Dr. Joël Hilaire

Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti where he grew up, Dr. Joël Hilaire graduated from the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy in 1986 at the age of twenty-five. On September 11, 1998 he married the love of his life, Claire E. Jean-Louis, who is also from Haiti. They have been blessed with four children and seven grandchildren.

When on November 30, 2007, Dr. Joël Hilaire was ordained the pastor of Orlando Gospel Assembly, he opened a brand new chapter in his life. That same day also, he thought that he had closed another section of his life as that marked his last day at the cardiology clinic where he had labored for five years in Tampa, Florida as the assistant of a renowned cardiologist. He didn’t realize that from being a caretaker of the human body, he was now going to watch both over the body and the spirit. He was caring for souls. Many people, by curiosity, asked him how can you leave the practice of medicine to pastor in Orlando a small church of about 50 people in a trailer, a church with a tumultuous past with his previous leaderships?

He smiled and simply uttered, “I am answering now to a higher calling in my life!”

It has been 17 years now and a few months. The church has grown spiritually and numerically. The congregation had overgrown the building. He was obligated to change the location. He is working on expanding on their four acres of land located on Dean Road at East Orlando. This book is fully dedicated as a fundraising tool for this project.

Dr. Joël Hilaire has been married now for 37 years and continues to care both for his wife (chronically ill for the past 5 years) and his church – the Orlando Gospel Assembly.

This is Dr. Hilaire’s seventh book.