Every Sunday, Berenice Juárez She gets up early, chooses the best of her skirts—always long, ankle-length—and walks to the Iglesia Christian Maranatha Ministrieswhere preach the word of Christ since she became a pastor.
In his meetings, tears often appear when he shares his testimony. Those who listen to her keep their gaze fixed, hypnotized by a story marked by extreme cruelty that shocks most.
The shock is not for nothing. The life of this Colombian, residing in Monterrey, Nuevo Leonis a string of misfortunes.
A childhood marked by prostitution and addictions
Berenice is the youngest of three siblings in a dysfunctional family, marked by his mother’s prostitution and his father’s alcoholism. That environment left a childhood with beatings, abuse of all kinds and in which hugs and “I love you” were almost non-existent.
She herself explains that she internalized this reality as the only possible norm: “When you are born and live in a dysfunctional home where prostitution is the languageit becomes a lifestyle, it was ‘custom and nature,’” he says in one of his congregations.
This context prematurely pushed her onto the street, where she became addicted to cocaine at only 11 years oldsomething that, with Monday’s newspaper, does not surprise him, since he considers that «he was from the world he came from.»
Berenice had a very hard childhood. Photo: Facebook Berenice Villanueva JuárezThe violence that Berenice normalized in her home escalated to her 14 yearswhen was victim of sexual abuse by a 40-year-old man, in a context of drug exchange, which resulted in the pregnancy of his first child.
Despite her young age, she decided to have her son, however she still remembers the distress that invaded her at that moment. «My life fell apart. I didn’t want to have my son, I wanted it to be a dream because I couldn’t visualize my life with another life in my hands, because not even what I lived was a life «, he says with tears in his eyes in front of the faithful.
When your life started to look darker and darker
To the 15 yearsher advanced addiction took her to a nightclub in Monterrey where she worked as exotic dancer to be able to exchange drug sex.
“In those days, when they abused me and left me beaten in hotels, I came to think that God did not exist” he remembers about his past where he didn’t care how, he just wanted to get his fix.
The nightmare intensified when he accepted a supposed job offer at the Mexico City that made her easy prey for a human trafficking network.
«I was deluded, I let myself be carried away by anger and resentment that I even thought: ‘I hope they kill me so that my mother can come and pick up my body.’ The only thing I wanted was for her to turn to see me, even just once.”, he confesses with tears.
Juárez was sent to a place where “they have many young foreigners and They sell human beings as if they were a commodity”.
“I had to be with old people without teeth, with guys who put guns to my head.” Even hygiene, he says crudely, was a act of humiliation: “They put us all to bed, they threw handfuls of powdered soap at us and they bathed us with a pressure hose.”
There are realities that result impossible to imagine for those who did not live them. Berenice remembers that, in that place, they tattooed her from the navel down, as if they needed «mark you as cattle”.
Were five years trapped in hell in which every night, between 30 and 40 men raped her relentlessly, while «their bosses» they injected him with heroin so that she could continue to be subjected to more and more people.
The violence and humiliation They had become their daily routine, erasing any shred of hope.
A savior sent by God
After years in the dark, liberation came through a regular client – whom he prefers not to name – who he bought it by 100,000 thousand Mexican pesos ($5,400) to take her out of the network and make her «his girlfriend.»
He, a bodybuilder, took her out of that place and took her to live in his house for a while, with the intention of rescue hernot to exploit it, but under the condition of not leaving without it.
Berenice couldn’t believe it; Everything seemed like a dream, which is why she didn’t stop crying for several days. During that period, he taught her to eat healthy, helped her quit drugs, dress, recover habits that would allow her to lead a healthy life, and even gave her her first The Bible.
One night, during dinner, Berenice was encouraged to tell him her entire story and confessed that she had 3 children – all the product of her life as a prostitute – in the care of her mother, whom she had not seen for 5 years.
He asked permission to visit them. He became angry and warned her that, If he left, he would never be able to come back.. She didn’t hesitate to leave. «There I knew that God existed,» he says, «No one who buys you frees you just like that.»
Today, Berenice preaches at the Maranatha Ministries Christian Church, in Monterrey. Photo: Facebook Berenice Villanueva JuárezWhen he was finally reunited with his family, he immediately noticed the absence of his youngest daughter. When she asked her mother, she confessed that she believed she had died and, unable to take care of the children, she decided to give little Sofía to some people she knew.
The revelation broke her down and she distanced herself from her mother again, although she depended on her to care for her children.
As she struggled to recover and prove that she could take care of her children, Berenice returned to prostitutionthis time in an executive restaurant frequented by wealthy men. That job allowed her to support her family and, in addition, it was there where she met the man who would later become her husband.
Her present as a Christian preacher
The real break came when her mother, who had become a Christian, invited her to church one Sunday. That was the great condition to be able to give you complete possession.
“It was the most important meeting of my life«, he remembers, referring to that first service, presided over by a Nigerian pastor, whose message he felt like a direct and personal call.
Since then, Berenice clung to the word of Christ, managed to recover her children and founded her own church. “God changed a prostitute for a shepherdess”, he states.
Today, together with her husband – also a pastor – she has been traveling to different countries for more than 12 years to preach her story of transformation and faith.
It is defined as “a shepherdess for the glory of God” who grabs the microphone and focuses her message especially on women “who are in a corner wanting help and a change in their life,” just as she experienced it.
Berenice shares her story in the cult not as a story of sadness, but as a victory. His life taught him, he says, that everything you experience in the present, no matter how painful it may be, can later become a triumph achieved.
