The 700 Club with Pat Robertson


Credits

Founder, Administrator, Senior Pastor, Calcutta Mission of Mercy, a foreign missions division of the Assemblies of God; her ministry feeds 20,000 women and children six days a week

Missionary to Calcutta for more than 50 years

Ordained minister

Widow of Dr. Mark Buntain

Mother of two, grandmother


Address
Mission of Mercy
P.O. Box 62600
Colorado Springs, CO 80962

Web Site


GUEST BIO

Huldah Buntain: Fifty Years in Calcutta

By The 700 Club

CBN.com Fifty Years on the Field

In 1954, with a 1-year-old daughter, Mark and Huldah found themselves on a ship to Calcutta, the beginning of a voyage that would take them across the Atlantic for three months on two ships. Their first approach to their new home was up the narrow and treacherous Hooghly River.

“It was like entering the mouth of a dragon,” Huldah says. “The murky water resembled sewage flowing down a wide gutter, only this current contained dead dogs and cows and even the skeletal remains of a human body."

Huldah, widowed since 1989, still lives in the same apartment and runs the ministry she and her husband began 50 years ago. From its humble beginnings, the Calcutta Ministry has grown to include more than 800 churches, an entire educational system, several Bible colleges, a hospital, a nurse’s training center soon to become a college, and a teacher’s college. Huldah oversees and visits them all. She spends roughly three to four months a year in her Calcutta apartment. The rest of her time is spent traveling throughout India and the world.

Huldah is responsible for ministry in 11 Indian states, including 230 million people. Thirty thousand children from these regions are in Mission of Mercy schools.

Calcutta Changes

Computers have changed the face of India. Huldah says that if you have a problem with your computer and you call a tech support line, you are most probably speaking to someone in India for help. And unlike the early days when she moved there, you can now buy electronic equipment and modern appliances. You don’t have to ship them from America.

But poverty still crushes in on Calcutta. For one reason, there are 18 million residents living in a nine mile by four mile area. And between the hours of 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. during the week, the population swells to 25 million. Some of Huldah’s own employees see their children only on weekends because they travel in from such a long distance. They leave home before their children are up and return after the kids are in bed so that they can earn a wage in the city.

Hope for the Future

At 79, will Huldah Buntain retire? “NO!” she says emphatically. The satisfaction of changed lives is far too great. She recently met a young doctor and his nurse/wife in Toronto who were “our children.” He was a boy from an extremely poor region who had come to a Mission of Mercy school and later married a nurse trained in Huldah’s nursing training center.

Huldah’s ministry is literally helping blind eyes see. Another of her recent success stories involves the 100 blind students taught at one of her schools. After being observed by a doctor, five blind children in the Mission of Mercy Hospital were selected to receive a unique eye surgery allowing them to see and read. Another 20 students are being screened to determine their possibilities for this surgery.

Huldah will release a 50th anniversary book at the end of this year outlining all the miracles God has accomplished in India through His servants Mark and Huldah.

Greatest Satisfaction

For Huldah, the investment in thousands of lives is a thrill. Of the 1,500 people on Mission of Mercy’s staff, Huldah is excited to point out that two-thirds of them came through Mission of Mercy’s programs as children. Seeing another generation come along keeps her excited and moving forward.

Huldah Buntain is truly one of those people who, when the end has come, will have a whole host of witnesses for whom she has been the vehicle by which they came to Christ.

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