Touching Lives of People Through the Holistic Mission Work of the Buntains in Calcutta,India

The living environment in Calcutta

When the Buntains were coming into the city by freighter, they noticed many surprising items floating on the murky Hooghly River, from trash to deceased animals. People were bathing in the water along the shores, and the Buntains were shocked to see abject poverty on every hand (79). Warm breezes blew in their faces, but with each breath they had to swallow thick and unpleasant pollutants that were in the air. The city was overflowing with starvation and illness, and people stumbled through “the last weeks of their lives. They were too frail to fight, yet too hardy simply to die.” They called for help, but no one responded; there were too many of them. ⁶

The muddy water looked like dirt flowing down an extensive drain, with dead dogs and cows, and even the parts of a human skeleton, shockingly visible. Naked natives were washing in the water. Other people assembled on the banks, and it made Huldah think of “Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and the Mississippi Queen; then she realized the two settings had nothing in common.” ⁷

As they went through the crowd, children grabbed at their ankles and pleaded for a coin or morsel of food. Many of them were thin, frail, and malformed. Their eyes appeared like those of supercilious owls, looking at the Buntains as if they were magnificent deities, come to rescue them from the brutalities of their world. ⁸

Huldah further described their new home as follows:

Calcutta is a desperate city. Four miles wide and nine miles long, Calcutta is the home of 18 million people. Eighty percent of the city is slums. There are 1,000 people to every toilet and 5,000 to every drinking fountain. Clapboard hovels, street vendors, beggars, half-naked children, and an estimated 40,000 human rickshaws fill the roads. Cows venerated as sacred monopolize the streets, forcing taxis and pedestrians from their path. Packs of dogs fight for scraps of food. Homeless men, women and children lie on mats positioned in alleys and on patches of open pavement. Many are embroiled in a daily quest for survival, grown men jostling in line for a job that may pay 10 rupees a day (30 U.S. cents). ⁹

The Buntains further mentioned that disease was rampant throughout the city: epidemics were impartial, snuffing out the lives of young and old. “Cholera, typhoid, tetanus, and more keep hospitals and mortuaries busy.” ¹⁰ However, the population also included people who had sufficient food to eat. These were the women who were beautifully dressed, as well as good looking young men with “moustaches and western shoes.” Some were hugely affluent, even millionaires. ¹¹ The vast majority of the people in the city, however, were desperately struggling for their daily survival.

Impetus of involvement in diverse social ministries

Once, soon after they arrived in Calcutta, the Buntains were having a church worship service when a beggar appeared and shouted, “Preacher, feed our bellies, and then tell us there is a God in heaven who loves us!” The Buntains also witnessed children who starved to death, and they learned that “millions of children in Calcutta live and die in the filth of poverty.” ¹² This stark reality spoke deeply to the Buntains and moved them to begin a feeding program, which currently serves over 60,000 meals a week. ¹³

One day in a school, Mark Buntain faced a critical situation as a girl collapsed in the classroom. He had to rush the child to the hospital but then was disheartened to discover that the local hospital was overcrowded and no medical staff was able to quickly attend to this emergency. This incident prompted him to begin to offer what he could in the way of medical care and food for children, besides providing for their educational needs. Eventually, Mark constructed a hospital in 1977, which has provided free health care services to countless people, adults and children, suffering from a variety of diseases. ¹⁴

Such heart-wrenching personal experiences inspired the Buntains to engage in one social ministry after another. They had a strong desire to provide people with good health care, adequate education, and a hopeful life overall. Aside from these specific experiences, the Buntains had compassionate hearts and love for the people. Huldah once described Mark’s passion for helping for the sake of the Gospel: “With a tear-stained face, Mark looked at me and said, ‘Huldah, there are hundreds of villages across these mountains. We don’t have a gospel work in Darjeeling or in any of these villages, which cover hundreds of miles across the Himalayan Mountains’” (84).

Starting a feeding ministry

Shortly after the Buntains settled down in Calcutta, they discovered that many street children had no proper name; they were simply referred to as “the one with measles” or “the kid with smallpox.” Some died from starvation; others succumbed to bacterial and viral attacks. Because of malnutrition, their bodies had no strength to resist. “These dead lie with a puzzled look on their faces while some adult, a handkerchief gripped to nose and mouth, determines what happened.” After encountering numerous people who were daily suffering from little or no food, the Buntains decided to start a feeding ministry. At first the numbers were small, but it kept on growing and continues to this day. The Calcutta Street Feeding Program provides food for many, including school children. The food is taken to various stations within a forty-five-minute range of Calcutta. Though the city has developed in various ways because of the influence of technology, the poor have seemed to increase, for floods of people are coming in from other cities looking for work and places to live. “The feeding lines continue to expand as thousands of families live on the streets and depend on these daily meals. It is estimated that one million children live on the streets in Calcutta.” For 25,000 schoolchildren daily, it is the only meal they will have in the whole day. ¹⁵

Feeding huge numbers of people daily requires considerable finances. The Buntains frequently encountered financial challenges because of growth in numbers. Occasionally, the senior accountants would say, “The feeding program account only has money for a couple more days to feed the children.” On hearing this news, Mark would take Huldah’s hands and offer prayer. In such cases, he seemed always to receive the assurance that God knew about the financial difficulty and would not abandon them (135).

Even after her husband’s death, Huldah has continually been operating this ministry. She has said, “When we were in need of money for our feeding programs and our other charitable compassionate ministries, I often thought perhaps we should consider downsizing these projects to take care of the daily operational expenses. At these times, however, when I was distressed over lack of finances and wondered where the money would come from, I would always be assured that God would take care of the problem, and miraculously He always did” (135).

The significant ministry of the feeding program has never stopped but still continues. Large numbers of people are greatly relying on this meal, although fund-raising can sometimes be difficult.

Building schools

The Buntains saw the urgent necessity of starting a school, for many children simply had no opportunity whatsoever to go to school. A piece of land came to light that they wanted to purchase, but it belonged to a Muslim man who was unwilling to sell. One day, Mark was called to come to visit this owner, who had been in the hospital for a long time with a critical illness. As Mark sat by the bed, he held the man’s hand and offered a prayer for him. Shortly thereafter, news came that the man had died. Sons of the Muslim man, being highly superstitious, agreed to sell the land to Mark because he had been the last person to see their father alive. This was good news indeed; however, he now faced the obstacle of raising the necessary funds to buy it. ¹⁶

Because of the financial need, Mark called for a prayer meeting one evening with his deacons. After the prayer meeting, he went home, filled with despair. Huldah welcomed him at the staircase to their flat and burst out, “You can end your prayers—the money is on its way!” Mark simply stared at Huldah, his face a mixture of smiles and tears. Huldah explained, “I have a cable in my hand from your sister, Alice, saying that the funds are going to be sent to buy the property.” Mark read the cable, then yelled, “Hallelujah!” Huldah gave him the whole story: “A layman in Alice’s church in the States had asked her if anything in particular was troubling her brother. Alice told the man about our financial crisis, and within days he had wired what was needed to purchase the land. For Mark and me, it was as if God, through this miracle, repeated his vow to never forsake us. In response, all we could do was wrapping our arms around one another and sigh a prayer of thanksgiving and relief into the other’s ear.” ¹⁷

Building the primary school on this property went ahead. Mark found a dear “Indian-born female,” a Mrs. Shaw who was attending an Assemblies of God church and who had considerable educational skills and experience. He hired her as principal to manage the entire educational program. When they were getting ready to open the school, Mark sent out more than five hundred invitations. As the dedication drew near, however, political uprisings arose in the city, much like the campus unrests that swept through the United States in the 1960s. These events kept all but a few from attending the dedication, which was in January 1964. To everyone’s amazement, not long after the dedication two hundred students had been enrolled. ¹⁸

At this point, it seemed the enemy launched an all-out attack. Mark was stricken with pneumonia and needed to be hospitalized. At the same time, their daughter, Bonnie, “had a near-fatal bout with a high fever that turned into tropical measles.” At the same time, catastrophic floods nearly overwhelmed the entire city, leaving thousands destitute and starving. The church fed a myriad of refugees. Because of blocked drains, it took weeks for the waters to recede. ¹⁹

Several years later, in 1979, Mark’s long-time dream to set up a nursing school came true. It was combined with the Calcutta Mercy Hospital. An advertisement at the time read, “The School of Nursing offers a two-year program, as well as a ten-month Diploma in Institutional Nursing Administration and Education and a three-year program in General Nursing and Midwifery” (123). It aimed to educate young women from needy backgrounds who were searching for a better future for themselves and their families. It was set up with a specialized teaching staff and services to thoroughly prepare graduates for vocations in health care. The school grew, to the point where, today, some twenty-five new students enroll every year. Graduates of the nursing programs find jobs at Calcutta Mercy Hospital or have places in Mercy Clinics. ²⁰ In 2008 the nursing school became a college degree program, which enlarges the possibilities for graduates (129–30). ²¹

After that first primary school succeeded back in 1964, almost every year thereafter additional schools were set up. Eventually, the Buntains had opened slightly over one hundred schools in Calcutta and in nearby suburbs. ²² They also opened Bible colleges that trained hundreds of ministers. ²³

The Buntains were also helping Calcutta Blind School as partners in the areas of home life, schooling, and medical care for underprivileged children struggling from damage to their eyesight. Countless families in India could not pay for medical care for their blind children. In some cases, because parents believed that their child’s deficiency was a curse on the family, they neglected or even deserted the child. ²⁴

The dream of Calcutta Mercy Ministries ²⁵ remains to grow every year, to assist more destitute people in different cities with further services. In 2015 a new College of Nursing facility opened. Its vision includes:

improving health care in hospitals in an effort to meet India’s current shortage of 1.1 million nurses. At the request of the Indian Nursing Council, Calcutta Mercy Ministries is constructing a new College of Nursing facility that will exist in addition to the School of Nursing. Offering a higher degree in the nursing profession, nurses will be able to expand their knowledge within specific medical fields and fill specialized roles that hospitals are currently lacking. ²⁶

Establishing a hospital

Over their years of service in Calcutta, the Buntains witnessed countless people die because of insufficient medical care. As noted above, when Mark dealt with the girl who suddenly collapsed in her classroom, it gave him a burden for establishing a hospital. In 1971 they began a small health facility at the back of their Royd Street School. It began with one big room and six patient beds and with a few volunteer nurses and doctors. Both Mark and Huldah were grateful to God for “development of medical and surgical procedures and personnel” and other necessary work on this facility (110).

This small medical center constantly expanded, making it clear that a larger facility was needed. They enlarged the capacity to sixteen beds, which were soon inadequate to handle the demand. This hospital was active in neighborhood programs of sickness prevention, which included free vaccinations and “basic medical care to schoolchildren, as well as to hundreds of people who would line up for treatment each day.” The Buntains longed to construct a larger medical center that would provide God’s care for both bodily and spiritual needs. For days and weeks on end, Mark kept reminding himself of what happened with the child who collapsed in the classroom and with people having to share beds in congested local hospitals. Sensing that it was God’s will that a medical facility be established in Calcutta that could serve the poor, he never lost hope (111).

One day, Mark came home with great excitement, saying that he had discovered land that could be suitable for a hospital on the central street of Calcutta. Huldah could not believe this news, because they had searched for days and could not find anything in the neighborhood of their current church, school, and small hospital. She was astonished when Mark enthusiastically shared with her about the property he discovered: a large “old British cemetery four blocks square that had not been used in over a hundred years.” Since there were no tombs there, it was used by a sports club as a soccer field. Mark planned to meet with the cemetery Burial Board for assistance. After many hours in consultation with the board and its committees, they finally agreed to draw up an agreement for the Buntain’s mission to purchase the land (112).

The initial building permit that they received was for the hospital. Mark, however, could raise funds barely adequate only for the initial groundwork. When they started digging, the contractors ran into water that they did not expect; the more they dug, the more water came out. Huldah recalled her thrilling experience:

I was very concerned as the water appeared like a large lake, and I knew we did not have money to fund the necessary pilings that would be required for such a huge building. Mark gathered some of our pastors and staff together and said, “This is an attack of the enemy. We have to pray that God will work another miracle.” I wondered what miracle Mark was talking about. When Mark took a little Bible out of his pocket, I knew something miraculous was going to happen. Mark then asked the contractors for a rope, which he tied around the Bible, and told everyone to join hands and believe God for a miracle. . . . He dropped the Bible down into the water, asked everyone to pray, and in a loud voice commanded the water to recede into the ground. (112–13)

Huldah could hardly believe her eyes. Amazingly, the water gradually withdrew back into the ground. The workers’ eyes were “as big as saucers.” They shouted, “Where did the water go?” In a calm voice Mark whispered quietly, “God took care of the situation.” The workers were absolutely astonished (113).

In 1977, after the building was finally finished and outfitted, the hospital began providing medical services for needy men, women, and children of Calcutta. Currently, Calcutta Mercy Hospital is a six-story facility with 173 beds and thirty multispecialty departments. Serving over 100,000 patients a year, 40,000 are treated free of charge, irrespective of their caste, creed, or religion. Ongoing programs provide free medical services to children suffering from blindness, cleft lips or palates, thalassemia, and leukemia. ²⁷

Besides operating the hospital, Calcutta Mercy Ministries presently operates eighteen Mercy Clinics and is aiming at opening twenty-two more clinics. Each day, doctors and nurses travel from Calcutta Mercy Hospital to satellite clinics, giving free health care to communities around the countryside. Underprivileged families living in rural villages who simply have no money to travel to the city have the chance of easy contact with medical care through Mercy Clinics. Calcutta Mercy Ministries vigorously works every year to provide new areas with sympathetic, necessary “end-to-end” care. Nurses obtain an advanced level of medical knowledge through the New College of Nursing facility. Self-sufficiency is a vital aim, as hospital programs strive to make the yearly income cover running expenses, for 40 percent of the services of the hospital are provided free to poor people.

Calcutta Mercy Hospital and its partners have dedicated a significant amount of time to Sonagachi, the red-light district of Calcutta. Sonagachi is home to over 10,000 prostitutes living within a one-mile radius. Over the last couple of years, Mercy Ministries has supported free medical clinics in the area, striving to provide a safe place where the women and their children can come to receive much-needed medical care. ²⁸

The hospital is continually making major strides in adding more facilities, developing into one of Calcutta’s top medical centers. For instance, recently the Mark Buntain Cardiac Unit was dedicated. ²⁹ Mother Teresa, who lived in Calcutta and who worked directly on some projects with the Buntains, suffered from heart disease, which was the cause of her death. After Mother Teresa’s death, Huldah and Jim Long, her son-in-law, who is a medical doctor and plays an important role in the hospital, along with a few others, strongly felt that it was essential to equip the hospital with a heart unit, which was actually a desire that Mark Buntain shared with Mother Teresa. It was miraculously provided. “It was not long after that our good friend Bob Pagett, who co-founded Assist International to furnish hospitals with equipment in Third World countries, knew of our need. He contacted us with the wonderful news that a hospital in California was donating a complete Cardiac Care Unit, which included everything we needed” (137).

When sick people who cannot go to a hospital because they cannot pay medical bills come to the Buntains and plead for help, their wish is granted without hesitation. Even those who are seriously ill, so weak that even a doctor cannot tell whether they would survive an operation, are treated. The Buntains earnestly pray for divine intervention in such critical conditions. In many cases many nonbelievers who find healing through medical care and through the Buntains’ love for them, express their wish to attend church.

Establishing Calcutta Mercy Ministries

After Mark Buntain died in 1989 and was buried in Calcutta, Huldah struggled with whether she would keep on with the mission work or not. Thinking of continuing the ministries with no husband was overwhelming; the undertaking was a huge responsibility, and the needs seemed greater than ever. For a woman like Huldah in her early sixties to go forward seemed to make no sense. She was convinced, however, that God held her hand and was leading her down a path to the impossible. After much prayer, she sensed God’s confirmation of her own call to keep on with the work. In fact, in a corner of her heart, she desired to conclude the work and return back to the United States and live close to her daughter, Bonnie, and Bonnie’s own family. In 2005, however, Huldah, along with Bonnie, founded Calcutta Mercy Ministries to support the ongoing ministry in India. The surprising fact is that, not only is Huldah maintaining the existing ministries, but her care for needy people is actually expanding (4–5)! ³⁰

Under the umbrella organization Calcutta Mercy Ministries, a program called Transformation India Movement (TIM) has been organized, which has “adopted” more than 150 villages in the nearby state of Bihar. According to its website, TIM gives every village 200 Bibles and hymnals for new believers, a much-needed clean-water drinking well for the village, ongoing literacy training, a one-time medical clinic/VBS program, a bike for the church planter, and the Jesus Film or a Christian movie. ³¹ This program, called Adopt-A-Village, is undertaken by qualified church planters of TIM and aims to plant churches. These Adopt-A-Village ministries are for communities without any Christian presence. Through this ministry, hundreds of churches in different villages have been started. It also provides “community development programs to unreached areas of rural India.” ³²

Huldah continues living in the same flat she did in 1989, when her husband died, and keeps on overseeing the ministries she and her husband started over sixty years ago. From its modest beginning, Calcutta Mercy Ministries has expanded to include even more programs. The number of churches planted has reached 800. In addition, there are several Bible colleges and a teacher’s college. Huldah supervises them all through her regular visitations. Such involvement allows her to stay at her home only three or four months a year. The other months she travels and visits various places in India and around the world. She oversees ministries in eleven Indian states, comprising 230 million people. Thirty thousand children from these areas are in Mission of Mercy schools. ³³

Evaluation of the Buntains’ mission work

The Buntains boldly started holistic mission in Calcutta. Back in 1954 it was rather unusual for Pentecostal missionaries to be directly involved in social work; the more normal focus was church planting and evangelism, only then gradually including social work based on the needs of local people. Historical records of the mission work of Ella Vanderbout in the Philippines (1947), for example, indicates that she was initially heavily involved in “power evangelism” in Northern Luzon and only later broadened out to include other social ministries such as an orphanage and a youth camp. ³⁴ Numerous written records indicate that power demonstrations in healings and casting out demons has been a typical way of doing mission work for Pentecostals. The Buntains’ priorities thus appear to be an exception to the established Pentecostal mission practice. However, they also shared the ultimate goal of evangelism, which led to the establishing of hundreds of churches.

Recently, Pentecostals have cultivated important mission programs to care for victims of societal unfairness. ³⁵ Pentecostal missionaries and church leaders serving among the deprived and the poor commonly stress that the human person is the basis and reason for Christian mission. ³⁶ That is, meeting the fundamental needs of life is a primary work to do.

Regarding holistic evangelism, we could say that it is, first, to bring people to a saving knowledge of Christ and, second, to transform people’s everyday lives. Such evangelism, which combines proclaiming the Gospel and doing social ministries, is far more effective for bringing transformation than just declaring the Gospel alone. The Buntains’ holistic mission not only has dealt with meeting people’s felt needs but also has become a vehicle to transform people’s lives in the deepest sense. In parallel with their tireless and lavish giving, their incarnational life demonstrated in diverse ministries touched people’s hearts. Numerous unbelievers told of the Buntains’ genuine love for Christ in books written by Huldah Buntain. One specific occasion displays how much Mark Buntain cared for a dying beggar.

A crippled beggar sat at our Mission gate. Our workers would bring him food from the feeding program which was across the street. One day we noticed that the old beggar was very sick. He was lying down and almost unconscious. Immediately Mark took him to our hospital. The doctors said, “Pastor you have brought us in a dead man.” Mark replied, “Yes, I know, but I want him to die between clean sheets and tell him that Jesus loves him.” After he was put in one of our hospital beds, Mark leaned down and said, “Do you know Jesus?” He suddenly gained consciousness, looked up in Mark’s face, and said, “Are you Jesus?” Mark said, “No, I am not Jesus but want you to know that He loves you and wants to take you to a better place called heaven.” . . . He prayed the sinner’s prayer, closed his eyes with a smile on his face and went to be with Jesus. (204)

A similar story of a missionary’s Christlike life also demonstrates this effect. John Bosco (1815–88), founder of the Salesians (who in 1934 opened St. Anthony’s College, in Shillong, India), and his colleagues were very well received because of the impact they made on unbelievers through their lives. “As the people saw the way John Bosco and his Christian colleagues and friends were involved with their problems, the worst drunkards in the factory and some residents of the slums all became Christians.” Then in a small room in the slum area, Bosco and his partners taught Christian workers and their family members based on their practical skills. These people who were ministered to by Bosco gave him their feedback: “By what you have done, you have painted us a portrait of Jesus.” ³⁷ Whether it is proclaiming the Gospel or doing social work, the incarnational life of Gospel bearers is very important in transforming the lives of people. It should be one of the chief aims for cross-cultural missionaries.

This article highlights the Buntains’ dedicated and committed mission service in Calcutta, although I have had to be selective in what was covered. It is interesting to consider their decision in going to Calcutta: initially, for only one year, which ultimately has stretched to over sixty years. It is apparent that God put them there to perform his will and purpose for the people of Calcutta. The Buntains entered a new horizon of ministries that they never anticipated: social works of opening various schools, engaging in feeding programs, running a hospital, and many others. Countless children received significant benefits from the medical services they received, not to mention schooling and being fed. Likewise, adults benefited through a variety of generous social services. Such services are playing an important role in bringing people to knowledge of Jesus Christ and in enabling them to experience transformation in their lives.

Mark and Huldah Buntain were unsparing in their sacrifices. On one occasion Mark was suffering from draining fatigue and eventually was confined in a hospital. A few days later, a doctor pressed Huldah by saying, “I’m afraid your husband is suffering from severe fatigue, and unless he learns to rest, he’s not going to live long. We’ve taken away his Bible and preaching tapes. He has the body of a seventy-year-old. He’s not sleeping without sedatives, and we can’t get him to eat. Please, take him back to Canada or the United States.” ³⁸

Mark Buntain certainly was making unceasing efforts, including fund-raising for setting up ministries they had been running. His physical weakness affected his heart and mind. However, Huldah’s abundant faith cheered him up, simply by her saying, “Don’t give up!” ³⁹ They were partners not only in ministry, but also in their spiritual lives.

The Buntains were more than unselfish in giving to those in need. Their sympathy for the poor and the deprived never declined; rather, it increased—they fed more people as the years went by. What has been the crucial element at the center of all their ministries? It is Christ’s love they have in their hearts. Parents of sick children who come to them frequently ask, “Why do you do this, and why do you love our children?” (129). The Buntains believe that there is no better way of providing them with the love and compassion of Christ than meeting their needs through medical care, providing food, and educating them.

Such an approach certainly brings to mind Matthew 25:35–40, which spells out clearly the significance of what the Buntains have done: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me. . . . Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? . . . I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” (NIV).