September 2023
Contributor: St. John’s Lutheran Church, Wheaton, IL
Álvaro Witt Duarte was ordained and installed August 26, 2023 as Associate Pastor at St. John Lutheran Church in Wheaton, Illinois.
Álvaro Witt Duarte was born in the small town of Resplendor, in the state of Minas Gerais, in southeastern Brazil. He was baptized into the church in his family’s rural Lutheran parish. At the age of 10 he and his family immigrated to Peabody, MA. After high school, he was enrolled at Salem State University, where he studied History and Education. After completing his student teaching at Beverly High School, he was offered a teaching position. Throughout his time in middle school, high school, and college, he had been active in his church’s youth programs. It was during that time that ideas of becoming a pastor went through his mind. His family back in Brazil has also been very involved in church work, as laity and clergy. In 2016, in his fourth year of teaching high school, he became seriously interested in entering the seminary, with support from family, colleagues, friends, and pastors. After much deliberation, he left his teaching position to be enrolled at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.
Álvaro started h s seminary studies in the Fall of 2017. In his third year, he delayed his vicarage in order to spend a year in Brazil: six months working in a rural parish in Itueta, Minas Gerais and six months studying for a semester at Seminário Concórdia, Porto Alegre. It was while working in that parish that he met his fiancée Mylena Kamke Boasquives, in January 2020. Upon his return to the United States in July of 2020, he began his vicarage at Trinity Lutheran, in St. Joseph, Michigan.
In January 2021, he flew to Brazil to propose to Mylena. In May of that year they applied for her visa in order to be able to come to the United States and be married. Mylena’s visa was issued in February of this year. In July, she completed her undergraduate studies in Portuguese Literature & Language and Education. Álvaro finished his Masters of Divinity from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, 2023 and looks forward to continuing his studies in the graduate program. The focus of his studies is in Historical Theology, specifically the life and work of Johannes Bugenhagen.
On July 15, 2023 Álvaro and Mylena were married at his home church in Lynnfield, MA. They look forward to life together as a couple and in the community of St. John.
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