By the time Gracinda was 21, she was already living apart from her husband in Mozambique. Things were not working out as she had planned. Part of the problem was that her husband was a Christ follower, and she was not.

Gracinda didn’t attend church, so she didn’t know God or his Word. Since nearly half of Mozambicans can’t read, their only chance to be exposed to Scripture is in church. They are a community of oral learners, so printed Bibles are scarce.

With the generous support of American Bible Society’s financial partners, a growing number of oral learners like Gracinda are now able to listen to God’s Word and grow in their faith.

“One day my brother-in-law invited me to go with him to a listening group in his church,” Gracinda says. “The group was listening to the book of Matthew, chapter 25 and verse 32. [It] touched me a lot when it says: ‘Then all the peoples of the earth will gather before him and he will separate one from another, [just] as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.’”

Gracinda was taken aback by what she heard. What did this passage mean for her, she wondered?

“I asked for a detailed explanation of this separation,” she says. “I saw that if I am not a Christian, I would be separated from my relatives who are Christian.”

At that moment, Gracinda gave her life to Christ. She continued to attend the listening group, soaking up God’s Word, being transformed by its message. She and her husband reconciled, and they now worship their risen Savior together.

“I’m a winner,” she says. “I gained the new life in Christ and also my husband. God has acted in my life, and I am a new creature.”

Gracinda heard the Gospel because the gifts of our financial partners were used to distribute 1,900 Audio Bibles, called Proclaimers, to churches across the country. The churches invite people like Gracinda to join a listening group, which meets weekly to listen to a portion of the New Testament and then discuss what they learned. This is how lives are changed by God’s Word!