career missionaries.

We intend to continue the Hicks’ work of planting churches here, helping needy people in this impoverished land, and maybe even developing a program for the youth. The church here is very young and full of people thirsting for hope. We can introduce them to the greatest hope of all, Jesus.

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