About Me

Mary-Kate Martin is a teacher by profession and a missionary by calling. Born and raised in small-town Wisconsin, she walked away from a fulfilling career as a high school teacher to follow something she couldn’t ignore — a calling to eSwatini, Africa. In 2017, she co-founded Hosea’s Heart, a safe home ministry for girls who have been sexually exploited, trafficked, or are at-risk for abuse. She lives there today, managing the ministry, teaching, writing, coaching basketball, and being a mother to many.

She is a visionary with a gift for finding beauty in broken places. Her writing pulls from the raw, honest material of her own life — rejection, singleness, longing, faith, and the wild adventure of saying yes to a calling that made no logical sense. Her childhood dream was to play wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers. She settled for something far stranger and far better: raising daughters in southern Africa, winning basketball championships in the Swazi women’s league, and writing books that help people believe they are worth loving. In her free time, she reads everything Francine Rivers has ever written and refuses to apologize for it.