The young boy stared wide-eyed at the package under the Christmas tree. It was the right size but not the right shape. Puzzled, he pondered if the gift he hoped for could be in this package. Don’t basketballs usually come in square boxes? Perhaps this square package did indeed contain the object of his affections!

For weeks, the youngster had been dropping hints to his parents about basketballs. Surely his loving mother and father had heard his hints and purchased the gift for him that he greatly desired. Eyeing the square package, the suspense was heightened! He glanced furtively around the room. No one was there.

The boy, Viggo Olsen, was handy with a knife. He had received his first pocketknife when he was only five years old. Aside from the ugly scar at the base of his thumb, he had become fairly adept with it. Now, the thought had occurred to him that, using his knife, he could find out for sure what this package contained.

Looking around once more to make sure no one was near, he selected a hidden area under the flap. Then carefully and gently, he slid his knife into the inconspicuous spot on the package. The incision was neat and orderly, and he gradually made it wider and wider until the prized object was revealed.

Years later, he looked back with a smile upon that occasion as his first successful “surgery.” He would humorously remark that it was “one of the largest tumors I ever removed” and “the only one I ever put back in”!

Viggo Olsen, the mischievous young “surgeon,” grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. Gradually, the Lord turned his interest away from basketball, and the youth focused more and more on developing his skill in using his knife. An early interest in medicine and anatomy directed his attention to the medical field.

While growing up, his parents compelled him to do his best in everything he did. His father made him take up the violin, and Viggo spent many hours in what his father called “the opportunity room,” which the young Viggo considered a torture chamber. However, it was here that he spent many weary hours learning to play the stringed instrument. This discipline forced him to do his best, and little could the boy’s father and mother have known that one day the fingers of their little boy would save many lives in a distant land.

In medical school, Olsen became a religious skeptic. He met a young lady named Joan Baur who was from a distinctly Christian family, but she had also wandered into skepticism and doubt about the truths of Christianity. After they married, Olsen spent many long hours discussing religion with his bride’s believing parents. His in-laws encouraged him and their daughter to personally and sincerely consider the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ.

By this time, Olsen had become very interested in the organized patterns of cells he observed in human anatomy. Could the marvels of the human body really have come together by random chance?

While playing a game of Scrabble with his wife, Dr. Olsen began to ponder the wooden square letters. He realized that blind power could flip the letters up in the air, but only an intelligent power could organize them into meaningful words.

For a time, the couple tried to find inconsistencies in Scripture to justify their skepticism. But their search was fruitless. After reading the Bible in their sincere searching, they realized that forty different authors spread out over the course of many centuries all presented a consistent message of Divine revelation. Dr. Viggo Olsen came to understand that behind these human authors must be a Perfect Author.

It was Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead that finally brought the doctor and his wife to their knees in repentance and faith. On their own, first Joan and then Viggo, the two surrendered to the claims of a risen Christ. Their lives were forever changed!

As Dr. Olsen gained more medical knowledge, he became widely respected in the medical community. He learned neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, and then gynecological surgery—three studies that would be immensely useful to him later in life.

Although a bright medical career was open to him in the United States, Dr. Viggo Olsen laid aside all desire for wealth, reputation, and security. Increasingly, the country of East Pakistan, later known as Bangladesh, lay upon his heart. Having been exposed to the immense medical needs of this field, he and his wife dedicated their lives and medical skills to serving the Lord in this needy land.

Dr. Olsen turned down a lucrative opportunity with the Mayo Clinic, as well as a separate position of chief surgeon in one of the best hospitals in the United States. Turning his back on these offers, he yielded his life to become a medical missionary.

Our merciful Lord had left the glories of Heaven to become our Great Physician. Was it not a duty of His followers to have mercy upon the neglected, the sick, and the hungry, and especially toward those in third world nations who lacked basic medical care? Would not the One Who was “moved with compassion” upon the multitudes in Bible times also do the same now?

Throughout a long and arduous mission career, “Daktar,” as Dr. Olsen was called by the tribal people of Bangladesh, performed countless surgeries. He built a hospital in the midst of a tropical wasteland where strange and unknown diseases confronted him on a daily basis.

The skills that Daktar had gained in youth were now put to practical use. One especially difficult surgery involved a young girl. She was brought to him with a massive tumor on her brain. It looked as if she had another head above her own, only that head was without a face. The “second head” was all one massive tumor.

During the operation, Daktar successfully removed the dangerous tumor. Surely it reminded him of his very first “surgery” as a curious young boy—carefully extracting wrapping paper to discover a basketball under the Christmas tree long ago. Now, he was not using his skill with a knife for selfish reasons but as an act of Christian compassion for the little girl under his care.

One particularly difficult case was a boy who had been severely burned in a fire. After numerous skin grafts and a dangerous infection, the boy’s life was spared. But after the boy’s release from medical care, Daktar always wondered if the boy survived the painful treatment or if further infection had snuffed out his life.

One day years later, while visiting a village, Dr. Olsen heard his name called! Immediately, he found himself clasped by the arms of a young man. Turning around and seeing the boy’s face, he recognized the marks of healed skin grafts. Knowing this badly burned boy had survived successfully brought special joy to the heart of the compassionate doctor!

The missionary doctor from Omaha, Nebraska, set the course for what became the medical missionary effort of the twentieth century: bringing Christianity along with medical care to remote and disease-ridden areas of the world. Often, Daktar’s own family was threatened by strange tropical diseases. But God was with them in all their difficulties, and the family faithfully served Him together.

Daktar Olsen wrote a two-volume autobiographical account of his life as a medical missionary. He defined his life purpose this way: “We must care for the whole man, not just his sick body. Man is body, mind, and spirit. Illness striking any one of the three parts of man almost always upsets one or both of the other segments of his being. The complete physician or surgeon sympathetically and compassionately treats the whole patient—body, mind, and spirit. Our Lord, the great Physician, worked in just this way.”

Dr. Olsen went to be with the Lord he faithfully served on January 17, 2022, at the age of 95. His work in Bangladesh continues to this day, setting an example for compassionate, Christlike care in other medical missions all around the world.

Sources and Further Reference:

Olsen, Viggo. Daktar: Diplomat in Bangladesh. Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1973.