CMDA | Dr. David Thompson, FACS, FWACS

Dr. David Thompson, FACS, FWACS

David Thompson was born in Pittsburgh, Pa. in 1948 to Ed & Ruth Thompson, who at that time were serving as Pastor and wife of a Christian & Missionary Alliance Church near Pittsburgh. A few months later the Thompsons sailed to Cambodia to serve as church-planting missionaries with the C&MA. David spent his childhood in Cambodia and attended the Dalat missionary boarding school in Vietnam from first to eleventh grade. When he was 14 years old he saw an injured man die alongside the road in Cambodia, and was deeply troubled that he and his father were unable to either help the man medically or lead him to faith in Christ before his death. From that moment on he began to ask God to allow him to become someone who could help the sick and dying and then share with them the good news of Jesus Christ.

During the 1968 Tet Offensive, while David’s parents were serving as missionaries in Vietnam and David was a premed student at Geneva College in Pennsylvania, his mother and father were killed by North Vietnamese soldiers as they tried to surrender to the communist forces that had overrun the city of Banmethuot. A year later David graduated from Geneva College and entered the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. During his four years in medical school he served for three years as the student president for the CMDA chapter.

In 1971 David married Becki Mitchell, a girl he had met at the Dalat mission school in Vietnam and who had lost her father when Viet Cong forces kidnapped him from a Leprosy hospital near Banmethuot, Vietnam where he was serving. Becki trained as a nurse and was also planning a career in medical missions.

After graduating from medical school in 1973, David trained for two years in general surgery at Mercy Hospital, in San Diego.

In 1977, David and his wife accepted a call by the Christian & Missionary Alliance to establish a new medical work in south Gabon, in west, central Africa. In 1981, David returned to a general surgery residency at White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. He completed his residency in 1984 and returned to work in Gabon the same year. In 1985 he qualified for certification by the American Board of Surgery.

In the years since, David, his wife, and a team of medical colleagues transformed a small dispensary into a 110 bed, full-service hospital where over the past five years tens of thousands of patients from all over the country have been helped, and more than 7,000 people prayed to receive Jesus Christ. The team has also been directly involved in planting four new churches.

In 1996, David helped establish the Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons (PAACS), an interdenominational and international organization dedicated to establishing surgical training programs for African doctors at existing Christian hospitals in Africa. The Bongolo Hospital will be graduating its fourth surgeon in August, 2006 and currently has four surgery residents.

David currently serves as the Medical Director of Bongolo Hospital, Chief of Surgery, PAACS Program Director, and the PAACS Director for Africa.

David & his wife Becki have three children, the oldest of whom is serving as a missionary in Cambodia, and two grandchildren. They are currently serving their sixth term of missionary service in Gabon.

David has written three books: “On Call” (his testimony/biography), “Beyond the Mist” (the story of the beginning of the church in south Gabon), and “The Hand on My Scalpel” (a collection of stories from his work).

Tax-deductible Contributions to the PAACS ministry and mission can be made as follows: Make your check payable to CMDA and in the memo section, write PAACS. Mail to CMDA, P.O. Box 7500, Bristol, TN 37621-0005.