Today is July 4, 2016. It is a day to pay tribute to our soldiers and an LDS leader who saved a soldiers life without knowing it.

A year ago yesterday, Boyd K. Packer passed away. He was a well known and loved leader in the LDS Church. Most of his adult life was spent leading and being an example of a true Christian. In many of his LDS Conference talks, he gave inspirational and uplifting life experiences, talking of his time as a pilot during world war two and his ability to do things that most polio kids couldn't do. So today's story is not just about paying respect to Packer, but to America, as we still can celebrate our independence and should stand up for liberty and our flag. This story has never been told, as Brother Packer saved a young soldiers life in Viet Nam, and even Packer didn't know it. For background information, in 1998, I spent some non-military time in Viet Nam. Part of my assignment was to provide humanitarian assistance to orphans and blind kids; build a school for orphans and help provide medical assistance to kids still being hurt by booby traps placed by the enemy years before. This was outside the area of the Cu Chi tunnels where many of our soldiers fought and died. While in the area, the last week of my assignment was to help recover any remains of our soldiers. I was able to convince my military advisor and interpreter to travel to a remote village where I knew my brother had served. I announced that within a 24 hour period I would return with medical and food supplies. The only thing I asked in return was to bring any artifacts belonging to American soldiers. Over there they call it the "American War". Their leader told me that if they so recovered anything, I would have to agree to have all my body hair shaven, as I had a full beard and long hair-which they detested. I agreed. The next day I brought the items promised as they did to, and was able to recover a variety of things including dog tags of American G.I.s. It was a little embarrassing and frightening to have the local barber take his straight edge razor and shave all of me, in front of 4 to 500 people. The real story belongs to the matter of Jerry L. Gardner and his dog tag that was given to me back then. In those days, the dog tag carried the religion of the solider and with the assistance of the LDS church, I was able to determine where Mr. Gardner was and he called me. With a broken voice of held up emotions, he told of being in Viet-Nam from 1967-68. His unit was camped in an area of the Central Highlands. While some of his unit went in to town for the night, others slept in. Gardner felt an internal force to travel to a beach front where Boyd K. Packer was speaking. That saved his life, as when he returned to camp he found that it had been bombed and all remaining soldiers were killed. He recalled leaving one of this dog tags in camp. He now has that dog tag, and his wife later told me, it was the first time he was able to really talk of the bad memories of loosing his unit. He felt guilt he didn't take others with him to listen to Packer.