From Calcutta's gutters to Collingwood: Local woman saved by Mother Teresa publishes her story

Publication date: 2 July 2014

Sara Denbok is a happy wife and mother living in Collingwood, and every year she celebrates her birthday given to her by Mother Teresa.

Sara didn't come with a birthday, or anything, when she arrived at Nirmala Shishu Bhavan (Mother Teresa's orphanage in Calcutta). She knew only that her name was Bindu (water drop).

Sara was rescued by a police officer from the gutter, filthy and wounded, perhaps by wild dogs, in Calcutta, India in 1972. She was about three years old, but there was no way to know.

Sara doesn't remember anything from her life before the age of seven. Though the orphanage put up posters to find her birth parents, nobody came forward to claim the toddler.

"Though Mother Teresa was, to many people, simply a woman to be admired, to me she is much more," said Denbok. "For if it was not for her, I would probably not be alive today."

Denbok, now a mother of two teenagers, lived at the orphanage for two years until one fateful day when Eldon and Audrey Bell arrived in India to visit with missionary friends, and stopped by the orphanage. Little Sara clung to Eldon's leg both days he visited.

"I guess I was determined to get out of that orphanage," said Sara. Though she doesn't remember anything before the age of seven.

The Bell's - though they already had four children of their own - adopted Sara and brought her home to Stayner.

She attended school right away and eventually grew up to become a developmental service worker. She returned to India in 1993 to spend a week working at Shishu Bhavan orphanage and met Mother Teresa when she was there.

"As we worked with the children, I was constantly reminded of the fact that I had once been one of them," said Denbok. "And though they were loved, it made me grateful to my parents for having decided to adopt me."

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