Salvation Army Leadership Shift
Lives long steeped in the Salvation Army led Nereus Mogaria and Valentina Agudelo to replace John and Kelly Ross in July as ministers of the Port Jervis church. The Rosses mentored them and then moved on to the Newburgh ministry.
Mogaria has attended Salvation Army events since before he was born, he says. His existence likely stems from Salvation Army activities several generations earlier. Five generations of his family have been involved with the charity-focused ministry, he said. His great grandparents in India were Salvation Army officers, as are his parents in Brooklyn. Growing up, he went to Salvation Army summer camps, music programs and Bible school near his home in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, a Hispanic and Asian community.
His father was a surgical technician, his mother a patient care technician, and
Mogaria at first trained to be a physician’s assistant for cardiac surgery.
“I felt called to physically fix hearts,” said Mogaria, 29.
But other voices and his own steered him to seminary school, as he continued church activities with guidance from a mentor. He met Colombia-born Agudelo, 25, at a Salvation Army conference in Maine, introduced by his cousin. She too had once been headed elsewhere, studying communications at Rhode Island College and imagining becoming an editor, news anchor or writer, she said. She worked on a local magazine, Netflix and movies while in school.
“But God had other plans. When I graduated, I went to Brazil on a mission trip,” she said. “They had Olympics there, and I did preparations with youth programs, painting, cleaning and moving things. I became immersed in their culture and saw the different ways the Salvation Army ministers around the world. They have churches in 100 countries. The pastors loved what they did so much, and I wanted to serve my community with the same big passion.”
She first encountered the Salvation Army when she was six and her family needed help with their rent. They had immigrated to Rhode Island from Colombia two years earlier. They were invited to the Sunday church service and became members.
“I loved it. It was a Spanish community church, and we were instantly welcomed,” she recalled. A friend she made that year would become her college roommate.
“I always loved the Salvation Army. It has lots of programs—karate, singing in the band,” Agudelo said. “For my father, mother, brother and me, there was always something to do.”
After college, while supporting herself working in retail, she spent summers on mission trips to Puerto Rico, Denmark, Greenland and the Virgin Islands. Agudelo led a group of young women and looked for ways to encourage spiritual growth as they cleaned churches, helped with soup kitchens and ran summer camps.
“Every day we looked at what worked and what was challenging and how to do it differently,” she said. “Some days were long with physical labor. If one person got cranky, it affected the whole group. We talked, and the crankiness stopped.”
She talked to pastors at a candidate seminar weekend about training to become one and what ministries can look like. Meanwhile, she was a “shoe waitress” at a mom and pop shoe store. Then s
1he was accepted into the ministry program in Suffern, New York and spent two years there, becoming class president.
“The class was a support system, training to do the same work,” she said.
She married Mogaria in June, and they honeymooned in Mexico. She has been with him in Port Jervis only a couple of months, organizing music, Bible studies and women’s group activities. She plans to have a youth ministry, she said.