DENVER, CO (January 29, 2015) —Marisol Martinez, the first woman to become the president of the Covenant Church of the Central and South Districts of Mexico (IEMP), was presented the 2015 North Park Theological Seminary Alumni Award for Distinguished Service during a reception at the Midwinter Conference on Tuesday.

A year ago, she resigned from her job leading El Pozo de Vida (The Well of Life), a nonprofit organization she founded in 2010 to combat human trafficking in Mexico City because she sensed God was calling her to something new. But she was surprised when she received a phone call last August asking if she would accept the nomination to be president.

“For several years I knew I had a call to serve the church,” said in an interview with her alma mater. “God put in me a great love for the church and a great desire see the church involved in the transformation of our communities and our world.”

Martinez, a 2004 graduate of the seminary’s master of arts in Christian ministry also has served as a missionary in Spain and different parts of Mexico. She is a member of the Tlalpan Covenant Church in Mexico City, where she has been active in numerous ways, including leading the Congregational Vitality process.

In a recent interview with Pia Restrepo, co-regional coordinator for Latin America, Martinez spoke about her life and what it meant to be elected president of the IEMP: “So I think it speaks that in the Mexican Covenant Church…we have been in a process where as men and women God uses both of us and it’s not a competition or that men are better than women or men have more value than women. In Christ, as a body, both women and men have gifts that he has given to the church so that we can grow in Christ, as a community, and as a family.” (Video)