When Tiwi people tell the history of their community, the material culture of missionaries looms large in the story. Glass and flour, Tiwi people remember, drew them both to the missionaries and to their God. Reading glasses became a message-stick, telling everyone to ‘come and see’ the ‘missionary from heaven.’ Flour underpinned the mission’s ration economy and the eucharistic sacrifice, but the Tiwi used it as body paint, making themselves ‘white’. This paper turns to Tiwi oral histories about ‘coming in’ to the mission on Bathurst Island. I consider the meanings of glass and flour within a Tiwi Christian framework and how Tiwi people used these objects to express disguise and recognition of faith and culture. In Tiwi histories, missionary objects confirm their worthiness to receive the Gospel, but also challenge missionary assumptions about Tiwi life and faith, suggesting they were more Catholic than the missionaries. Their stories play with missionary categories and expectations, just as they played with missionaries’ goods.