It was the opportunity of a lifetime for a captain from the India South Eastern Territory to travel more than 8,000 miles to attend this year’s Brengle Holiness Institute held annually at the College for Officer Training in Chicago, Ill. In the days before the institute, Captain Kalapu Selva attended the Central Territory’s commissioning weekend, followed by a whirlwind tour of the Wisconsin and Upper Michigan Division which is a Partner in Mission (PIM) with the India South Eastern Territory.
Captain Selva is the territorial project officer responsible for managing and funding mission and community projects and educational resources. His thirst for knowledge was gratified by each of the diverse tour stops, which spanned almost the length and breadth of the division. Most importantly Captain Selva discovered aspects of ministry and programming that could be replicated in his territory. He spent time with officers, soldiers and employees at corps that were diverse in size and ethnicity, as well as at the Green Bay Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center, Army Lake Camp, inner-city services and urban outreach ministries.
The captain said in India, open-airs and revival meetings featuring music, songs, dramas and dance, are effective outreach tools through which God works powerfully especially in villages. One entire village accepted Christ, which led to the building of a corps there. On a visit to another village, an older Hindu woman asked the captain to pray for her to have a child; when he next visited the village, she was pregnant!
Selva was commissioned with his wife, Thaya Anusuro, in 2009 with the “Witnesses for Christ” session. They served in two corps (four years each) and directed a child development center in the second corps appointment before his current appointment at territorial headquarters. They have two daughters, Kaitlin Shekinah and Chelsiya Vinolin.
