Pastor D. Davis Deshun Davis has been the pastor of Kingdom Building Bible Church for a year and a half. He lived with his grandmother at age three until age nine when moved with his Dad. When Deshun turned twelve he lost his grandfather and that’s when he lost his faith in God, and he stopped believing in God he tells Yaner “I called myself an atheist. I knew that there was a God it’s just I was mad at Him.” Deshun says. Growing up Deshun tells us that everything was tugging him except Christianity. He dibbed and dabbed into different things but he still wasn’t having a true connection with anything. “My uncle is a Muslim so I tried that but I never was a real Muslim.” He says that around that time his cousins were in gangs and he felt the tug to be in one as well. Deshun says that he would hang around his cousins and do little things here and, there but he was never really active like they were. For a period of time Deshun wasn’t looking to be anything, he was living his life in the best way he knew how. By age 18 Deshun found himself struggling to graduate with his class; he had been kicked out of high school twice and all of his playing around finally caught up to him in the last year. Deshun eventually got everything together and graduated; just not with his class. “By the time I was 18 I got a real reality check. I didn’t know God and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be or what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t know if I wanted to be all the way in with my cousins, or if I should start trying to gte my life together.” Deshun says. One day Deshun asks his Mom if he could use the car “I remember driving down the street and I said God if you are real… show me.” Deshun says after he said that he was making a turn onto a street and the sun blinded him “It was like my Damascus road experience.” While the sun had him blinded, a truck hit him from behind and flipped his Moms car over. “The car had landed in someone’s yard. It was shattered glass everywhere but the only thing I got from the crash is a scratch on my knee. Once I got out of the car I said, okay God, you are real.” Deshun tells us that after the car accident he basically developed his own type of interfaithism. December 20th 1998, Deshun had an one on one encounter with God and he gave his life to Christ. “I didn’t see anything, but I can remember feeling the presents of God and love and peace everywhere. Everything that I had been wondering about all made sense to me in one moment. I could reach my hand out and touch it. It was like smoke.” Deshun says that without knowing the sinners prayer or anything he gave his life to Christ. He vowed to God not to put anything above Him, ever. “I told God I wouldn’t put women, money, or anything above him ever again.” My cousin and I wrote poetry, and we would perform it at different places and in some churches. “ My cousin and I was doing a poem for this one church right after I gave my life to
God. While I was doing it I had something like an outer body experience, before I knew it everybody was standing on their feet crying. That very day the preacher baptized me on the spot. From then on my life went running.” From then, Dashun found New Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church and called it home. He learned from Pastor R. A Toliver. “ Just the things that he was teaching me was amazing. His teaching grew me up from a spiritual baby to me being able to minister on my own.” Pastor Toliver had one of the largest impacts on Dashun’s spiritual life. “I wouldn’t personally teach anybody the way that he taught me. His teaching is he will throw you in the water and say swim. His ways of teaching are very do or die. I really appreciate it now though. I didn’t see what he was doing then but I am very grateful for it now.” Dashun shares with us in laughter. Later on in life Dashun went to the SouthWest Seminary Baptist college with the last of his savings. In the midst of that he went to China and got an entire different experience on church and religion. “It is illegal for them to read unauthorized bibles, such as the holy bibles that we read. Their bibles has to be issued out to them from the government.” Dashun says that it took him a while to get back use to the way church is ran here in the United States, but from then on he never looked at church being a denomination but it just being what it is suppose to be, which is all Gods saints praising him “The only thing that I was to promote is Christianity”. What is your favorite color? “Ha ha it’s sky blue” What is your favorite football team? “I don’t have one. I am just anti- Cowboys!” How old are you? “I am 35” Are you married or do you have any children? “No I am not married nor do I have children but I would like to be married and have children one day, definitely.” When is your birthday? “December 16th 1977.”