CHICAGO, IL (January 29, 2013) – A funeral service for Teofisto Nelson C. Gaurano, pastor of Community Evangelical Covenant Church, will be conducted at 10 a.m. Saturday at Immanuel Covenant Church.

Gaurano, 52, died Monday following a prolonged illness.

He was born September 23, 1960, in Manila, Philippines. He married Lilia Jumaquio on June 4, 1988. He is survived by his wife and two children, a daughter who resides in the U.S. and a son who resides in the Philippines.

Gaurano graduated from Asian Theological Seminary in the Philippines. At the time of his death, he was pursuing a Master of Divinity degree at North Park Theological Seminary, the recipient of a Covenant Diversity Scholarship.

“I applied for the Master of Divinity program . . . in response to God’s call to pastoral ministry,” Guarano wrote in his scholarship application. “I found the Evangelical Covenant Church’s affirmation of faith to be what I have been praying for and looking for in pastoral ministry.”

He became a member of a Filipino Covenant congregation in Chicago in 2009. “Serving with an ethnic Covenant church while studying is a suitable ministry learning experience,” he said. “I hope to resume a teaching ministry and do church planting when I go back to the Philippines.

“The scholarship serves as God’s continuing assurance that studying at North Park Theological Seminary is what he wants me to do now,” he continues. “Since I started with the program, God has been preparing me and teaching me what ministry is all about. He is also teaching my family and I to fully trust him for our needs.”

A close friend describes him as “a man who was full of grace and had a pastor’s heart that reached out to others.”