Randy Kington, now a retired accountant with homes in Morristown and Naples, Fla., told an appreciative audience Sunday that the best day of his life was March 21, 1966.

On that day, as a young Marine shot through the neck in Vietnam, he became paralyzed for life.

People say it's morbid to talk that way, Kington said, about a day that broke his parents' hearts.

"But folks, that was the day my name was written in the Lamb's Book of Life. That means I'm going to spend eternity with God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Only God could take the worst day and make it the best."

Kington was the speaker for a Veterans Day celebration at First Church of God. He said he has spoken at 59 Veterans Day programs, "and this has got to be the very best one."

Before Kington spoke, the church honored all veterans present. The church gave gift certificates to the oldest veteran, Arthur Ricker, 88, who participated in the Normandy invasion during World War II, and the youngest, Capt. Christ Gann, on active duty with the 733rd Engineer Co., based in Greeneville.

The Rev. Gerald Rudd, the church's pastor and himself a veteran, also presented a $1,000 donation to the 733rd's family support group, on behalf of the church.

Kington said the Marine Corps' motto is "Semper Fidelis," which means, "Always Faithful."

He said it was easy for him, as a young man, to be faithful to "the greatest country in the world," and he learned to be faithful to his fellow Marines, whom he relied on and who relied on him, but it was not easy to be faithful to God in his youth.

Kington said that, although he was raised by parents who tried to teach him that "everything good comes from God," by the time he joined the Marine Corps after graduation from high school in 1964, he had "made a conscious, deliberate decision not to be faithful" to God.

But in the rice paddies of Vietnam, "in the blackest moment, the darkest hour, everything changed forever," he said.

Nine months into his 12-month tour, in a three-hour firefight against a much larger enemy force that killed 95 Marines in his unit, Kington was hit in the neck by a bullet.

"The bullet tore into my neck with so much violence that the impact raised me off the ground, into the air," Kington said. He said he seemed to roll and float over the battlefield in slow motion. "I could not come back down. My first thought was, 'This is it. I'm going to die.' "

Then followed "the most frantic thought of my life," Kington said. He recalled thinking, still suspended in the air, "Maybe I'm already dead, and I died without asking God to forgive me!"

In response to that thought, he said, "I screamed down in my soul, 'Please Lord, don't let my mother bury me. Please God, save my soul."

In that instant, still in the air, above the battle, "God heard my cry, and answered," not in an audible voice, but in a "yes" that Kington said he heard and felt in the depth of his being.

His fear immediately left him, replaced by peace, Kington told the rapt audience.

In that short transaction, Kington said he learned what he believes are "the three greatest truths" about God's salvation.

The first thing he said he learned was: "God did not make me beg him. I didn't have to get down on my knees, or read books," or anything else, he said.

"The gift of eternal life was just that: a gift. All I had to do was ask for it."

The second truth Kington said he learned was: "God did not make me wait."

He said he believes that "one of the most efficient lies" that our enemy the Devil has is, "Wait until you're good enough" to ask God.

Kington said God saved him immediately, "just the way I was, black, ugly, sin-filled," and "immediately began to help me."

But "the most exciting truth I learned was: God did not make me look for Him," Kington said. "He wasn't in Heaven, too busy to take my call. It was just like Jesus was standing right outside of my life, and had been there for 19 years, waiting for me to invite Him in."

When Kington crashed into the ground, he said, the impact bounced his legs up into his face, and his twisted body caused his ammunition belt to bind so tight that he could not draw a breath.

"I could not pull air into my lungs," he said, "not any at all. I ordered my hands to move but they wouldn't work," and he realized that he was paralyzed from the neck down.

"With explosions all around me, I calmly raised by eyes and asked, "God, I need my hands." As soon as he asked, Kington said, "feeling rushed into my shoulders and into my fingertips," and he could push his legs away from his face and free himself from the twisted belt.

A U.S. Navy hospital corpsman, Gary Hann, stopped the bleeding and hid Kington behind a rice paddy dike before rushing to help others. Hann did not survive the battle, but he was faithful to his buddies, Kington said, and saved his life.

The paralyzed young Marine was airlifted out, and taken to the Naval Hospital at Da Nang, then to an Air Force hospital in the Philippines.

Sixteen months later, at a Veterans Administration hospital in Memphis, "God sent a beautiful, red-headed angel my way," and she became his wife, Patty. "God laid a wounded young Marine on her heart," he said.

Together they built a good business, raised two sons, and now have two grandchildren.

Kington has written a book, "What A Life," that is available for purchase from his Web site: www.randykington.com.