David Edward Mitchell

David Edward Mitchell was an amazing and awesome man.  We experienced him as a wonderful husband, father, grandfather, brother as well as best friend to many.  He led a remarkable life. Born in 1932 in Los Angeles, most of his first eight years were spent in Sumatra Indonesia where his parents, Hubert and Helen Mitchell, served as missionaries alongside Hubert’s sister and brother-in-law, Helen and David Morken.  David’s mother Helen died in childbirth and was buried there in 1940. On January 1st, 1942, David’s father Hubert and his four children, together with the Morken family, escaped from Indonesia on the USS President Madison, the last ship to make it out before the Japanese invasion.

Here is a link to some pictures that reflect David's life.

David’s father Hubert later married Rachel Edvardsen, a Norwegian missionary coworker with Synnøve’s parents in India.  After the war, the family went to India as missionaries where David graduated from Woodstock School in 1950.  David then attended the Open Bible Institute and was ordained in the Open Bible Standard Churches in 1955.  He subsequently went to Wheaton College as part of the class of 58.

David married Synnøve Svendberg, with whom he grew up in India, on August 15th, 1959, and they went to Pakistan as missionaries in 1961 where they served for 38 years with The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM). David and Synnøve celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary last August and he passed away in the early hours of March 1st, 2025, with Synnøve beside him holding his hand.

The words “amazing” and “awesome” have become cheapened with overuse, but they apply in their full meaning to David Mitchell.  He always gave his full focus to the person he was engaging with.  They were the most important thing to him in that moment. It was not just that he made them feel that way, it was genuinely from his heart. This gave him the ability to minister to high government officials as well as gardeners and night watchmen. As a result, many people describe David as their best friend.  He wasn’t in competition with anyone, and this enabled people to open their hearts to him.

David taught people how to have fun and recharge, important and often scarce skills on the mission field. If you have a chance to look at the collection of pictures we have uploaded just look at his grin in nearly all of them. He introduced people to the joys of wild boar hunting, backpacking and trout fishing as well as flying kites and looking for genuine Harris Tweed jackets in the used clothes market in Rawalpindi.   Imagine his excitement finding a $500 jacket at Hathi Chowk for 50 rupees.

Music was a big part of his life. We have recordings from the 1930s and 40s of his family singing on the radio. He and Synnøve would often spend an hour in the morning at the piano singing, and sometimes he would pick up his trumpet and the two would play a beautiful duet.  If they were present at a missionary gathering they would invariably be asked to sing “He Giveth More Grace", a poem by Annie Johnson Flint that his father put to music.  That song has been a source of great strength for the Mitchell family over the years.   Here is a link to them singing the song at the 2010 Pakistan Reunion.

David and Synnøve worked as a close team.  They invested heavily in the next generation of missionaries and Pakistani leaders.  In the email messages we have received since his death many have credited David and Synnøve with keeping them on the mission field. This often came at great cost. They were not professional counselors who are trained to leave their clients’ problems in the folder. David and Synnøve together carried the heavy burdens of the people they counselled. They felt their pain, cried with them and shouldered their burdens. People could come at any time, and David and Synnøve would drop everything to minister to them. That's what made them so effective and loved. It was their gift. It also meant that as a family we had to leave the house to have uninterrupted time together, and we did this often.  David always had time for his children, and he explored and engaged with their interests rather than pushing his on to them.

After David and Synnøve retired God blessed them with a house less than a block away from the mountains above Sierra Madre in Los Angeles. He would hike nearly every day, and he came to know everybody on the trail. He would review his favorite scriptures and share the love of Jesus with everybody he met. He was an answer to prayer for more than one hiker.  We made a list of the scriptures he memorized, and the references alone were three pages long.

In his last hours, even when he could not speak, he could quote scripture and sing.  One of his cousins videoed him singing with my mother shortly before he passed, and many have shared how blessed they were by that short clip.  Even in his death he was a blessing to many.  Here is a link to the video. 

David is survived by his wife Synnøve; his three children Jonathan, Joy and Jeffrey; his six grandchildren Daniel, Iain, David, Anna, Sadie and Sarah; and four of his five siblings Paul, Jean Marie, Anne and Andrew.  He was predeceased by his brother Daniel.

We were all privileged to have him as part of our lives. We invite you to share something in the form of a short video message or photo or a paragraph or two if there is something special that comes to your memory.

Join us in celebrating a rich, blessed and full life.

If you would like to send a card to Synnøve her address is:

1420 Santo Domingo Ave

Duarte, CA 91010