The Personal Testimony of  Dr. David Parsons

This is my story.  You have 5 options!

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zO80Xu_8R4

The written testimony is below with photos, just scroll downbut it is also available in:

English Abbreviated

Spanish

Spanish Abbreviated

The full written testimony is below:

I am color blind.  As a child, I had five seizures with loss of consciousness between the ages of 5 to 12 years old.  I was on big time anti-convulsant medicine into college, and I wore glasses.  If any one has any of these, they cannot train to fly military airplanes.  It is a very long story of how I was approved to fly, and none of it makes any logical sense.  But there was NO WAY I ever should have been allowed anywhere near a military airplane, let alone the fighters… but… there was a power above that determined I was to fly military jets and I went to fly.  

T-38 Falcon, advanced supersonic trainer for United States Air Force (USAF) flight training. 

After graduating from Texas Christian University, I completed USAF Officer's Training to become a second lieutenant.  A year later, I received my wings.  I graduated at the top of my class and went to fly fighters for the Air Force.  In the first two fighters I flew, I won the Top Gun award. Then, it was off to combat.

When I arrived in Vietnam, I learned that three of my classmates had been killed in combat. In the next three months of combat, three more of my classmates would die.  By the end of the year many more would die.

I flew the OV-10 Bronco.  It had one of the highest fatality rates due to our mission of flying directly over the enemy.  We were always alone in the Bronco.  Our mission always required that we fly very slow to optimize our visibility of ground action and we flew quite low.  Alone, low and slow was a ticket to being successfully hit by enemy fire. 

Let me tell you about our mission.  We lived with the US Army units we supported.  We attended briefings every day to know where the enemy was suspected to be, and where our troops were being deployed.  We had the platoon and company’s radio frequencies and could always be in contact when they got into trouble.  

I took enemy ground fire virtually every mission and deployed my rockets and automatic gunfire every day.  We carried both high explosive and white-smoke marking rockets along with 4 internally mounted machine guns; occasionally we also carried a minigun that fired 6000 rounds/minute.  The Bronco was very effective at suppressing enemy assaults and advancement.  I could help our fighting men on the ground by identifying their position, then assaulting the enemy with my weapons.  When excessively hostile, I could direct Army artillery or call in USAF fighter aircraft to attack with powerful explosive bombs and napalm.

During attacks, the ground fire from the enemy was intense both at me and our ground forces.  The Army guys loved us as we often saved their lives and limbs. 

The OV-10 Bronco over Vietnam.

But when I returned from each mission, the sense accelerated that I was something very special in a Bronco.  Every mission I came back as a valiant warrior in victory.  I felt invincible and volunteered to fly more and more sorties and finished that year flying more than 450 combat missions.  

As a First Lieutenant, I was highly recognized by my commander and was selected to be a combat instructor pilot.  My “students” were experienced pilots with no previous combat flying.  I had Majors & LtColonels as my students.  

To be a combat Forward Air Controller (FAC) assigned to the US Army a pilot had to be a fighter pilot.  At first, I was with the 1st Infantry Division, then the 25th Infantry Division and was ultimately one of the original Rustic FACs as we invaded Cambodia.  Cambodia was an unbelievable harrowing combat area and our attacks on the fully armed invading North Vietnamese were devastating.

After the year, I was awarded three Distinguished Flying Crosses, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry and a chest full of medals.  The ATTITUDE was firmly established that I was something very special in a combat airplane .  IT WAS WHO I WAS!

Do you see that the ATTITUDE equals Pride.  In Proverbs of the Bible it says “Pride disgusts the Lord.”  The Seven Deadly Sins are also listed there and number one is Pride.

Let me tell you a little of the spiritual life of this 24 year old combat pilot.  I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma.  I was blessed with wonderful Christian parents.  I was a good kid and did things right.  But, my faith never matured from childhood.  Jesus was just the lead actor in Bible stories and nothing else.

As a top gun combat fighter pilot, the falling away from anything spiritual began.  God was replaced with THE ATTITUDE, the attitude that I could fly combat better than all the other pilots.  I was my own false god.

Remember the color blind kid with five seizures and five episodes of loss of consciousness? The Lord was actively leading, guiding and moving in my life even though I was totally unaware.

I was promoted to Captain and upon returning to the States, I continued as a combat instructor pilot for experienced pilots going to war.  

Then the dream assignment came, the F-105 Thunderchief.  It was the fastest low altitude fighter in the Free World, One guy, one engine and pure speed and power!

The F-105 Thunderchief also known as the "Thud." 

When I got to the F-105 Fighter Weapons School, the instructors immediately assaulted me because my background was as a FAC. They wanted “real combat fighter pilots.”  I should have been humbled but instead, I was challenged. 

If you saw the movie Top Gun, the character Tom Cruise played so desperately wanted to be the Top Gun that he would do anything to win it, including violating the rules of engagement.  I did not violate the rules of engagement and by the third strike mission, I beat my instructor. There were 17 strike missions in the program.  All of the instructors wanted to fly against me to prove that no student could beat them, but each time I came back victorious.

Finally, on the seventeenth flight, they put me up against the wing’s Top Gun. He was a seasoned veteran with 100 bombing missions over North Vietnam. He knew the plane well. He was a great pilot.  We fired the Gatling gun and rockets.  We flew high and low angle bomb runs.  But when the smoke cleared, there was a new Top Gun.  For the first time, a student won that hallowed honor.

Tom Wolfe wrote a book about fighter pilots called The Right Stuff.  In that book, he talks about the ego of the fighter pilot.  He said, “There is no ego in any other profession that rivals that of the fighter pilot except one -- the surgeon.” The same week I won Top Gun, I was accepted to medical school at the University of Texas.

I was on my way up the ladder of success, and The Attitude was out of control.

Life as a medical student was tough after a life in the fast lane, but when I finished, I graduated with the same honors that I had won in fighters; top of my class, medical honor society and more.  The ATTITUDE was reborn in medicine. 

Where was Jesus in all this?  Long forgotten.

Years later, I was now both a full Colonel and a full Professor.  I had specialized in children but after becoming a Pediatrician and serving in Albuquerque for a few years, I realized that I really wanted to operate on children and returned for 5 additional years of study to become a Pediatric Head and Neck Surgeon.

I studied under some of the top surgeons in the world in London and Sydney, Australia.  They not only taught me surgery, but they taught me how to advance our specialty.  I began doing research, writing surgical articles and wrote over 130 articles for medical journals, I edited the largest selling book in the world on Pediatric Sinus Care and designed over 45 surgical instruments. 

But I was still in the USAF and could not receive any financial benefit from the sale of these instruments.  So the manufacturers put my name “Parsons” on each instrument.  As a result, my name was known all over the surgical world.  I was invited to lecture in more places than you can imagine.  The ATTITUDE?  I had gone from Top Gun Fighter Pilot to Top Gun Surgeon.

But my out-of-control-ego ruffled feathers, especially the General’s and his staff.  Without formally accusing me, they began an investigation to prove that since the surgical instrument manufacturers were making millions, Colonel Parsons was taking money under the table.  They were wrong.  I never took any money, but when the investigation showed that I was innocent, 3 more investigations were held and I was put under house arrest.  Yet, no wrongdoing was found and the house arrest was ultimately lifted, BUT…

My career, my empire that I had worked so hard to build was crumbling and obviously destroyed.  My fall from earthly grace was devastating.  As I was falling into a Godless despair, I could only reflect on my beloved wife who loved Jesus.  With her as a model of peace and joy, I did something almost unbelievable.  I said “yes.”

Three friends, who didn’t know each other, independently approached me. The first friend said, “David, you have been doing some spectacular surgical work, let’s go together down to Mexico and see if we can’t help the poor rural people in the mountains?”  I am an immense skeptic, I don’t say yes to anything without a thorough consideration.  But I turned to that friend and said, “You bet, let’s go.”

The second friend came up and said, “David, how about joining me in Bible study?”  I was NOT going to read that ancient book, and I wasn’t going to believe any of that “Jesus stuff." But I said, “Yes.”  There is no question, the “yes’s” came out of hopelessness, despair, and profound emptiness.

The third friend came to me and said, “David, let’s go to a Christian men’s retreat.”  Being the spiritual skeptic I was, I would never go to such an event, but, I agreed to go. 

The Bible study was powerful and the mission work deeply touched my heart.

The men’s retreat was an opportunity to learn about and really grasp "Grace."  Grace is the unmerited, profound love of God given freely to each one of us.  It isn’t earned, in fact, you can’t earn it, no matter how good you are.  I had no clue as I was not only a non-believer, I was a rejector of Jesus.  

On the retreat, I was profoundly moved.  I remember our small group leader took just our table to the chapel to talk and to pray together.  We sang acappella the beautiful hymn “Here I am Lord,” from the ancient Book of Isaiah and the words of the song “Here I am, Lord. Is it I Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go, Lord, if you lead me” went straight to my heart. 

Professor (Dr.) David at the University of Missouri, 1993.

I suddenly realized how little I had to show HIM and for 1st time, I was truly humbled.  At that moment, I could see through the pride and the anger I had for the men who falsely accused me.  For years I had been wanting others to change, to see MY way.  NOW, I recognized “I” was the problem.  I needed to be the one to change.  Without my self-centered behavior, none of these terrible issues would have ever happened. 

So, I laid my sins and my pride on the altar in that little country chapel and for the first time ever, I asked Him to forgive me.  And I broke down, falling to the floor and curling into the fetal position; I cried and cried and cried.  Right then, while laying on the floor, I made the decision to truly believe in Jesus and ask Him to enter into my life and take control of it.  

And He did.

My life was changed.

John 6:28-29 is a very touching scripture to a sceptic seeker.  Jesus, the disciples, some of the Pharisees and some normal Jewish people were walking along the road.  “Then they asked Him, ‘What must we do to do the works God requires?’”  Notice “works” is pleural.  That means the asker wanted a list of ALL the things a person MUST do to be able to enter into Heaven.  What is the “have-to-do list?”

Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent.”   As Jesus says “work” it  is singular.  “The list" is ONE thing only.  True Christianity says salvation is simply believing in Jesus and NOT doing a list of must-do activities .

John 3:16 says the same thing.  "For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life."  The Apostle John tells us this more than 15 times in the first 11 chapters of his book.  He wants you to know this is serious.

As I slowly began to grasp this, peace, contentment and joy began to fill my life.  Since that day my story only gets better.  I am a changed man.  My life has a purpose far greater than I had ever realized before.  My life now centers on a daily walk with Him and it effects virtually every decision I make.   

Have you ever wondered if you could “Change the World?”  The Lord did, using me and some truly wonderful friends.  By accepting Christ into my heart, God allowed me to use the platforms that He had already given me as a non-believer to bond with believing doctors to reach new heights for us in Third World ministry.

The platforms were as an author, lecturer and professor.  Together we (the team and the Holy Spirit who directed us) helped organize a single mission trip.  But slowly, over time, it expanded to serve 13 countries, beginning with just one step.  And it continues to expand.

The Lord gave me endearing friendships and together we created teams made up of some of the most outstanding doctors in our country.  These doctors also loved Jesus.  The grace and passion encouraged all of them to return for a second trip, then a third and now well over a hundred trips with hundreds of doctors.

Our goals had many faces.  One was to go into small rural villages in the Third World with a team of 90-100 where we took over a school compound and converted it into a med/surgical hospital with dirt floors.  In order for the locals to be seen by doctors and cared for, every person and family member had to hear the Gospel in their language multiple times.

My expertise was cleft lip and palate surgery coupled with having a heart to share Jesus.  Through the team, so many families came to know Jesus.  Bible studies and home churches were started that are still going to this day.  All of this worked!  

Another face of some of our trips was to go into major teaching hospitals in the Third World and give millions of dollars worth of donated new or high quality used equipment and teach their professors about new and modern surgery.  Such stops included cities all over Vietnam, Cuba, Honduras, Eastern Europe, Mexico, South Africa, Cambodia and others.

Always, their professors were in awe of what we gave and offered.  They always asked, “Why are you doing this?” And that opened the door to quietly share Jesus.  Quietly because openly sharing in communist countries would result in arrest or revocation of our passports.

We worked using the Pyramid Principle.  We started at the top, teaching their most respected surgeons in the country.  We quickly realized after we left they would not only teach modern surgery below in the pyramid but they would also teach Jesus.  Year after year we returned updating their skills and their knowledge of our Lord.  

Here it was, the Christian Community in action.  The world was changed and it was all by God’s amazing Grace… and He let us help!

I hope you can see, I did NOT plan any of this; I was simply obedient, willing & prayerful!  Even with the first baby step, the Lord allowed the plan to blossom.  Doors were opened widely.

The validity of our witness is not proven in immediate results.  Some Christians will plant, some will water, and some will harvest.  As disciples, we are not called to be successful but to be faithful: doing what we can, with what we have, wherever we are, to advance Christ’s Kingdom on earth.  

My story isn’t complete but neither is yours.  He is NOT finished with us.  So listen in your quiet moments.  He IS calling you.  And like our song says, “Whom shall I send?  Is it I Lord?  I will go, Lord, if you lead me!”

Amen and thank you for reading!  But there is one more story you might enjoy that reveals a couple of our many joyous triumphs.

On our first trip to Havana, Cuba, we went knowing we couldn’t even say “Jesus” publicly.  So our goal was two fold: teach modern surgery and build friendships.  There was only one Cuban surgeon who spoke English, Luis, and he was a junior resident in ENT.  He was always with us and his translation in the operating theatre was essential.  

We also were assigned a translator for lectures.  She was the head of English Department and grew up as a little girl in New York City.  She was blind but had exceptional hearing.

Luis was raised by a Fidel loving father who taught Luis what Christians believed and pointed out all the flaws in Christian’s thinking.  Every year, we took Luis out for dinner and, in private, tried our best to share Jesus.  Luis always laughed at us politely and quoted his father’s teachings.

For 17 years we repeated this same program and for 17 years we received laughs.  But in that time, Luis became an absolutely outstanding sinus and head and neck surgeon.  

Then in the 18th year, the trip occurred a week after a devastating hurricane struck northern Cuba.  The storm then rested for 17 hours directly over a small village of 500 homes.  All were leveled.  So on this trip, instead of only teaching in the major cities, we used our funds to buy building equipment, cleaning supplies and food.

As we went through the village, we gave away everything we had and fearlessly shared Jesus.  Luis translated.  Many of the people were deeply touched and prayed with us to invite Jesus into their hearts.  

About sunset, Luis stepped forward and said, “I want what Jesus offers!”  

We were shocked and thrilled.  Today, Luis is one of the top surgeons in Cuba but far more important, he is one of the top evangelists!

The head of the English Department, as it turns out, was a spy to keep the government informed of what we American Christians were doing.  We knew her blindness was correctable but Cuban doctors had NO modern equipment.  So, we raised the funds and fought the Cuban government for two years to get her a visa.  When the visa was approved, she stayed in our home in South Carolina.  She had 5 eye surgeries and now sees wonderfully.  But sharing Jesus with her yielded no fruit.  But shortly after Luis’ confession, she and her husband prayed to receive Christ into their hearts!  Luis's influence was powerful.

What wonderful gifts the Lord gave to our many teams.  We were so blessed to see similar conversions time after time!  Thank you Lord!  :o) 

Luis and his believing daughter.

Let me summarize what I learned through all this with four points.  But as I go through these, search how each relates to you:

#1 - There is a God!  God created this universe and you and He loves you as His child.  God is there and He is moving in your life.  I know that is true for me, and if you don’t believe it, how do you explain a color blind, seizure disordered kid getting to fly those sophisticated fighters?  Open yourself to how he is moving in your life.

#2 - God is holy, perfect in every way.  Sin is anything that keeps us from being perfect like God. Because of our sin, our relationship with him is strained.  Because of my pride, I was truly separated from Him.

God is a just God, He must show justice and punish us for our sins. That would lead to eternal separation from God.  

#3 - But, despite our contrary behavior, God still loves us with an unconditional love.  So, God made a provision for us. He was willing to be punished in our place for all the things we do wrong.  So God, as Jesus, died in our place.  Now, because Jesus has already been punished for your sins, YOU ARE FORGIVEN!  But this forgiveness is a gift and isn't yours until you accept it.  It's an option.  You have the choice to accept it... or reject it or ignore it, which is the same as rejecting. 

#4 - The only thing you have to do to receive God's Forgiveness, Grace and Eternal Presence in your life is to prayerfully ask for it.  That’s the option that I finally selected.  Simply admit to God that you know you have sin in your life, you know that you can't get rid of that sin on your own.  But you know that Jesus can... and did.  By believing Jesus did this for you, you are assured of being eternally with Him.   

I came to that point where I had to make a decision whether or not to invite Him into my heart. That is what all of us have to do.  We have to make a decision, and that decision clearly is the most important decision of your life.

If you would like to make this decision, please consider saying my closing prayer with me.  But remember, God is far more interested in your heart than your words.  But if these words express the desire of your heart, I would encourage you to make this your prayer."

Dear God, I know that I’m a sinner. I know that I unable to get rid of my sin on my own. 

I know that I deserve to be punished for my sin, but I also know that you love me so much that you sent Jesus to die for my sin. 

I believe that Jesus’ death on the cross is enough to take away my sin.  I believe in Him.

I ask for Your forgiveness, and thank you for already having  forgiven me. 

Thank you for loving me that much.  And thank you for always being available to listen to me. 

Lord, right now, I would like to invite you into my heart, and ask you to change my life, forever.

Please accept my humble prayer. Amen.

Testimony is also available as:

English Abbreviated (only a couple of pages)

Spanish Same as above en Espanol
Spanish Abbreviated (only a couple of pages)