“The Salvation Army is the place that gave me my roots and my grounding, where I understood what I believed and why,” says Captain Melissa Mailman who, with her husband, Captain Mike Mailman, are both in charge of The Salvation Army in Wetaskiwin, Alta., she as the community ministries officer and he as the corps officer.

“The fact that The Salvation Army is a holiness movement really drew me because I’m very, very evangelistic,” she continues. “I have a missionary’s heart. And the Army provides that opportunity. The Spirit leads me and the Army gives me an umbrella and the tools.”

“Huh”

Captain Melissa remembers the day in January 2007 when she was called to officership. 

She and her husband, Captain Mike, had been happily married for seven years and had a child. He was in a dream job as a graphic designer, and they owned their own house in a cul-de-sac backing off of the very school she had attended.

The Mailmans were soldiers attending a Salvation Army church, and God had given them everything they wanted.

“Little did I know God had so much more in store,” smiles Captain Melissa.

That day, God spoke to her. 

“I remember sitting on the couch reading a book,” she says. “I felt it rather than heard it, though it was audible for all that.”

The message was: “You need to go to training college.”

She put her book down and replied, “OK.” Then she went back to reading. “That was that.”

When her husband came home from work, he started taking down the Christmas lights.

“I was sitting there again, with my daughter, and I felt the Holy Spirit say, ‘Now you need to tell Mike.’ And I went, ‘Oh.’ 

“How am I going tell Mike that I think we need to change our lives forever?” Captain Melissa recalls herself asking. “And I wasn’t sure what the response was going to be.”

So she said to her husband, “I have something to tell you. I really feel like we need to go to training college.”

He looked at her and simply said, “Huh.” 

Confirmation

Captain Mike told his wife that he had been praying about this exact thing over that past week.

“For me, my faith was, ‘That’s what you’re calling me to do? OK.’ That was my confirmation,” Captain Melissa says. “For Mike, just me telling him that was his confirmation.” 

From there, it was “kind of a whirlwind.” By the summer, the Mailmans were at the College for Officer Training with a one-year-old in tow.

“It feels like eons ago, but we were commissioned in 2009,” Captain Melissa says.

“Here I Am”

But, for a time, Captain Melissa questioned. 

“Not my calling,” she says, “but I questioned the umbrella under which I was serving.”

On sick leave, she worked through some traumatic incidents that had occurred in her life. She sought the professional help she needed in order to heal, and she prayed and asked what God’s will was for her life.

“And here I am, still here!” she smiles. “Still serving with The Salvation Army. During the seeking, I found a deep peace, which, for me, was a telltale sign that I’m exactly where I am meant to be serving. 

“I believe God has appointed The Salvation Army,” she goes on to say. “We are a holiness movement. The Holy Spirit calls us to love God and love others, and the Army is at the forefront of that. It’s about faith and living my first purpose as an officer, which is to save souls. That’s why the Army is right for us because that’s what we believe our lives are about.”