From the time that they pronounced me deaf was a good 45 minutes.
They cut my clothes and then they paddled my heart, my heart had stopped.
And I could see people screaming and crying, but I didn't realize that was actually my
physical body because I was somewhere else.
The only thing that I could feel, if you could imagine, absolute love and peace, there wasn't
anything else to be felt.
I was greeted by people I'd known in the past.
I'm back home again.
Incredibly safe and felt at home.
Just one quick note before we get started with today's interview.
And by the way, it is absolutely one of the best yet.
You're going to love it.
This month, we're asking a quick favor.
Please take just a second to hit the follow button and give us a review.
It doesn't have to be anything long, just a sentence or two.
We really appreciate it.
Thank you in advance.
Welcome to roundtrip death, everybody, and welcome to our extremely special guest today,
Scott Drummond.
I'm going to give you just a little background before I let him say anything because Scott,
I've been trying to get on this show for a long time and I feel very honored that he
has bypassed a couple of hundred other podcasts and interviews to take a few minutes to be
with us today.
And I feel like calling you the 22 million man, not dollar man, but million man because
your video about your near-death experience has now at last count over 22 million views
on YouTube.
Welcome, Scott.
Thank you for having me, Eric.
It's good to talk to you.
And we're nearly neighbors.
We only live about a half hour apart, but we are over Zoom today.
We're just happy that you're here.
Would you tell us, our listeners, just a little bit about you?
Well, to be honest, Eric, I'm really nothing special.
I kind of live a very quiet life, been retired, almost, well, since 2005, and married, been
married for 49 years.
We have four children, 12 grandchildren.
We enjoy traveling and we enjoy doing service to our community.
Speaking of service, tell us about the Gracie Scott Foundation.
This is your foundation.
Why is it special to you?
You know, my wife and I are on this foundation.
And we have a very unique experience.
We have a granddaughter that was born at 23 weeks.
She had three brain bleeds.
She had heart surgery.
And she was a primary children's hospital for six months.
She's presently 11 years old and she's still on a G-tube.
Happiest can be one of our very special grandkids.
We started this foundation, believe it or not, less than six months ago.
And we named it the Gracie Scott Foundation.
I've always teased her that her middle name was Scott, even though it's Violet.
And she usually gets pretty upset at me when I say that, but we have this very special
connection.
We started this foundation because we figured if we could help kids with children with special
needs, go to camps, go to activities, that was something my wife and I already had a
desire to do.
I'm actually more excited about the foundation.
I'm sorry than the book, because the book is very boring and it's about me.
You know, who really wants to know about me.
The real story is my granddaughter's story.
And we love her very much, as well as we love all of our kids and grandkids.
Scott, you are so hopelessly modest.
I love it.
That didn't even get a blush out of you.
Come on.
I'm so curious.
Your book, which just barely hit shelves, by the way, is called What Dying Taught Me
About Living and Proceeds Go to the Foundation, if I'm not mistaken.
That is correct.
And there'll be a link in the show notes to go to Gracie Scott.org, if anybody wants to
help out with that foundation as well.
Let's jump into the meat here.
I'm looking forward to this.
I've heard your story before, based on 22 million views on YouTube.
Some other people out there have heard it before, too.
But we're going to take a deeper dive today.
I hope you don't mind.
This is a place where we ask lots of questions in a non-judgmental, safe space.
I'm just trying to read the questions that our listeners may have and try to set them
out to you.
Anyway, let's go back.
I know your experience happened over 40 years ago, but you didn't talk about it until recently.
Tell me why.
You know, I had a friend.
His name is Wes Lapiolli.
One day he was walking along the river trail here in Probo, Utah.
And I happened to be standing down next to the river.
And it was odd because I was looking at the ripples off of the water as it was coming
down the river.
And I noticed some fish that were right around there.
And I was sitting there looking at them.
And he walked down to me and he made a comment to me.
He says, I heard about a year ago that you was not afraid to die.
And I said, that's very true.
I'm not afraid to die.
And he says, you know, would you like to tell your story?
And I said, no.
And he looked at me really funny.
He says, you know, I think that you might be able to help a lot of people with this
COVID-19 because a lot of people are dying.
And they need hope.
They need faith that everything's going to be OK.
And I told him, no, again.
And I'll tell you why I said no.
Because what happened to me was very sacred.
Even though it happened over 40 years ago, I see it every day.
I can go back and pinpoint exactly where I was standing and my experience and what I experienced.
And I didn't want anybody to degrade it or to tear my story down because it was something
that meant so much to me.
Well, he asked me one more time when we were down on the river trail and I just walked away from it.
That's how serious I was about even telling anybody about my story.
And I came home from my walk and I walked in the house and I told my wife, I says,
our neighbor asked me to tell my story.
And I told him no.
And she said, well, maybe it's about time you tell your story.
Being religious people that we are, I went back in the back bedroom and I said a prayer.
And I said, if this is the time for me to tell my story, I'll do it.
But otherwise, no.
And the first thing that came on my mind was it was all about the one.
You know, I went, well, what does that have to do with me?
I'm the one.
And then all of a sudden it hit me like somebody had smacked me across the side of the head and said,
remember the story about Christ talking to the shepherd.
And how what happens when one sheep leaves the flock?
What does the shepherd do?
Shepherd leaves the 99 and goes after the one.
And what happens when he finishes finding that sheep?
He throws him over his shoulder and then comes back with the rest of the flock and they celebrate.
I took a whole different view of that.
All of a sudden what started coming to my mind was what can I do for my neighbor?
What can I do for people that I might be able to run into out on the street?
How could I help them or do service to them?
I saw a whole different picture after that little experience that I had.
And I basically made a promise to my father in heaven
that if he really wanted me to tell this story, I would if I could just affect one person.
And that was that was the whole intent from the very beginning.
I thought maybe maybe a friend or a neighbor might watch the podcast,
but I never ever expected Eric to be talking to people all over the world about my experience.
And what a great experience it's been.
It's been very humbling to talk to people all over the world and to find out their stories and find out their experiences.
It's still all about the one.
And with our thousands of listeners, they are each individuals and there is someone there today
listening to this that needs to hear this and is going to get something important out of it.
Let's go back 40 plus years ago.
And this must be such an exciting story because what led up to your NDE was a ski accident.
So when I hear that, I immediately picture Sonny Bono, who got wrapped around a tree, unfortunately,
or Gwyneth Paltrow and she didn't kill anybody.
But what happened to her?
So was yours glamorous like that?
No, let's hear the dirty details.
I was working out of town a lot and I worked for the government.
I had the chance to come home for Christmas holidays.
And when I came home, I spent the time of Christmas with the family.
And then I felt like there was a need to go skiing.
So I called a friend of mine and we went up to Park City.
We knew that we had heard over the TV that there was going to be a foot of fresh powder up there.
And boy, we got excited.
So we loaded up a wind up to Park City and we got out and boy, we were excited to make those first runs down the heels
because anybody that skis loves to put those first tracks on the heel.
Well, I was standing in the ski line about, I guess it was around 10, 30, 11 o'clock.
And I kind of glanced over to the side and saw this lady coming down the hill with poles going every which way.
Meaning out of control.
Out of control and there was no way of stopping her.
You know, standing in the lift line, you're just kind of shuffling along to get on to the ski lift.
Well, needless to say, she took out three of us just like a bowling ball takes out of pins.
You know, and she got a strike.
Well, we all went down and we got up and we helped her gather all of her gear together and put her fur hat back on her head
and send her on her way.
Well, I skied the whole rest of the day and I never had so much fun in my whole life.
And at the end of the day, we took it all the way to the end, all the way until 4 or 4.30.
And we decided it was time to go home and went down to the car and I started taking off my skis like you do.
You take your pole and you pop the binding and you get out of your skis.
And then it came time to take my boots off and I took my left glove off and then took my right glove off.
Well, something looked really strange.
I lifted my hand up and my thumb was hanging down to my wrist.
And so I knew something was wrong.
But you know, you wonder why I didn't feel any of that.
It was cold that day.
And so the temperatures just kept my thumb numb.
Well, when I took off the glove and got in the car, all of a sudden the heat started, my thumb started hurting.
I'll bet it did.
We called my wife back then, you know, 40 plus years ago, there was no cell phones.
So we had to go back into the ski resort and make a call to my wife to have a surgeon ready at the hospital.
But we drove an hour to get down the mountain to get home.
And believe it or not, it was painful.
It was something I just couldn't put a bandaid on it and it would be fixed.
Well, we got to the hospital and my wife was there and they had a surgeon ready for me.
It took me in, prepared me in and we'll be down the hall.
I'll never forget that day because it was something that was tender to me.
I never told my wife that I loved her.
And thanked her for what she had done, getting things ready down there at the hospital.
I never did tell her to tell the kids that I loved her, loved him before I went into that surgery.
I think one thing that I learned from that experience was how important your family is and how important it is for you to tell your family that you love them.
And of course, this surgery wasn't going to be life threatening.
It was just fixing your thumb.
Oh, no.
No, it wasn't life threatening.
This doctor had done the surgery many times.
The problem was when we got into the operating room was the anesthesiologist was called away.
So he couldn't do it the normal way of putting me out and then doing the surgery as he was accustomed to.
But when they called that anesthesiologist away, he knew of another procedure and that was a bare block.
And if you don't know much about a bare block, it's basically they lift your arm up in the air and they drain the blood out.
They put a tourniquet around your arm.
It has two valves on.
Well, the valves back then were done manually.
Today they're done through machines.
And so the nurse that was in there didn't know quite how to do this surgery.
But the doctor said, well, I'll talk you through it.
Well, what they did, Eric, is they.
They put a sheet between me and where the doctor was operated on that when I was laying on the table.
So I couldn't see the surgery.
But you were awake. That sounds like.
Well, they did a local in my hand.
So yes, I was awake.
So as the surgery started, I started feeling pressure in my arm.
And the nurse undid the first valve because at first they close the valves off.
And then it relieved the pressure, which was great.
I could hear exactly what the doctor was talking about and what the nurse was saying and how the procedure is going and how they were cutting my thumb open.
And he was explaining to her that he would have to put a page of me and he'd have to take a tendon out of my arm and wrap it around my thumb.
And it was it was very natural.
There was nothing wrong with what was going on at all.
I didn't feel any any threat.
Well, as as time went on, the pressure started building up again.
Well, when the pressure build up, the nurse remained over and opened that second valve.
But what she forgot to do was close the first valve.
And when that happened, the medicine that went that was in my arm went up my arm and crossed to my chest.
And the next thing I knew, I was standing above my body and I was watching the operation on the other side of the sheet that was between me and the doctor.
The sad thing that happened and I wished I could have talked to that nurse.
She went running out of the room saying that she had killed me.
And that that that was painful has been for the last 40 years because I'd love to have explained her that it was not her.
Her fault.
Well, as as things go, you know, when you flat line, there's all kinds of people that come running into the room and they were trying to revive me.
And I'll never forget, I was looking down, watching my body laying down there on the table and watching all these nurses and doctors running around the room,
trying to bring me back and revive me.
What was what was everything I could hear was I could hear him talking.
It was all audible.
But then something happened.
A lot of people think that they have a guardian angel.
Well, that is true.
I had I had someone stand right beside me to the right of me.
And they talked to me through my mind, which is, you know, not normal, but was very real.
And we both sat there and watched the surgery.
The doctor was so persistent and very adamant about finishing his surgery as they were trying to to bring me back to life.
Mind if I ask a couple of quick questions here?
Sure.
Was it was it scary?
Did it bring up some kind of crazy emotions to be on the other side of the sheet and looking down on your body?
No, it felt everything felt so natural.
There was no fear, no anxiety.
It was like it was supposed to happen.
You know, looking at myself laying down on the table, I kept thinking, get up.
But that person did move.
And the first time I looked at myself down there, I said, that guy looks just like me.
But yet I was standing up above my body.
That's actually a very typical response right there.
I've heard that for many people.
They felt completely disjointed from that body that's there until they figured out.
Oh, I knew once I after I was there for a little bit that I was that I wasn't going back into my body.
When I looked down, the last thing I remember is I looked down at the machine that was there and there was a flat line.
The person that was next to me said that it was time to go.
I'll never forget that because I knew at that time when he said that it was time to go that I wasn't coming back.
And we went when we went up into that field and I was standing there.
He gave me three instructions.
He said, first of all, don't look back.
He said, you can look from side to side.
Number two, number three, you could look what's in front of you, which was a cloud.
I took a look around from side to side and I saw tall trees off to my left and they were the most unusual tall trees, kind of like a sequoia tree where there's no branches and they're tall and they have leaves at the top.
I'll never forget the colors that were on those leaves because they were so vibrant.
There was some beautiful red and burgundy and yellow and green, a couple of shades of green, light green and dark green.
To describe those colors, I can't do it because there's so much brighter than what I'm used to seeing here.
The other thing is, you know, when you look at a trunk on a tree, they look dirty.
Well, these trees were brilliant, they were brilliant brown, but they had gold trimming on it, which was beautiful.
And in between those trees and myself on the left was wildflowers.
And these wildflowers were the most beautiful colors I had ever experienced in my whole life.
I'm talking shades of all colors and colors that I hadn't even seen before.
But the unique thing about these flowers were they were all facing towards me.
You know, when you look at a flower, many times you got to walk around it to see all the different flowers and colors.
These flowers were all facing towards me.
And it was so special, it was like each one of them were showing me love.
Now, these flowers were up to about my waist.
And I can remember putting my hands out to my side and seeing how beautiful these colors were and how every leaf on those flowers were facing towards me.
Now, to my right was tall grass.
And when I'm talking tall grass, it was up to my waist.
And they were brilliant green on the bottom with gold trimming on top.
And what was unique is there was no wind or I was standing.
All there was was like everything was flowing and it was flowing towards me.
Each individual grass blade was flowing towards me as if to also show me love and to give me that peace that I needed while I was standing.
And then, of course, in front of me was three clouds.
And these three clouds were very unique.
They were like they were three bunches put together.
But the one in the middle was brilliant.
It was a white, it was a pearl white that you would only see.
Let's give you an example like on a car.
Every once in a while, you'll see a car that has a pearl white color that has speckles in it.
It almost seems to change color depending on the sun.
It's change colors, yeah.
But not the two side clouds.
And then on both sides of the clouds and around them was the most brilliant blue that I had ever seen.
It was like a bio, see what is that called?
Bio?
Bio luminescence.
It was that bright of a blue.
I've never seen it quite like a blue like that except for when I went to Puerto Rico and went out to where they have that out there in the ocean.
I love the descriptions. Throw out as many adjectives as you can think of.
I still want to understand the colors on the flowers that you said you hadn't seen before.
Is there any way you can describe them?
No, I can see them in my mind, but I can't describe them because they were so vibrant.
They were beautiful.
Now, after observing what I was able to see, I was also reminded again, don't look back.
And when that happened, I knew I was dead and I knew I was in a place where I didn't know what was next.
But yet it was so calming.
It was just so full of love and calming.
The next thing I realized is my escort that took me up there or wherever I went was not there anymore.
The unique thing was, I don't know if it really makes a difference, but when I was down looking over my body,
when they were operating on me, he was on the right side of me and just out of my view on the right side.
When I was standing in the field, he was on my left side, just out of my view on the left side.
Now, I'm sure it doesn't mean anything, but it was something that really stood out and I thought about it.
Well, when he was not there any longer is when I actually washed my life.
And Eric, this is hard to talk about because I washed my life from the day I was born and I was put on my mother's stomach all the way until I was 28 years old.
Eric, I wasn't on the right track.
A little background, I played professional basketball, I played college baseball.
And I felt like I had the world by the hand.
I had been working for the post office and I was moving up in the post office rather quickly.
And my goal was to be a millionaire and be able to walk away from everything at 32, 33 years old.
And so at that time, my life was all about money and how to get ahead.
And it didn't really matter who I stepped on to get it because that was my ultimate goal.
But what I found out in this video of my life now, it's not like a projection screen.
You know, it was all done on my mind and I was living it.
I was living everything.
I was living the way my parents were raising me.
How much time they put into me, how they, they, they went overboard to get me into my sports and to get me to my activities.
It was back then, even at a very young age, it was all about me.
I learned through watching this video of my life that it wasn't all about money.
I learned that it was about the people you come in contact with and how to be kind to people and to recognize their, their needs.
Not, you know, not monetarily, you know, but just their needs.
I found out that you don't know what people are going through.
You know, you don't know whether or not they're going to commit suicide that day.
You don't know if you're ever going to see that person again because of an accident they're in.
I learned that it wasn't, I, well, I didn't see any motorhomes.
I didn't see any fancy cars that I was accustomed to having.
I didn't see any ATVs.
I didn't see, I didn't see any toys up there.
All I saw was how I treated my wife, how I treated my kids and how I treated my fellow man.
And Eric, at that time I was not on the right track and it was a real good, swift and kick in the butt, you know, how my life was going.
Can I just ask you, as you were going through that, what we refer to as a life review, what kinds of emotions were you feeling?
Was there guilt? Was there sorrow? Was there happiness? Were you feeling anything?
No, because what it was was what it was. It was black or white.
There was no gray area. There was nobody to argue with or defend yourself or say, I did this or did that.
You know, for that reason, it was what it was and it was so real.
But one thing is it was all done with love.
You know, most people would expect to feel guilty.
No, I didn't feel any guilt because I accepted what I did.
And whatever was going to happen next was not really wasn't my choice.
That's all I can really say about it.
The next thing that happened after I viewed my video of my life, I stood there for a little bit and I went, well, OK, I did it.
I'll never forget that I just stood there.
Nothing, nothing I could say about it was real and it was over and what it was going to happen next was going to happen.
And the next thing I heard was a voice saying to walk forward.
And I started to walk forward.
And the unique thing about this whole experience walking forward to the cloud.
And I want you to know it was like a panoramic view.
I could see a long ways to the left, long ways to the right, but the cloud was not very far ahead of me.
And I was not allowed to look back.
Now, you had mentioned three clouds.
Was this one of those?
I was walking to the one in the middle.
OK, what were the other ones like?
Do you remember?
Well, they, you know, it wasn't blowing, you know, they were just standing still.
It wasn't. I don't think there was any real importance to the two on the side.
I think the important one was in the middle because that's the one I was walking towards.
Right. And that's where you saw the opalescence and everything. OK.
Yep. Now, the other thing is, too, is when I was walking, the flowers and the trees and the grass were,
it was like they were pushing me towards the cloud.
But yet the rays that were coming around the clouds were like they were pulling me towards the cloud.
It was it was a feeling that I can't explain.
It was just a feeling that I knew that I was supposed to walk forward.
And they were helping me get there.
And it was showing so much love.
It was like really, I wondered how I deserved it.
How did I deserve this when I just watched my life and I didn't really feel like,
well, I felt like I could have done better.
It wasn't that I was being chastised. It was just that I knew I could have done better.
Well, when I got up to the cloud, an arm came through.
Now, Eric, there was only this much of the arm. Can you see that?
I can see it, but our listeners can't. So from just about the bicep down.
It's from the bicep down is all I saw.
And it was I had I had the chance to study that arm. The arm was stronger than mine.
And I'm not a small guy, Eric. I'm six, three, I weigh 260 pounds.
When I saw that the biceps on the arm and I could tell that person had done a lot of work.
You know, they've been in either construction or farming, maybe even a carpenter.
But I but I could tell that he had done a lot of hard work with his body.
And then I looked at his hand.
His hand was bigger mine.
And I remember it being a lot. His fingers being a lot more meatier than mine.
It had more meat on it, which made him very strong.
And I studied that hand and the hand was kind of on an angle coming down at me.
Now, whether or not he was that much taller than me, I don't know.
But it was kind of coming down.
I remember his fingers were stretched out and I remember his thumb was kind of extended
and it was just coming right at me.
I'll never forget that because when I put my hand up to touch his hand,
I could feel energy that I had never felt before.
The other thing is, Eric, I wanted to express to you is
that hand and arm was so pure that I could not see color.
I didn't see white. I didn't see black. I didn't see yellow.
I didn't see red.
All I did was saw something so pure that was full of the energy.
It was just incredible.
There was so much love at that moment.
And when I reached up to grab the hand, his hand pulled back into that cloud
and said, it is not yet your time. You have more things yet to do.
And I will never, ever forget those words as long as I live.
It is not yet your time. You have more things yet to do.
And the next thing I knew, Eric, I was back on the table,
had a sheet over my head, had a paper on my chest
and I had a war going on in my body that I can't explain because
I didn't want to come back.
I had seen something so pure, so beautiful that I would have done anything to stay there.
When I pushed the sheet over off my head,
the doctor started to freak out and I looked down on my chest
and there was a death certificate on my chest
and I had been dead for 20 minutes.
When they willed me out of the room and started going down the hall,
my wife was out there in the waiting room.
The first thing the doctor did is he went over to my wife and said, he's okay.
Everything went just fine. We brought him back.
And of course, my wife didn't take that very well.
We had had three kids at the time and she didn't know what had happened.
And I'm going to tell you right now, Eric,
even to 40 years later, my wife didn't know the whole story.
My kids knew bits and pieces, but I did not know how to explain to people
what had happened to me. It was that beautiful that I didn't know how to explain it to anybody.
And when I did try to explain it to somebody that had never had that experience,
it didn't go real well because they couldn't understand what I was seeing.
And so I stopped talking about it.
Even to this day, Eric, there's times. I mean, I committed, I did it.
I talked about it. But even today, I'd have been okay just taking my story to the grave
because that's how special and sacred this whole thing is to me.
Well, and our point with this show is not to sensationalize it,
but with you to learn what you learned from it.
With that in mind, can I ask you some questions?
You can, if I can answer them, I will.
Okay. Maybe the hardest one first.
Whose hand was that coming through the cloud?
And do you think you're going to see that again someday?
Yeah, I know I'll see it. And I know I'll recognize that voice.
You know, something that I looked for because I'm a fairly religious person.
I believe it was God's hand.
You know, I struggled with this for 40 years. You know, I know the cloud represents Christ.
And I always believed that the hand that came through was God's.
So maybe the next time that happens, he won't tell you it's not your time.
Well, I got the road for the first time.
Yeah, you'll be able to grasp that hand the next time.
I hope I'm giving that gift the next time.
I'm sure you will be.
Was there anything else that you saw while you were there, people, animals,
or was it just all trees, flowers, grass?
You know, I think that the first stage that I was in was to give me peace.
The surroundings, you know, to make me feel like I was loved and that there was total peace.
When I got up to the cloud, I could feel other people on the other side of that cloud.
I could sense it. It was almost like there were other people over there waiting for me to come through that cloud.
How I can tell you that, I don't know, but I could sense it.
OK, let's talk about your guide.
You referred to as guide and guardian angel both.
Do you know who that person is or that angel is?
Do you mind if I ask?
No, but I will recognize the voice.
That voice has been in my head for 40 years now, and I know I'll recognize that voice when I hear it again.
And you know you're going to hear it again someday.
I believe I will when it's time to go.
Why do you use the term guardian angel?
You know, I think everyone on earth has a guardian angel looking over him.
This whole experience I had made me realize that basically what I am here is a worker bee.
I'm here to learn.
And I think that there are people that are put in our paths to help us through different experiences that we have.
Even since my time with my experience, it's been interesting.
The people that have come into my life that I went, I know why you're here.
Because I could feel that they were here to help me.
Tell me about the process of getting to the field.
Because some people talk about going through a tunnel.
Some just kind of automatically go from wherever they were.
You were in the hospital room looking down on your body.
And then you said you were in this field immediately after.
Was there a process or was it just a bee?
No, it was like a twinkly evening.
It was like when he said it was time to go.
That's where I was right then.
I knew I can't tell you where I was at.
But I can tell you it was the most beautiful place that I've ever been.
And I was going to ask you, how did this whole experience change your life?
I think you talked about some of that in relation to your life review.
But can you be more specific 10, 20, 30 years later?
How is the Scott now different than the one back then?
Well, I hope I've changed a little bit.
But let me tell you, Eric, it didn't happen overnight.
You know, I've been learning for 40 years.
And I'm going to tell you something.
10 years after my experience, I got hit by lightning while playing golf.
And I know that that experience, I get hit by lightning, was a real reminder
of the direction I needed to go with my life.
In fact, that person that I was golfing with died on the 26th of May.
He had known him for 45 years.
And because of our experience golfing, he had several back surgeries in his camp.
He's his liver went bad on him and he couldn't get a lever trash flat
because he was over 70.
I explained a little bit about that in my book that I just wrote.
But what a what a swift reminder of of the direction that I was supposed to go in.
It reminded me of how I was supposed to be supposed to be kind to other people
and to also recognize that my wife was my best friend
and that we were to consult with each other and cheer each other on.
Told you earlier, we've been married for 45 years.
Has it been an easy 45 years?
Probably not in the first, you know, 10 or 15 years and maybe even 20 years.
But after my first experience, I kind of turned things around a little bit.
Little bit by little bit, I started telling her how much I loved her.
How much I appreciated her.
And after he reminds you before that, I very seldom ever told her that I ever loved her.
I've been learning things little by little, Eric, for the last 40 years and I'm not perfect now.
You know, if I was perfect, you know, maybe I'd have a shot of going back again.
I think I've still got a lot of things to learn.
It's almost like Eric thought a lot about this since I came out about my story.
I figured that God kept me alive until this time and then it was my time to tell my story.
And I'm going to tell you, I don't feel like it's my story.
I think it's my father in heaven story because he taught me a lot of lessons along the way.
I've had a lot of good people come into my life.
One thing I can express to you is find you a good mentor in life.
Somebody that you can watch and learn from.
And I was fortunate to have that one person in my life and it happened to be my father-in-law.
You know, he never judged me.
He always cheered me on during my good times and then he was right beside me during my bad times.
I think it's really important that we find a good mentor and then learn from these mentors and then pass it on.
The other thing is I want to emphasize is don't look back.
Don't look back in your life.
Look what you can do today and try to be better today and see how you can move forward and help other people along your path.
Because this whole life that we're in right now is a learning experience.
I'm learning to find out where I came from.
I'm learning what I'm doing here right now.
I am learning about where I'm going to be in the future.
I had a glimpse of what happened to me at 28 years old.
The thing I hope for and I pray about this all the time is that I will have a better report.
Now is everybody going to have the same experience as me?
I don't know.
I can only tell you what my experience was.
I see this experience every single day.
I wake up every day thinking about how can I do something just a little bit better than yesterday?
I think that's what we can all do.
You know, we all may have not had great experiences in the past,
but we can look at our time right now and move forward.
We have that ability to improve our lives and we can do it starting today.
You know, there might be somebody that walks into your life at the grocery store and they don't look very happy,
but maybe you can smile at them and make a difference in their life.
Maybe that smile might make their day just a little bit better.
It's not always, you know, giving people money.
It's just basically the way you treat people.
And I just hope that in my latter years of my life that I can continue to work hard,
recognizing people around me and maybe try to help them or help them have a better day.
That's great advice. Will you be my mentor, Scott?
No, you don't need me.
You know, you've got to find your own.
I want someone like you.
Back to a more serious note. How has this changed your relationship with God?
I know there is a God.
You know, every day I pray that He will give me His love so that I can share His love with other people.
I've been fortunate enough to see love and peace.
Eric, I thrive for it every day.
I was gifted when I came back to the hospital after my experience for three days. I had total peace.
I wish everybody could experience total peace with no anxiety, no fear.
There is no better feeling.
Now, Eric, I'm not afraid to die.
If I was to die today, it would be okay.
My life would be complete, but it's not to be.
I'm supposed to be here.
I was content after I returned in 2005.
Totally content.
My wife and I were traveling. We were enjoying life.
We had served a couple of church missions.
Everything we felt like was just going well.
We thought it was going good for us.
And then this happened and we went, okay, now what?
Now what do we do?
But we have been blessed by so many people that's come into our life that has helped us set up the 501c3 for the foundation.
Help us set up our LLCs and helped us with our book.
Something that I never ever expected to do in my lifetime was to write a book.
And this book, I don't talk about the gifts that I receive when I came back from my experience.
But what I do is I try to get people hope.
And if I can affect just that one person, that's all I'd like to do.
That's what this show is all about.
It's about giving people hope.
But right now I want to dig deeper on just one thing, and I never do this on this podcast, but I'm going to do it today.
If you wouldn't mind telling us a little bit more of your personal belief, you've mentioned the term God and Heavenly Father.
Where does Jesus to you?
Where does Jesus fit in this equation?
Well, in my life, he's everything.
Eric, I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
So in a nutshell, I do believe in Jesus Christ.
And what an example he is to me and was to me while he was here on the earth.
He has helped me learn about where I came from, what I'm doing here, and where I'm going.
And I feel like he's done a great job of giving us guidelines of how to live our lives.
But sometimes we get in the way of ourselves.
You know, going back to that guardian angel, I feel so blessed to be able to have people prompt me to do things.
Because I don't recognize those things on my own.
I am prompted to do things.
Eric, I don't know what to say other than I believe.
Scott, I appreciate that very much.
I appreciate you opening up, being willing to share things that are so special and deep feeling for you.
Is there anything else you want to share before we sign off here?
Yeah, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about my book.
We were prompted by another friend to write a book.
And Eric, that was not something I had even a desire to do a year ago.
And I haven't been on these shows talking about myself for almost a year.
Because it's not something I like to do is talk about myself.
But when Covenant Books out of South Carolina prompted me to send them my manuscript,
you know, most manuscripts are turned down many, many times before they go to a publisher.
And they accepted it on the first time.
They said, you have a message that you can send out to people all over the world.
And what they did is they went through my views of people that have commented on my YouTube page.
That's not my YouTube page, but it's a prioritize your life page.
I thought maybe a person like myself, which is really, you know, I'm not anything special.
But if I could say a few good words to help people, I thought maybe it might be worth it.
And so I talked a little bit about my past.
You know, I grew up in a broken family.
My earlier years work was not that good.
But what I did do is I had a drive to succeed.
I talked a little bit about, I talked a lot about my experience that I had.
And I went into a little bit more detail in a couple of the gifts.
And they might seem rather silly.
Eric is, I see colors different now.
I see them so much brighter.
I can look at food and know whether or not it's good or not.
I had the ability, Eric, to put a seed in my hand and I can watch it grow in my hand all the way to maturity.
Before I even put the seed into the ground, I know whether or not it's a good seed or not.
I'm not bragging by any means, but I was privileged to be able to come back with some very special gifts.
And I'm not going to talk about it anymore of them because they're sacred to me.
I don't talk about these gifts in my book.
What I try to do is try to give people hope and faith that they can make it through this life.
The name of the book is called What Dying Taught Me About Living.
My ghost writer is from Forks, Washington.
And her name is Sandy Ponton.
Sandy didn't know anything about my story before this all started.
But I'll tell you what, she lived this journey with me all the way through writing this book.
There are many times that Sandy told me that she had to pray about what she was writing because she wanted to be so
as close to what I had experienced as she could.
And she came down for two days and filmed me both days and then went back and tried to write this story.
Someone that is spiritual to write my story was an honor to me.
And she did such a great job of writing this book.
And I want to thank her publicly.
Those gifts that you mentioned, I think we're giving gifts like that so that we can help others.
And you mentioned being able to see a seed grow in your hand.
How have you been able to use those gifts to bless the lives of other people?
I think that if each one of us can plant a seed in someone's life, maybe it can make a difference.
Scott, thanks a lot. Appreciate you being here.
You're welcome.
Thanks for listening and a quick reminder to follow this podcast and take a few seconds to listen to
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Until next time, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.
Thank you.