When a pastor’s vehicle got trapped in a snowdrift near Sparta, Missouri, over 70 years ago, a local farm girl offered the use of the family phone. The subsequent friendship led to a lifetime of ministry for Buena M. Huffman, now 88 and still preaching.
After using the phone, evangelist Warren Davenport, who deliberate to start an Assemblies of God church in the community while joining Central Bible College in nearby Springfield, learned Buena’s mother, Lois Swearengin, agonized from heart disease. Warren prayed with Swearengin, and he and his spouse, Dorothy, start bringing meals and ministering to the family.
In 1949, Buena married her high school sweetheart, Elwyn E. Huffman. They farmed near Sparta, and Elwyn taught school. When farming hindrances and school consolidations forced them to consider other options, Davenport obtainable to teach Elwyn roofing carpentry in his family’s Kansas City, Missouri.
The Huffmans’ Kansas City flat was near Blenheim Assembly of God, now Turning Point Church. Buena talked to pastor Milton Beckett about starting a kids’ church. He insists her to do it, and she did, learning at Kansas City Child Evangelism Fellowship and at CBC by communication. She assisted as children’s pastor for 16 years and held kid’s crusades, going into poor areas to invite children. Elwyn drove the church bus for outreach.
During a kid’s crusade at Swope Park Assembly of God, many of the parents recognized Jesus as Savior, including one woman who supernaturally established the ability to play the piano. Organizers asked Huffman to continue the seminars.
Initially, she doubted what she would do if she ran out of sermons, as she only knew how to preach to children. But, encouraged by her grandmother, a Holiness Church of God preacher, Huffman accepted.
In 1965, Huffman started serving as pastor at Jamestown Assembly in a small central Missouri town. At an area meeting with “all the important Assembly of God people there,” the Holy Spirit used her to give a message in tongues. She almost panicked, but to her relief, the interpretation came — through then-General Superintendent Thomas F. Zimmerman. The event encouraged her to always mind God’s way.
Elwyn Huffman continued to work as a carpenter and school teacher. Buena, ordained in 1967, became a preacher of East Side Assembly in Eldon two years later after serving in Jamestown for five years.
But half a century ago, despite the AG’s doctrine of no limits of females in ministry, not all rural Missouri congregants felt receptive to a woman in the pulpit. Huffman bump into protesters, some armed with rotten tomatoes and eggs. Classmates taunted her three children, then in elementary and middle school, but she continued, even after Elwyn died at the age of 55.
Fifty years later, Huffman is treasured in the central Missouri town of 4,600.
“She preaches the Word,” says longtime congregant Joyce Sullens, 79. “And people all over town call when they need assistance.” East Side Assembly, with an average Sunday morning attending 75, supports over 20 active missionaries every month. Huffman, who will be 89 in December, ministers at a nursing home each Sunday before church.
“We don’t have a big band or a gymnasium, but we have the Word,” Huffman says. East Side has a Sunday morning and evening service, plus Wednesday night, for numerous opportunities to study the Bible. Huffman is now teaching prophecy and the Book of Revelation.
Melissa D. Mentel, kids’ ministry director, finds Sunday evening Bible study particularly entertaining. An interactive format inspires questions, and there are often guests whose home church doesn’t have an evening meeting. Mentel says Huffman remains significant to kids, many of whom address her as “Grandma.”
“She’s a fireball,” says Mentel, 40, who grew up in the church. “She takes bazillions of phone calls; she’s never too busy to support someone.” Families participate in outreach, including Christmas shoeboxes and an “egg a day” feeding project.
Huffman sees her own kids as miracles from the Lord. Born with scoliosis and spina bifida, doctors didn’t expect Huffman to walk. Her son James pastors Christ’s Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas; son John is Oregon’s U.S. Department of Agriculture representative; daughter Joyce Jeffries lives in Buffalo, Missouri, and coordinates the Compassionate Heart Room in Springfield for retired missionaries.
Now East Side honored Huffman for 50 years of ministry at the church.
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Thank you AG News and Cindy J Thomas for sharing this.
