While leading my squad on patrol, I instinctively turned around to signal to my men that the enemy is in the area and to pass it up to our platoon leader. As I turned around, I hear a faint metallic click at my foot.

. .

then the explosion. Instantly, I am traveling through the air, my steel pot (head gear) is traveling in one direction, my rucksack previously strapped to my body is traveling in another direction, I can see the visions of my life moving slowly before my eyes in what seemed like an eternity.

I feel suspended in time. There is no sound around me.

My body is stunned, and I am going in and out of consciousness. While in this suspended state of life and death, I remember praying, "God, please don't let me die.

. .

if you let me live, I will devote my life to saving humanity. " God saved my life in Vietnam.

Before Vietnam, I lived a purposeless life caring only about fun, booze, and women. .

. .

But why did he save me? What caused God to turn me around at the moment of the explosion? What was he saving me for? Looking back, I now accept my land-mine explosion encounter in Vietnam as one of many times of major transitions in my life when God interceded to guide me. .

. a spiritual marker that would lay the groundwork for all that would follow.

. .