[13] In 1920, at the age of 17, Bustin had left school, and worked for several months at his maternal greatuncle's farm in the panhandle of western Texas.
However, not wanting to stay with his father, who had married Alma Myrtle Arthur (born May 6, 1896, in Bastrop, Louisiana; died July 15, 1989, in Gautier, Mississippi) and their infant daughter,[16] Mary B. Bustin (born about February 1920), Bustin accepted an invitation to stay with his estranged mother in Little River, in Mississippi County in the delta country of northeastern Arkansas.
[18] In his first autobiography My First Fifty Years (published in 1953), Bustin indicated that he was raised to be godly by his grandmother, but that they believed that one could only ever hope to be one of the Lord's elect and thus could not know whether Christ had died for them and thus be saved.
[20] Seeing Fannie as a "fanatic", Bustin refused to allow her to pray audibly for his conversion and call into the holiness ministry, and after several months left his mother to go "rambling".
[27] Two months after Bustin enrolled at Trevecca, his mother died in a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee just before he was able to travel to visit.
[31] During his second and final year at Trevecca College, Bustin continued to hold religious services and preach.
A large group of young people were brought into the fold during those weeks, and some of these were mightily baptized by the Holy Spirit.