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To the west of the Great Forest the gray waves of the Atlantic hurl themselves onto the shimmering beaches of Gabon, West Africa. And under the 100,000-square mile canopy of the Great Forest live millions of creatures, including dozens of tribes with strange-sounding names. Mwiri and Bwiti live there too- Mwiri claiming to be the "Guardian of the Forest" and Bwiti, the more powerful god, holding the people of the Great Forest in his cruel and enslaving grip.
Into this dark kingdom came young Donald and Dorothy Fairley in 1930. They plunged into the forest, befriended its peoples, engaged the evil powers, preached, and taught. They also constructed homes and churches from raw materials, built a hydroelectric plant and turned 177 acres of the Great Forest, once known as "the place of death," into a place of both spiritual and physical healing. That place is now known as Bongolo. Today, the self-supporting and self-governing Gabon Christian Alliance Church, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, has spread into every province. And what about Mwiri and Bwiti? Their kingdom has been penetrated, their fearsome grip loosened, their dreadful power dispelled in Jesus' name. A riveting, never-to-be-forgotten story of raw human courage and the love of God for all peoples!
About the author
DAVID THOMPSON was born in the U.S. but grew up in Cambodia where his parents worked for 16 years. When he was 14 he and his father tried unsuccessfully to save a Cambodian man who was seriously injured when a truck and a bus collided. God used the incident to plant in David's young heart a desire to become a doctor and help people who had limited access to healthcare. David graduated from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 1973 with a M.D. degree and eventually completed five years of residency in general surgery in southern California. In 1977 he and his wife Rebecca moved to Gabon, Africa and for the next 34 years built a 150-bed full-service hospital to provide medical services to Gabon's least served provinces. In 1966, Dr. Thompson helped establish the Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons (PAACS), an organization that trains African surgeons at Christian hospitals throughout the continent. Since 2014, Dr. Thompson has been working as a volunteer to train Egyptian surgeons at Harpur Memorial Hospital.
