In 1954, a couple sailed from New York to India for what they thought would be a one-year missionary. 50 years later, the Buntains' ministry has grown from a small shop above a night club to 800 churches, schools, colleges, orphanages, a blind school, a hospital and a nursing school. The Buntains' Calcutta Ministry also include feeding 25,000 people daily, performing cleft palate surgery and blood transfusion on patients.
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This morning I had the privilege to hear Huldah Buntain, 79, share at the Assembly of God church about how she gave her life to Calcutta. The entire congregation gave her a standing applause the moment she walked to the stage. Huldah has such a heart for the people in India that hearing her speak about them made me weep for the people in India. Not that they need my tears, but that there was so much to love through Huldah.
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It's an amazing experience to be in the presence of such a wonderful woman of God and I'm so dying to share this with you. :P Tales about her deeds of love and acts of faith were unheard of that they made me redefine what love and faith means. A case in point was the construction of a hospital in Calcutta by the Buntains. See, when they started building churches (esp in Muslim territories), people burnt them down. Then, they decided to build hospitals instead because when services are being provided to the community, burning them down would mean having no treatment.
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Anyways, the city (council) granted them an area to build a hospital. The moment they started digging the land, they found that it was on a lake! Calcutta is 12 ft above sea level and they needed pilings, which they couldn't afford, to lay the foundations. So Mark, Huldah's late husband, gathered some people around that plot of land, tied a string to a bible, lowered it to the water and commanded the waters to recede in the name of Jesus.
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Today, their hospital basement is one of the driest area amidst the monsoon and flood. It houses heavy instruments which non-christian engineers from Toshiba, CA, said would rust after surveying the location. But, after inspecting the basement for dampness, they asked, "Can you (Huldah) tell me your story, again?"
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This story made me recollect on my mom's testimony of the all-things-are-possible-God we have. My grand-father donated a plot of land in a fishing village in Kuala Kedah to the Southern Baptist missionaries to build a church. It was one of the first Baptist churches in M'sia btw. Once, a fire came upon their village, got carried by the wind and consumed all the wooden houses. Amazingly, the wind stopped at the direction of the church. It was the only building that was spared by the fire in the village. Amazing, ya? Today, the church is converted into a firehouse, however.
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Anyways, you can read more about the Buntain Calcultta ministry here. When Huldah said, "and my God will supply ALL your needs.", she meant every word she spoke. It wasn't just words, but life to me.
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