The Liberty County Sheriff’s Office has a new chaplain joining its ranks.
Rev. Jessica M. Marquez will be a welcome and much-need asset to the sheriff’s office as she is bilingual and can interact with female crime victims, peace officers and other persons needing spiritual guidance at a police scene or in their personal lives, said Capt. Ken DeFoor, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office.
“Chaplain Marquez will join with the other seven LCSO chaplains in helping to answer these needs and will be placed on the regular call-out roster to be assigned as dispatched by the LCSO. And as always, LCSO Sheriff Bobby Rader has made the Chaplains available to any other law enforcement agency that request a Chaplain on a police call or on a personal basis,” DeFoor said.
Chaplain Marquez started her ministerial career at the age of 10 years old. In her adult life she turned down a scholarship to Harvard University to attend Texas Bible College, and after marrying her husband, Antonio, and living in Mexico for 10 years, the couple moved on as missionaries to Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, North America, Central America, Caribbean, South America, Australia and Europe.
After returning from the foreign mission field in 2017, Chaplain Marquez and her husband settled in Miami, Fla., where their ministry continued to grow by establishing two churches there.
Since December 2019, Chaplain Marquez and her pastor husband have served on the Pastoral Staff with The Sanctuary Church in Cleveland, Texas. Chaplain Marquez and her husband have planted the seeds for 17 churches in four different countries and, on any given day, she has more than 40,000 people connected to her via social media.