Faith Bauman

Faith Erma Bauman
October 2, 1922 – March 23, 2022

“The next time I shall see you, it will be in India.” The summons by a visiting missionary sparked the imagination and dreams of the young daughter of a southern Ontario mill worker and his wife, a homemaker, part-time maid, and faithful church volunteer. Faith Erma Bauman, née Weber, pursued those dreams with a passion, sailing to India in 1950 to launch a lifetime of service in mission work. There she met and married the love of her life, David Bauman, an American missionary, and with him raised two sons, Mark and Philip. Over 36 years in service with the United Methodist Church, the couple worked with churches urban and rural in economic development, church administration, Christian education, and outreach, pouring their love and commitment especially into serving the Bhils, a tribal rural population in the western Indian state of Gujarat. In retirement they found a home set in the midst of peach and apple orchards in northern Ohio, and pursued their interests in gardening and canning, astronomical observation, and church and volunteer work. Upon David’s death in 2007, Faith moved to Madison to be near her son and daughter-in-law Mark and Janice, and joined Bethany United Methodist Church, where she was an active member and contributor to women’s and mission fellowship and program groups. Faith died on March 23, 2022, at the age of 99.

“It’s been a varied and interesting life, hasn’t it?” Faith mused just two weeks prior to her death. Varied, and as unlikely as can be dreamed only by the wildest imaginations of the heart. Born October 2, 1922, Faith and her identical twin sister Hope, along with older brother George, were raised in the small town of Preston, Ontario, and steeped in the evangelical faith of their parents, Norman and Mildred Weber. Though the family bore the challenges of the Great Depression, Faith recalled her childhood as idyllic, later telling stories of piano lessons, her father’s bountiful garden, her mother’s baking and canning, taking baths in an old metal tub by the kitchen stove – the only source of heat in the home – skating to school on the frozen river, picking strawberries in summer for a penny a carton, and recycling newspapers for a dollar a wagonload. Faith and Hope were inseparable, as alike in their passions as in their looks, together developing an interest in serving abroad as missionaries, a fantasy that began to take root when as young teenagers at a church camp they met a missionary on furlough from India. Post-high school the twins moved to Ottawa to work in government jobs as part of the war effort, and there, a local pastor urged them to attend to God’s calling by preparing for ministry. Though their parents had no money, they enrolled in Waterloo College on the promise of support from both the Ottawa and home churches, budgeting 80 cents per day for food and paying tuition bills with money that arrived just barely in time. Upon graduation they applied to the Board of Missions of the United Church of Canada, which led to further graduate work in Christian Education and Theology in Toronto, field work in Alberta and Ontario, until finally at nearly 28 years of age, Faith sailed from Montreal down the St. Lawrence to the open Atlantic and Liverpool, and from there on to Bombay. Hope had already taken an assignment in Manitoba, the beginning of a storied career as one of the groundbreaking women ministers in the United Church, and from that day on the twins, who had to then lived their entire lives in close step with each other, set off for separate adventures on opposite sides of the globe.

Mission assignment to India started with Hindi language studies in the Himalayan resort town of Mussoorie, where to her surprise Faith met the very same missionary who nearly fifteen years earlier had promised, “The next time I shall see you, it will be in India.” She also made casual acquaintance with an American, David Bauman, of the Methodist Church. On assignment in central and western India, Faith took on Christian education and evangelism work, then moved to Rajasthan where she first engaged in ministry among the Bhils, an aboriginal community who resided mostly in rural poverty in Western India. It was through that work that Faith encountered David again, also working among the Bhils, in nearby Gujarat. A friendship soon blossomed into courtship: engaged during a Christmas visit in 1954, the couple married the following year in early December, 1955, at the little stone church in the town of Neemuch, Faith’s home. Neither David’s nor her parents were able to cross the globe to attend the event.

Marriage to David was her next big adventure, as Faith left her beloved United Church to serve under his American Methodist Board. While raising their sons Mark and Philip, Faith and David served the remainder of their careers as missionaries with the Gujarat Conference of the Methodist Church of India. Their work was varied and innovative, so expansive and in depth that by their retirement in 1986, after 36 years of service, they were loved and acclaimed by thousands whose lives they had touched. Periodic furloughs to the U.S. and Canada during those years of service afforded occasions for travel – to South America, Southeast Asia and Japan, and to Europe – opportunities unimaginable to the working-class Ontarian day laborer and the homemaker/maid who decades earlier had set the young girl’s heart toward service and adventure.

Retirement to America, a land that had never been her home and in a modern culture foreign to her experience, provided Faith her next great adventure, and with it, opportunities for friendship, a new church engagement, and reconnections with family – including most especially her beloved twin, Hope, in nearby Ontario. During those early retirement years, the couple continued to identify as wandering sojourners, displaced from their true home, India, and so they returned there, periodically, a total of seven times together – to see friends, revisit their work, and in at least a couple occasions, for Faith to reprise as visiting lecturer an intensive course in biblical literature at the seminary in which she had earlier taught. Children who had sat at her knee decades earlier were now church leaders – pastors, and a bishop – and she and David were repeatedly celebrated for the impact their life and work had had on the people whose lives they touched.

When Faith’s lifelong closest friend, her beloved twin Hope, died in 2002 and when only five years later David, too, died, she realized, at the age of 85, her wandering spirit was calling her to her newest, and final, home, in Madison, close to Mark, her oldest son, and his wife Janice.

It was here in Madison that Faith put down roots for the final time, becoming an active member of Bethany United Methodist Church, serving God through her participation in its ministries of peace and justice and in its fellowship. She reveled in time spent with Mark’s grown children, Ben, Sarah, and Rachel, watching them mature and make their way in the world, and welcoming their life partners Alex and Anna, and two great grandchildren, Everett and Augustin. And she enjoyed periodic visits in Massachusetts, and later Colorado, with her youngest, Philip, and his family – wife Chris, and son and daughter Sam and Nicki. In Madison, new friendships were created and treasured, and she found new opportunities to serve, including raising money for local and global charitable organizations by knitting and selling stuffed animal toys for children.

Following a Christmas with family, Faith experienced a series of health issues that led to full-time nursing care. Shortly thereafter, in the presence of the loving God to whom she had dedicated her life, and in anticipation of the company of the beloved who had preceded her, including her sister Hope and husband David, Faith Bauman died peacefully on Wednesday evening, March 23, 2022. Honoring her choice, a small gathering of her loved ones laid her body to rest in a green burial at Natural Path Sanctuary, Verona, on Saturday the 26th.

The family gratefully thanks friends from Bethany UM Church and Greentree Glen Apartments for their wonderful love and faithful support for Faith.

A service in celebration of the life of Faith Bauman will be held on Thursday, May 19, 2022, at Bethany United Methodist Church, 3910 Mineral Point Rd, Madison. Please join us at 10 a.m. for visitation and at 11 a.m. for the service. A luncheon reception follows.

In lieu of flowers, donations honoring Faith are welcomed by Bethany UM Church (https://bethanymadison.org), The Beacon (https://thebeaconhelps.org), or Porchlight (https://porchlightinc.org).

To view and sign this guestbook, please visit: www.ryanfuneralservice.com

Ryan Funeral Home & Cremation Services

5701 Odana Road

608-274-100