Dennis J. Woods affectionately calls Louise Hunter "Mother Hunter," although he's not one of the 73-year-old inner-city missionary's biological children.

Hunter, a woman of faith who devotes her life to helping others, is the mother of 21 children. Today, 18 of those children still are living, and she has 61 grandchildren and 55 great-grandchildren.

"I can't keep up with all the names. You know they have all those new names these days," she said jokingly. "I just say, 'Come here, Granny's baby.'"

Her oldest child is 55, and the youngest is 35. "It was like I was having a baby every year," Hunter told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "Times was hard, but we didn't suffer long. The children all growed up fast."

While she has raised her own family, she has been Mother Hunter to countless others who have made their home or had a meal at Love & Charity Mission, the shelter she founded in Racine, Wisconsin.
 
Hunter doesn't take credit for any of the work done at Love & Charity. She said it's the work of the Lord.

"The Lord blesses me, so I keep on helping others," she said. "I know about his miracles."

Hunter was led to open the shelter back in the 60s. At a time when she already had eight children and was expecting another, the family was about to be evicted from their two-bedroom home.

"We didn't have nowhere else to go," she said. "One day, a perfect stranger who knew what we were going through came to the door and said he had an 18-room house."

Hunter went to look at the house, and she asked about the rent. The stranger told her it was not for rent, but for sale. At the time, her husband was only making $100 a week, and she assumed they couldn't afford it.
But the stranger told her it cost one dollar. Still, she didn't have a dollar in her purse. So he paid the dollar. And the Hunters had a house.

"After God helped me that day, I asked him, 'What do you want me to do?' I knew I had to find ways to help somebody. I never had much, but I had love and kindness," she said.

Hunter would go out with her children door-to-door, collecting food and goods to give to the poor and the homeless.

"The best thing in life is to reach and reach up to help somebody else," she said.

Hunter still collects goods for the poor and homeless. "We feed breakfast every morning to the poor and homeless, then we go out and collect food and goods. In the afternoon, we hand it out," she said.

She'll be handing out basket's for Mother's Day this weekend too.

"My miracles keep happening, so I have to keep on," she said. "Last month, they were gonna cut off my utilities because we owed more than $50,000. We had to pay at least $8,000 to keep the power and gas on." An anonymous person gave $4,000, and others gave smaller amounts, she said. "We got about $9,000. God just touched people's hearts."

If the utilities had been cut off, it would have meant that the many people who count on the shelter to provide a roof over their heads would have been out in the cold.

Although it's springtime, lows at night in Racine still dip to near freezing. And there is always someone who needs a place to stay, she said.

Hunter sleeps at night with the phone close by. "You never know when the Lord's gonna call," she said. "We operate this shelter 24/7. Sometimes the police will call in the middle of the night when they find a homeless person that needs a place a stay. That's like a call from the Lord. If we don't have room, we make room."

This weekend for Mother's Day, Hunter said she will take some time to visit with her children.

"Me and my husband are going to St. Paul, and there's no telling what all they have planned there." But the important thing is to be around family, she said.

Woods and Hunter's children say they have learned a lot from the woman who walks by faith. Woods has written a book about her. Several of her children either work or volunteer in positions of service. "It's all about helping others," is what her 19th child, Paul, said she has always advised.

Hunter said she draws her strength and encouragement from her faith in God and the miracles she already has seen in her life and the lives of her children.

"I know it's a lot of mothers out there who sometime think they ain't gonna make it," she said. "I tell them to hold on. Yes, they can make it. It may be dark now, but the light is gonna come."