Dr. Samuel Padilla Rosa Biograpohy

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

After returning from the Vietnam War (1966-1967), Samuel Padilla Rosa began to wage another war, here at home on two fronts: rejection by the society that branded him as a murderer, baby killer and saw him as a time-bomb ready to explode at any less expected moment, and with the ghosts of war that not disappear by any kind of veteran's prescribed medication, nor with alcohol and illicit drugs that he could find in the streets. The traumatic experiences' ghosts of war haunted him day and night, during the day in flashbacks of incidents experienced with the proximity and the horrors of the near-death experiences, and at night with the ghosts of nightmares that kept him awake all night long. Still struggling with himself, Samuel Padilla Rosa earned an associate degree in social studies from the Puerto Rico Junior College. Then he joined the hippie group movement and leftist groups seeking to acquire the peace and love that the hippies were preaching with a utopian government of the left, which would administer justice to a hostile world full of injustices. But he could not find the peace or love the hippies proclaimed. Wandering the streets with the mark of Cain on his forehead, for being a Vietnam Veteran, he couldn't find a job. Amid the suffering and anguish that afflicted him, as always, flashback scenes would surprise him as if he were again living the trauma at those very moments.  ... A big explosion, Danny's face bloodied and covered with dirt, his glassy eyes looking to a point far away in space that only those who pass through that valley of shadow and death can see. That day, amid another flashback, another bloodied face similar to Danny's appeared before him: a crown of sharp thorns nailed into his head, swollen and disfigured, one eye out of his socket, streams of blood running down his forehead. His lips split and swollen from blows received and from the intense thirst he felt; his entire face was unrecognizable without seeming to be anything. He heard him whisper instantly: "Me too, the violent and evil men who invent wars and ways to kill people like Danny, killed me too. "Immediately, a text from the Bible came to his mind: "But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his wounds we are healed." (Isaiah 53:5 - ESV). That experience began transforming the mind and the spirit of the "time bomb," as some called the Vietnam Veteran Samuel Padilla Rosa, and he could resume his university studies and acquired a bachelor's degree in economics, with classes in psychology and comparative literature from the University of Puerto Rico.

By then, Samuel Padilla managed to calm that sea of raging waves due to the War traumas. While Samuel Padilla helps his father in the work of his pastorate in the church, he obtains a master's degree in theological studies. He works as an economist for the Government of Puerto Rico and as a teacher in the Public Instruction System. In 2005 Samuel Padilla Rosa moved to New York City and, while being co-pastor at Elim House of Worship in Lower Manhattan, with Senior Pastor Carlos Torres Oyola, they founded a youth rehabilitation center in Newark, New Jersey. After returning to Puerto Rico, he obtains a Ph.D. in the developing branch of neuroscience - "Christian Neuro Theology." Samuel Padilla Rosa is now a "new creature," spiritually born again, different from the battered creature that one day arrived from Vietnam, waging another with the flashback and the ghosts of the Vietnam War. He and his wife have four children and eight grandchildren.

Dr. Samuel Padilla Rosa is the author of more than a dozen books and is committed to teaching and preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ for these times of Daniel 12:4, in which people run from here to there and science multiplies by leaps and bounds.