By Abdul Masih –
Angel Ortiz smuggled drugs for the Juarez Cartel into America, up the East Coast and to Denver.
So when he got saved, discipled and ordained to launch a church in Cuba, Angel didn’t worry about rules banning Americans from taking up residence in the socialist island. He didn’t worry about the ban on foreign preachers.
“I never cared about the law, so why would I start now?” said the now-evangelist based in El Paso, TX. “My past is what made me who I am.”
Not only did Angel Ortiz live in Havana, he raised up a church too large to evade scrutiny from the Cuban authorities AND he planted out another couple churches forming pastors he discipled in his four years there.
Born and raised in El Paso, Angel Ortiz got recruited by his uncle into the cross-border Juarez drug cartel, a job he executed successfully from age 18 to 22.
“I made a lot of money, crazy, crazy life,” he recalls.
With the fast money, heavy addiction came.
“You’re on this huge high, but then sin comes asking for payments,” Angel says. “My life spun out of control.”
The police were looking for him, as were hitmen and angry rivals from the underworld of crime.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he says.
Meanwhile, his brother was attending church in El Paso. When some associate/friends got locked up in a federal penitentiary, he went to visit them. Inmates witnessed to Angel.
“It shook me up,” Angel confesses. “I called my brother and gave my life to Christ. It was Holy Ghost miraculous. With one prayer, I got delivered from cocaine and alcohol. God got me out of the cartel. It was one miracles after another.”
Once you join the cartel, you can’t just leave. They come for you to kill you.
The miracle was that God delivered Angel from the vendettas.
“The people who were trying to kill me started to forgive me,” he marvels.
He had been running the operation for his uncle who was in jail. When he visited his uncle, he was afraid his own uncle was order his killing.
Instead, “he cried. He kind of gave me a pass. It was the weirdest thing in the world,” Angel recalls.
His uncle apologized. “I’m sorry for bringing you into this life,” he told Angel.
It was 1994. As he continued serving in the church and getting discipled by the pastor, Angel got to the point where he was ordained a pastor to start in church Pico Rivera neighborhood of Los Angeles.
In 2017, he tried his luck to get into Cuba to pioneer a church.
Naysayers pointed out things he already knew: Cuban law bans Americans from taking up residence in the nation. It also bans foreign preachers.
Angel drew upon his experience as a drug smuggler. Why would serving the Lord be impossible when serving the devil, anything was possible?
At that time, Cuba passed a new law, allowing Americans to reside, as long as they paid the government big rental fees.
It was his opening.
He took his wife and three daughters. When his daughter joined a local soccer team, the coach’s wife asked if she could practice English with the family. They eventually got saved, and the Ortizes started church in the patio of the home of the soccer coach.
For four years, he pastored. The church grew. He performed evangelistic concerts where 100s of people showed up. He raised up workers and planted another church in Playa Baracoa and then one in Bauta
How did he never get caught preaching? When the authorities catch you, you can get jailed – but more often you get sent back to America.
Police visited his church. Spies were sent in. His congregants were interrogated. Still, he never got busted.
“How did they not catch me?” Angel wonders. “It was supernatural.”
