I was honorably discharged in 1955 and spent one semester at Joplin Junior College, beginning in the fall of 1956. I took fifteen hours and entered the University of Missouri in January 1957.
I was selected to enter the 1962 Class of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Missouri, School of Veterinary Medicine-Columbia. I was rotating the tires on my car on August 1st, 1958, just outside of student housing where we lived, when I had a visitation of the Lord. I was just 200 yards north and slightly east of the Big M on what is now Faurot Field.
I had finished the rotation and was putting the hub cap on the right front wheel and something fell on me, some power; it absolutely scared me, tremendously. It was unexpected, I had no idea who it was or what it was, it was just a weight that hit me and a voice talking to me,
"I do not want you to be a veterinarian, but I want you to be a minister of the gospel,”
and immediately I started praying, “Oh Lord don’t send me to hell.” I wasn’t sitting down, but was squatted down and I don’t think I ever got out of that position, I might have went to my knees; I don’t recall, but I kept praying that—loud, out loud—in the street, not knowing what had happened, yet my sense was, God was talking to me; but surely God wouldn’t talk to me like that. It made no sense to me. I’d been born again since I was six and I hadn’t been asking God for anything.
I know now, it was a sovereign move of God. It went on for ten or fifteen minutes, the praying, the fear—I think I quit shaking somewhere. I didn’t know what to say and my daughter Kathy and of course her mother Pat (who is now in heaven), were inside our house in the student housing.
At some point, I got up and went in the house thinking I had some kind of physical ailment. I had been a hospital corpsman for four years in the U.S. Navy and I thought “Something’s happened to me physically,” but I didn’t know what it was. I was weak, trembling and eventually I asked Patti to drive me to Boone County Hospital emergency room. I told them what I had experienced and they were checking me out; a physician finally came in and I was admitted to the hospital and they did an examination. I finally called Mother and Dad and told them, “Something’s happened to me,” and they drove up from Sarcoxie. They arrived the next day and I explained to them what had happened. After the evaluations, the medical personnel said, “We think you’ve had a heat stroke.”
I didn’t know what to think, all I could hear was God talking to me—I thought it was God, but I didn’t believe what He was saying; years later the Lord told me it was unbelief. But at that time, I didn’t know what to think, I was just a bundle of fear.
I took a week, went to Texas to visit family and after I returned to Missouri I went to Joplin to see a physician that my sister worked for, Dr. Detar, who knew me. He encouraged me to have tests done, since I was getting ready to embark on a costly investment of time and money to become a veterinarian and thought we needed to find out what was wrong with me. I went through all his clinics which I personally paid for. The previous evaluations by Boone County Hospital and the college medical hospital were free because I was student there.
I’ll never forget the day I went to his office to hear the results of the tests and he said, “Look—you look good, you have a tan, you look as healthy as anybody that I’ve seen and frankly, I can’t find a thing wrong with you.” I walked out of there feeling somewhat better.
It was God, that’s all I can tell you.
I had my instructions that day in 1958, but I did not follow them. I went on to veterinary school, graduated and moved to Texas where I had a very successful practice, specializing in equine medicine and built a hospital. I had no wants and God didn’t penalize me in my rebellion, but He talked to me a lot, asking me,
“When are you going to preach the gospel?”
until 1969, when He told me to sell out and obey Him and that is another testimony.
God bless you,
Doyle Davidson
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