VITORIA, BRAZIL - “Don’t try to change me, preacher. I like wine, and I like women.”

Antonio Silva remembers saying those words to a U.S. missionary nearly 13 years ago. At the time, Silva used most of the money he made as an electrician to satisfy his drinking habit. Friends joked that his car trunk, always filled with liquor and ice, was a “bar on wheels.”

The only reason Silva had set foot in the Vitoria Church of Christ was as a favor for his nephew, Marcus Mendes. Mendes, whose parents were baptized by the missionaries, had begged his uncle to come to church, with no luck.