Teaching Elder
Afonso Issa
I came to Vancouver from the center of Brazil with my wife, Louinne, in 2020 to study at the Vancouver School of Theology, on the UBC Campus. We came with our kids, Leticia, Luisa, Alice and Tiago (our first picture in Vancouver is shown here). I met Louinne through a group that was reading the Bible, praying, and eating together during our time in the medical school in the state of Goias, where we both grew up. After a life crisis where I faced depression altogether with a sense of losing my faith and contact with God, I and Louinne could experience the love of God, the mercy of Jesus, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit through a small group that was meeting in the house of a Pentecostal Presbyterian Pastor in Goiania twenty years ago. In that small group, through meals, prayers, laughter, travels, and learning more about Jesus and the church, I felt reconciled with God . I graduated from the Medical School in 2007, practiced Pediatrics from 2008 to 2020, while with Louinne we joined Christian small groups for families with kids and for medical students. When I was finishing a PhD in Health Science, studying influencing factors of career choices among medical students, I realized that I needed to pay more attention to our family and pursue a call to become a teacher and pastor in a local church. Louinne and I left Brazil and our medical careers, although Louinne wants to practice medicine again as soon as possible. After 5 years to finish a Master of Divinity, I am grateful and excited to live and work and learn alongside the West Vancouver Presbyterian Church, paying attention to what the Holy Spirit is bringing to our Altamont neighbourhood and discerning in our community what is the call of God for our lives at this time and space. I love learning and teaching in small groups, I believe God is relational and is calling us to live relational lives. I believe God is in Christ reconciling the world to God, and is calling us, God's chosen people (the church around the world) to the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5).