He?s been shot in the stomach, slashed in the back, got hooked on heroin in his mid-teens and spent 12 years behind bars in a US jail for a $250,000 kidnap scam.

If anyone can tell Bermuda?s youths why they should turn their backs on gang culture, it?s Fernando Aranda.

The self-confessed ?miracle man? found God after more than 20 years living on the edge. He reckons he would be dead if he hadn?t.

And now he?s jetted to Bermuda to tell his chilling but life-affirming story in a bid to prevent the Island?s youngsters from getting sucked in by the so-called glamour gangster lifestyle.

At the age of eight Fernando was already in jail for house breaking, and he soon became embroiled in gangs in his Los Angeles neighbourhood.

?I was born and raised in East LA,? said the man, who will speak during a special teen conference at the Fairmont Southampton tonight and tomorrow about his experiences.

?If you are raised in a certain area you automatically belong to the gangs.?

By 14 he had served time for assault with a deadly weapon. Aged 15 he was shooting up heroin and was blasted in the stomach.

This brush with death, which came as he ran from a party and led to a priest getting sent to his hospital bed amid fears his life was ebbing away, has left him with a permanent scar on his belly.

?I always knew that somebody had to be protecting me because I was still alive,? he stated. ?Most of my friends were dying or were getting life sentences.?

He admits to having shot several people. Asked if he had killed anyone, he replied: ?Perhaps. I never looked around to see. You just drive and shoot and then you?re gone.?

After being trained to ?kill, kill, kill? during a peacetime stint with the Marines, he got involved in a kidnapping plot that landed him in big trouble.

?Me and a friend ended up kidnapping an individual for a ransom of $250,000,? he recalled. ?We got the money, but six months later we were arrested.?

Facing 25 years to life, he pleaded guilty and ended up serving a 12-year stretch.

After his release it took a bizarre and coincidental set of circumstances for him to ?find God?.

Fernando was in a drug-rife ghetto area trying to find a place to buy a gun. Told that undercover drugs cops were looking to make an arrest, and aware of the heroin track marks on his arms, he ran, fearing he would be tossed back in a jail cell if caught.

?I ran into this rally, hoping to get lost in the mix,? he recalled. ?And I noticed there were people just like me with tattoos, people who I grew up with.?

He said a man later approached him and said: ?Don?t you remember that you cried in your prison cell one day, and you said that if God would take you out of that hellhole you would serve him.

?He said something that I?d said word for word,? remembered Fernando. ?I believed then that God had sent this man.?

His guardian angel was from the Victory Outreach ministry. And the ex-gang member reels off the exact date and time he says his life was saved ? noon, April 5, 1993.

Since completing drug rehabilitation, Fernando has travelled to 18 countries across the world telling his tale, trying to reach out to drug users and gangsters.

Thirteen years clean and quoting extracts of scripture throughout yesterday?s interview, he admits that the only time he opened the Bible in his gang days was to use it to make a cigarette.

?I literally smoked the word of God,? he laughed. ?Now I understand it.?

So what?s his message to Bermuda, in no way LA ? where he says there have been more than 300 gang murders so far this year ? but still an Island some believe is starting to suffer the consequences of spiralling gang-style culture?

Fernando says his knowledge of the crime culture here is sketchy, but he said the message he brings ?is one of hope?.

Does he feel this message is more credible because of his past?

?I used to have people come to me in therapy, but they did not live the life I lived.

?The young people of today, they know when someone speaks to them from the heart. When the truth is spoken it pierces the heart and they can relate.?

And he is confident there is hope for those caught up in Bermuda?s gang problem

?For me, there was no hope. My family shut the door; my school shut the door; the judge shut the door; doctors could not help.

?Nobody could help me because I was a hopeless case.

?But because there was a ministry that reached out to me it have me a new beginning, and that was through the Lord Jesus Christ.

?If God can do it for the very worst and a nobody like me, God can do it for anyone else.?

He says that the gang lifestyle does not last long. ?It?s only for a season,? he said. ?Then you end up getting shot or going to prison.

?I?ve seen youngsters with diamonds and gold, but the next thing there?s 120 bullets inside them.?

? Fernando speaks at the Fairmont from 7 p.m. tonight and from 6.30 p.m. tomorrow.

The conference has been organised by Cornerstone Bible Fellowship. Senior Pastor Gary Simons said Fernando?s story was ?stunning and compelling? and would equip Bermuda?s youngsters to deal with a counter-culture that was ?destroying our society?.