Aside from the fact that she is a famous female preacher in a male-dominated world of ministry, 54-year-old pastor Isabél Contreras seems like an ordinary pastor. She, however, has a very dark past.
At age 14, Contreras broke the tradition of her Roman Catholic family in Mexico and became an atheist. A few years later, when she was already in high school, she even explored satanism.
To add to the darkness in her spiritual life, she embraced the lifestyle of a lesbian when she became a member of an amateur team. Worse, she even sold her body as a same-sex prostitute for three years when she lived in Mexico City.
The darkness in her life dissipated at age 21, when Contreras got to know Jesus Christ. Immediately, she stopped having sexual relationships with women.
"Immediately the Holy Spirit told me this was wrong," Isabél shared in an article on Charisma News.
Contreras eventually became a Christian. To share the good news, she invited 25 of her friends—some of them lesbians—to tell them that she is a changed person.
"You are welcome to join me," she said, after inviting them to her charismatic church. "Otherwise you can pretend you never knew me. The old Isabél is dead."
The temptation to live a homosexual life, however, did not stop there. Some of her friends even hired a woman to seduce her into going back to her lesbian lifestyle, but Contreras managed to resist this temptation by holding on to her faith.
"I knew I would never go back into that life," she shared. "I knew my decision to follow Jesus was all or nothing."
Ever since discovering Christ and turning her back on being a lesbian, Contreras has come a long way in terms of her spiritual life. She has already established two churches, and has already preached in every state in Mexico and in five other countries.
"God has told me that I'm a sign," the preacher said. "The way I look, the way I am, allows people to feel comfortable with me and they receive what God is saying."
