MARK CURNUTTE | Cincinnati.com

AS A YOUNG MAN, just in his second year at God’s Bible School and College, Paul Bustin received a call to work as a foreign Christian missionary.

He listened. From 1964, he and his late wife, Carolyn, would spend 23 years overseas. They had their five daughters during a 19-year stay in Papua New Guinea.

Rev Bustin returned to the Cincinnati in 1987 and spent the rest of his career as a travelling evangelist whose revival meetings also featured him as a singer.

“Dad believed in the power of prayer to heal people,” said one of his daughters, Cindy Rapson.

Rev Bustin, 71, has died from complications of diabetes and kidney disease at his daughter’s home in Pleasant Ridge.

Born in 1941 on Andros Island, the Bahamas, the son of missionary parents, Rev Bustin lived in Haiti and Florida as a child before moving to Cincinnati to attend God’s Bible School, Mount Auburn.

After two years in seminary, knowing he wanted to work as a missionary, he enrolled in the University of Cincinnati’s medical school.

“He wanted to take care of people spiritually and physically,” Rapson said.

He met his future wife, put his medical studies aside and headed overseas.

 “It was an exciting way to spend our childhoods,” she said. “It was `the old days.’ We knew what it was like not to have a washing machine, running water and to read by lantern light.”

Rev Bustin also sang, offering his rendition of traditional Southern hymns. He recorded seven record albums on vinyl.

After returning to Cincinnati, he took a job in 1990 for five years as a delivery driver with City Dash. As diabetes took a toll on his vision, he spent his remaining years as a travelling evangelist.

He frequently worked with a small faith community of immigrants from New Guinea in a Springdale church.