My Testimony: How God Used a Missionary to Transform Me from an Atheist to a Christian

Who Am I?

My name is Maurício, I’m 29 years old, and I’m from Portugal. I was born and raised in a traditional Portuguese family. When I say traditional that means a Roman Catholic one, but they are not a practicing Catholic family, as I usually say, they are “Catholics of the 3 acts”. This phrase means, my family only goes to church for three reasons: baptisms (of children in this case), weddings, and funerals. Apart from these occasions, they don’t step foot in church, so I was never very close to religion or God. While growing up, I remember attending church only because my family imposed it. I remember thinking, “Who wants to spend a Saturday afternoon at church listening to someone about something I never believed?” I’d rather be with my friends playing soccer. For these and many other reasons, I never believed in God. However, I did believe in science. I thought science had the answers to everything, and this way of thinking became even stronger when I went to secondary school.

In secondary school, I started taking subjects like science, physics, and chemistry that covered topics such as the Creation of Man, the Creation of Life, the Universe, etc. At the time, science had the answers to everything for me, and it was in secondary school that I became convinced of being an Atheist! “God, He doesn’t exist! A fairy tale! Science has the answer to everything,” I used to say. “God is great, but He’s not that great!” Little did I know then that at the end of high school, things were going to change, a lot.

God Sent Someone to Share the Gospel with Me

At the end of high school, things began to change drastically. I started to see and feel things in my life that caused enormous pain. My family experienced financial difficulties, my mother suffered from domestic violence, my relationship with my father was bad to the point where we didn’t speak for years. I didn’t have a job, my “friends” disappeared, and I began to hear things from my father that were quite harmful. I thought my life didn’t have much value after all, and I thought I was a problem and no longer felt like living.

Although I faced many hardships, I look back and realize that God was also beginning His work in me at this time. You see, I love sports, and when I say sports, I mean football, American football. I got the opportunity to begin playing and practicing with a football team in my city, and that’s where God’s story begins. For a while, one of my friends on the team would drive me to each practice, but he eventually quit the team, leaving me to find a new ride. Thankfully, my coach said that he would be able to take me to each practice. One day on our way to practice, my coach started telling me more about himself and why he and his family were in Portugal. They were American missionaries, but more importantly they were Christians and believed in Jesus. I immediately told him that I respected his personal beliefs, but I did not believe in God. I said, “If God exists, then why does He allow me to go through all of this hardship in my life?”

Not long after this conversation, I was at home, and I began feeling the desire to know who Jesus truly was. At first, I thought I was going crazy, but in the following days I said to my Coach: “I want to meet this God of yours, this Jesus that you follow!” He introduced me to the Gospel, and on that very day, I decided to follow Jesus Christ. God transformed me from an atheist to a Christian.

My New Life in Christ

After I decided to follow Christ, my life changed completely. I was lost, and by God’s grace, I came to know His forgiveness. I began to realize that my life had value after all, so much so that Christ died for me on the cross. I am grateful for a family, the Milam’s, my Coach Andy Milam, and his wife Michelle Milam, who came to my country to tell me about Jesus. Through the Milams and their faithfulness to spread the gospel, I came to know my Savior. They changed my life. Andy could have given up on me when I first told him I didn’t believe in God, but he didn’t. He was persistent in praying for me and telling me about Jesus.

After I followed Christ, Andy invested time in me to disciple me. Every day we would text each other, and every week we would have coffee and read through the Bible together. He invested time in me to help me understand the gospel and God’s word, and for that, I will always be grateful.

Today, I often say that I have two families, my biological family and my family of faith, the Milam’s. Because of them, not only am I a follower of Christ, but I also desire to serve in ministry for the rest of my life. God worked through Andy and Michelle to make me a disciple, and I want to do the same thing for others. I am reminded that at one point in my life, I did not believe God was great, but I serve Him now, and I pray that those who don’t know He is great now will one day be transformed by Him, like I was.