Beginning June 5th

This day, June 5, in 1952 at 7:00 PM West Coast Time, at Linda Vista Presbyterian Church, Patti P Tinkle and I were united in marriage by the minister of that church. As Patti was given to me by God, every step we took was ordered by God.

I had dated Patti for three years. On February 1, 1952 I joined the US Navy and took my basic training in San Diego California. After spending 10 days leave in Sarcoxie, I returned to San Diego and entered Hospital Corps School at Balboa Naval Hospital. Two weeks after I started school, the Lord spoke to me and told me to marry Patti.

I called her, she agreed and came out to San Diego, California on a train from Sarcoxie, Missouri. I finished Hospital Corps School and was transferred to Oak Knoll Hospital, Oakland California.

Upon my transfer, Patti returned to Sarcoxie Missouri because I didn’t know what was ahead of me. In January of 1953 she joined me in Oakland California. September of that year I was ordered to go to Yokosuka Japan Naval Hospital. Patti was expecting our first and only child, she was almost nine months pregnant, but the Navy went ahead and sent me on to Japan anyway. I recall standing on the ship deck, the US Cape Esperance TCVE 88, looking down on Patti, as we backed away from the pier in San Francisco. I was determined not to cry. I held back the tears, saying good bye; “Love you! I’ll see you again!”

The ship pulled away from the dock, turned toward the entrance of San Francisco Bay and under the Golden Gate Bridge, headed for Japan. That was a strange feeling going under the Golden Gate.

With the ground swells facing us for miles heading out of the bay, and many of the transients getting sick, I was taken and assigned to the ship’s hospital room to assist in dispensing medication. You see, I was a hospital corpsman and by the grace of God I never got sick.

I was fifteen days at sea. On the eighth day I received a communique; Kathy Jane Davidson was born, giving me the date of October 27, at the specified time. I was twenty-one years old and a dad.

I arrived in Japan seven days later and was assigned to a position in Dispensary Services at the Yokosuka Naval Hospital. My senior was the Commander of Medical Forces, Far East under Admiral Callaghan. Soon he was replaced by Captain Cohen, Chief Medical Officer, Far East Command. Hospital Corp Chief, Harry McCarty was my immediate superior. He was Captain Cohen’s Chief of Staff.

After a few weeks I decided I wanted to bring Patti and Kathy to Japan. I talked it over with Chief McCarty and Captain Cohen. They thought it was the right thing for me to do. So, I sent word to Patti, my dad, and my mother, “Here’s what I am going to do.” I had two horses, a mare and her offspring, boarded at my dad’s farm. I instructed him to sell them and purchase tickets for Patti and Kathy to join me. Patti was ecstatic. So, with the sale of the horses, I had everything for her and Kathy to fly on American Airlines to Haneda International Airport in Tokyo. The tickets were bought, and everything was set.

But then I got notice that Surgical Team 15, which I was a part of, was being sent to Korea for duty. I was shocked. I talked to the chief and the captain. After a bit, the captain and his wife met with me and said, “Look, you go ahead and bring her on. And if you must go to Korea, Patti and your baby daughter can stay at our house until you return.”

I suppose I didn’t know the grace of God that was on my life. But within days God intervened and removed me from the Surgical Team and finally the team was dissolved. Now everything looked better. I rented a house in Kamakura and prepared for them to come. On May Day 1954, Patti and Kathy landed at Haneda International Airport on a DC-8, a prop plane. I met them and my God, what a day! I met my daughter for the first time, she was just over six months old. She was so cute! To think they were with me in Japan! I somehow knew it was God, but I did not give him much honor at that time, but I have repented of that since then. It was an act of God. We lived in Japan together twenty months in both Japanese and base housing.

On the 18th of December 1955 we left Haneda International Airport on a Military DC-6, seats turned backward. Six airplanes had already attempted to take off that day, and all returned because of mechanical problems. We were aboard the seventh plane to take off. During takeoff all the engines were shut down. For thirty minutes we idled, then began new starts of the engines, and we took off toward Guam. There we landed, refueled, departed on the same plane, headed for Midway.

After Midway we travelled to Honolulu. There we waited thirteen hours while they replaced an engine that was not working properly. It was in Hawaii where Kathy had her first drink of pasteurized milk, not the condensed milk which she had to drink in Japan. Now we are heading home! We took off after the engine replacement, proceeded toward McClellan Air Force Base, Sacramento, California.

After we had been flying for a while I thought we had an engine missing (a spark plug not firing). So, I asked one of the flight crew, “Do we have an engine missing?” He replied sternly, “Don’t you open your mouth.” I listened to that engine miss all the way to California. Then with land underneath us, we prepared to land at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento.

We made three attempts to land in a cross wind. The first two times we had to abort and go back up. Almost everyone on that plane was vomiting, Patti and Kathy included. And there I sat, one of the only ones not sick. I am sure I was praying. On the third attempt we landed. We boarded a bus to San Francisco and were met by John and Dorothy Mitchel, my brother-in-law and sister, at the Federal Building. We stayed with them through Christmas and on the 28th of December I was released from the US Navy Active Duty and put into the reserves for eight years. My mother and dad met us that day at the Federal building. We left from there; Patti, Kathy, mom, dad, me, and started the drive back to Sarcoxie. Needless to say, I did most the driving.

Our civilian life had begun.

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Prominent Woman Makes Big Impact on Water of Life Church of Plano, Inc.

In 1980 I was a certified lay speaker at the First United Methodist Church of McKinney, Texas and a practicing veterinarian for 18 years when God said to me, “Go to Plano, Texas and speak to the people of Plano.” I said, “What do I say to them?” He said, “Read in the book of Acts where Paul and Barnabas were in Antioch and you’ll understand.” And I did. In 1981 Water of Life Church of Plano, Inc. purchased the building they are in today. I was working as a veterinarian until November 1982. I had started Water of Life Christian Training School at God’s direction, I was on Word of Faith Satellite, I was on radio - 1600 AM, five days a week and I was growing in strength, faith, and love. April 1, 1984 I went on television in Dallas, Saturday night - live, one hour, channel 49 preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. In 1985 a woman walked in to this sanctuary; she was a nice looking woman and a woman that was BOLD with her faith! And it didn’t take her long to start preaching to me! I would be having Sunday lunch at Wyatt’s cafeteria in Plano with many from the congregation, and she’d wait in line and when I got there she’d join me and preach to me. She told me about Jesus, about the Word of God, and I was impressed with her love for the name of Jesus and her unwavering dedication to the truth of the Word of God. Later in 1985 she came to me and said, “I have some stock I want to give to your ministry.” She sold the stock and gave the money to Water of Life Church. When the stock sold in ‘85 it paid off the note on this property in full! And she hadn’t stopped preaching to me. By now, I was convinced this woman was serious about Jesus Christ being her Lord and Savior, not talk, but sincere he was her LORD and Savior at least with her money! Many of you in the metroplex have heard of this woman, Jane Downtain. I recognized her faith, but most Water of Life people, from the top worship leader down were threatened by her faith. They would come to me and say, “She’s a Jezebel.” You see, anyone in the church today that has faith and is strong, other members in the church think that there is something wrong with them. In ‘85 she started bringing her family to Water of Life, and she brought her daughter Terre and son-in-law, Steve Brown, and their two children. She attended Water of Life Christian Training School in the fall of 1985. She often left money for another person, even a hundred dollar bill as the Lord prompted her, not knowing - but supplying their need. She liked to sit right in front, right under my podium. (Terre Brown, her daughter, states that her mother was hungry for the Lord Jesus and to see the power of God manifest in her life.) Jane had a zeal for the power of God like no one I ever met, and she would tell you about the power. I thought, Lady you’re singing my song! In the years following Jane came under such psychological pressure from the tongues set on fire from hell against her that it affected her emotionally, but I knew that she had some love for Jesus. She came under such persecution because of her faith that she started having some medical problems. She went into an assisted living home taking four medications for various health issues but after a few years she refused all medications much to the concern of the staff at her residence. They sent her to her doctor and she told him that the medications made her feel worse and she was not going to take them anymore. (That was her faith speaking!) He said that he would work with her and requested a blood pressure reading once a week but very shortly even that was stopped and she continued on for many years advancing in age through her 70’s taking no medications with both her physical and her mental health improving. You see, I never forgot this woman and her faith and her obedience to the Lord Jesus with her money. I never stopped praying for her even though she was out of this ministry in her assisted living quarters. And the gospel, the power of God worked in her life and those years and mixed with her faith and brought that improvement in her health. In her later years the staff at her home informed her daughter how she would share the Lord Jesus with others there at that home. When the appointed time came for her to depart from this life, her body began to shut down, and her daughter and I recognized that. We prayed her into heaven within six weeks with minimal suffering. On the day before her last day on this earth, she complained to her daughter about her living quarters. And her daughter replied, “I’m sorry, Mom, but this is what we have to do right now.” To which Jane replied, “Well! Maybe then I’ll jut pass away!” And she did the very next day. That was her faith in action. At her funeral service the power of God manifested so mightily, such as I have never seen at any funeral service of anyone ever. Her daughter and grandchildren sang many songs as a tribute and a testimony to this woman, their mother and grandmother, and while they were singing “Our God Reigns” the power of God manifested and the glory of the Lord fell on that service in an incredible way as a witness to this woman’s faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Jane’s daughter, Terre Brown has been on Water of Life staff since joining me and Kathie D in prayer daily in 2010, and then became a worship leader and led The Browns to minister their family worship on Facebook, then brought forth the Brown Brothers, then came the Water of Life Quartet with Paul Peters, and then Terre and the Browns, with Paul often joining them, and then Terre’s solo ministry. And I must say that Terre Brown has faith much like her mother (have you ever thought Terre was a Jezebel?) even as Paul writing to Timothy states in 2 Timothy 1:5 “When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also.” We have not yet seen the end of the manifestation of this woman’s faith! I have watched Jane’s faith work in her daughter Terre Brown to come through some very difficult times. In September 1987, just two years after Jane arrived at Water of Life Ministries, the Lord prophesied that there was coming a great deliverance. In the days ahead we will see the effects of Jane’s faith delivering his people from the power of darkness.

You can watch the celebration of Jane Downtain's life below:



God bless,
Doyle Davidson
Servant and apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ

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