Andrew and Rosie Thompson
Helping the Malagasy church reach the Tsimihety people with compassionate healthcare and the hope of the gospel.
The Tsimihety people of northern Madagascar live in hundreds of small, remote villages where many still have little access to the gospel. The Good News Hospital in Mandritsara serves this vast rural region, where people often travel for hours or even days to reach reliable and compassionate medical care.
The Good News Hospital
The Good News Hospital began in 1988 through a partnership between Malagasy churches and international mission workers, with a vision to combine healthcare with evangelism and church planting in the Mandritsara district. Today the hospital provides medical, surgical, maternity and eye care for a population of around 300,000 people. Alongside this work, community health programmes, a Christian radio ministry and local church outreach have developed across the region. Over the past 30 years around 70 small churches have been planted as the team continues to share the gospel each day in the wards and clinics and out in the villages.
Since some of our earliest conversations together, we have prayed that God would show us whether we might serve in overseas mission. As Rosie was finishing her specialist training in emergency medicine in 2024, we became aware of the need for a senior doctor at Good News Hospital in Mandritsara. A short visit at the start of 2025 left us deeply impressed by a strong Malagasy and international team under local leadership, committed to compassionate medical care and clear gospel witness. After returning home we spent several months praying and reflecting before sensing that this was where God was leading us to serve.
Our roles
Our hope is to serve in ways that strengthen the long-term work of the hospital and the Malagasy church as we learn language, culture and the rhythms of life in Mandritsara. We are particularly keen to invest in training, support local leadership and help develop sustainable systems that enable compassionate healthcare and gospel ministry to flourish.
Rosie is an emergency medicine consultant with particular interests in tropical medicine, medical education and quality improvement. At the Good News Hospital she will work alongside Malagasy colleagues providing emergency and inpatient care while helping develop training for doctors, nurses and community health workers. Andrew’s background is in mathematics and data science research. In Mandritsara he initially hopes to learn language and culture while exploring how data, epidemiology and health systems thinking might strengthen clinical work and long-term planning. Andrew currently serves as an elder at our church in Northstowe and, as language allows, hopes to support the local church and church-planting work through discipleship, evangelism and teaching. Our three children will attend the local school and learn alongside us as we settle into life in Mandritsara.