Portrait of Sistie Givens Riley. IMB Photo

Sistie Givens Riley, an International Mission Board missionary emeritus who shared the gospel in Brazil, died Sept. 25, 2025. She was 93.  

Sistie was born July 6, 1932, in Mangum, Oklahoma, to the late David Oscar Givens and Virginia Talley Givens. She graduated from Mangum High School and received the Bachelor of Science from Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, and the Master of Religious Education from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas.  

She worked as an assistant home demonstration agent in Tulsa County, Oklahoma. Her work included 4-H camps, home visitation, county and state fairs, trips and professional training, and seeking to meet needs and improve living standards around the county and state. After working for two years, she entered seminary in September 1956.  

She was a junior in high school when she first began to think about foreign missions. At Oklahoma State she became involved in Young Woman’s Auxiliary, a discipleship program, where she caught “the contagious fervor of missions.” After college, she spent the summer in Jamaica as a missionary. While seeking appointment she wrote, “The summer I spent on the beautiful island of Jamaica working in Vacation Bible Schools I felt and saw the dire need of taking the gospel to the peoples of the world.”  

In 1958, the International Mission Board appointed Sistie missionary to Brazil. Over 36 years, her family said, she had many responsibilities. She was in charge of a dispensary that supplied powdered milk for babies and included traveling through the Amazon jungle. Other duties put her in charge of an orphanage, and she also spent time planting Baptist churches in the region.  

After retiring and returning to the United States, she married Duane Riley in 2007.  

She is survived by Duane, her husband of 18 years, four nieces, and one nephew. 

A funeral service was held Sept. 29 at First Baptist Church of Mangum, with burial in Riverside Cemetery.  

Read an obituary here.