Phil Anaya is on a mission from God.

After receiving a heart transplant and later dying on an operating table in Arizona, Anaya said his life has a new purpose.

"I believe that's why I was sent back. To educate people about donors and donor awareness," he said.

In early 2007, after suffering a number of heart failures, Anaya checked in to the University Medical Hospital in Tucson to explore his medical options.

"My heart was barely pumping," he said. "I was the walking dead."

He said he was given a choice; he could go home and die or have a heart transplant. The second option meant someone else would have to die. Anaya said he didn't like either option.

Before he went into surgery, he wandered into the San Xavier Mission — an old adobe church, likely built in the 1800s, on the outskirts of Tucson — where he prayed and went to confession.

"I told (the priest) the problems I was having about somebody having to die for me," he said. "He convinced me that it wasn't me. I didn't do it, it was God. He's got this time book and he knows when your time is going to come. … I left feeling good."

Two days later, at about 3 a.m., he got a call that his heart was ready. He called Anthony and Patsy Tenorio, friends who live in McIntosh, and asked them to drive from Edgewood and bring his daughters to the hospital.

"I got to see them 15 minutes before I went in," he said. "That was the last time I would possibly see my girls … tell them bye, and all that and I'm going to come back out of this and everything will be OK."

The surgery went well and, Anaya said, although he was pretty weak, he was able to get up from his hospital bed the day after.

"Not very fast and not very far, but I was up and walking," he said.

Because of the surgery, which happened in mid-May, Anaya had to miss his daughter Audrey's graduation. Anaya, a member of the board of education for the Moriarty-Edgewood School District for 12 years, said he had planned to be there to give Audrey her diploma, but instead he got the next best thing to being there.

A group of people got together to film the event and sent the video to him and the school board also got together and filmed a get-well video.

"That was one of the days I realized the community that I had and how much they really support their friends and neighbors," he said.

But Anaya wasn't out of danger yet. About 10 days after his surgery, there was a complication: an ulcer had exploded in the area of his stomach and large intestine. He went back into surgery, even though he was still recovering from the heart transplant. It was during the surgery that Anaya died, he said.

"I had gotten really, really bad and they were losing me," he said. "I had flatlined and they used shock treatment to bring me back … you can call it near-death."

Anaya said he remembers the doctors asking if they should call his wife in, then he went on a journey toward a blinding white light and he said he was completely pain and worry-free. And he wasn't alone, he said.

"There were three souls that I was following," he said.

One was his sister, who was 27 when she died, and his mother-in-law, who died in 2007, he said.

"The third one, I have no clue who it is," he said. "I would like to think that it was the blessed mother."

His daughter later asked if it could have been his heart donor, but he says it remains a mystery.

"All I know is that there's a heaven and I was so grateful to see that," he said. "That's why I'm here today doing what I do."

Anaya said he was not an organ donor before he received his transplant, but now he's "recyclable."

One donor's body can save eight lives and help cure 50 others with tissue and bone marrow and there are 97,000 people in the United States who are waiting on donor lists, he said. Being a donor is as simple as checking a box when renewing one's drivers license, he said.

"When you die you don't need (your body). It stays right here and rots. Why not help somebody?" he asked, and said shows daily gratitude to his donor. "Every morning when I get up and take a shower I touch my heart and say a prayer to my donor, to his family."