Greg Munck's Blog

My friend Adam Fagnant and I were both latchkey kids. We had parents who loved us but they had a lot going on in their own lives, giving us a lot of freedom. In fact, Adam and I started to hang out during my freshman year. He had his own apartment with his brother Steve who had recently graduated high school. His dad was living somewhere else nearby. The amount of drinking that took place my freshman year at his apartment was ungodly. As I mentioned, I had a fake ID and partied a lot in high school. Each year I partied hard but a little less than the year before, which was a good thing. Towards the end of our senior year, Adam Fagnant and I went to Vegas to visit family and attend a wedding. I was his plus one. His uncle lived away from the strip, and we were staying with him for the weekend. They had open desert all around them and a bunch of three-wheeled ATVs. A bad combination for fearless eighteen-year-olds. We took them out for a spin, just wearing our shorts. We had a blast cruising around the desert landscape surrounding the house. We were jamming down this one dry bed that, when it rains, water goes through it, and started to race each other.

There were these long deep grooves made by the water. They weren’t a big deal until my left back tire was in one. It wasn’t a problem at first. Adam was on my left, and we were neck and neck, going as fast as we could. I noticed that the groove gradually was going left. I was getting closer to Adam but didn’t think much of it until I was coming right on him. I turned the handlebars a little to the right, and nothing happened. I wasn’t pulling to the right. I was still going in the direction of the groove, like I was on a track, right into Adam. I started screaming for Adam to turn, but he was a little ahead of me by this time and couldn’t see or hear me. I panicked and did the thing you are never supposed to do on a three-wheeler: I stuck my left leg down to change my direction. I really don’t know why I did it. I put my leg down, and it all happened so fast. My leg got sucked up in the back left tire. It sucked me off the seat hard left. I pulled the handlebars and I instantly flipped three times with my left leg still stuck in the wheel well. The engine was not shutting off. A few seconds later, the three-wheeler and I came to a stop. A cloud of dust was in the air. I was in a daze, on my back with my body all twisted up, and my left leg still stuck. The engine and throttle were stuck, and the tire was grinding on my leg. I was screaming, and from my position, I couldn’t see my leg.

Adam didn’t notice I had crashed for a while and he had to turn around. He finally got to me.

He was screaming, “Oh my God, oh my God! Are you, okay?!”

I screamed, “Is my leg still there?” Pain started shooting through my leg. He couldn’t hear me.

He finally turned the engine off, and the tire stopped.

I was yelling as if the engine was still on, “Is my leg still there? Is my leg still there?”

He says, “Oh my God, Oh my God. Yes, I think so.”

He started to untwist the three-wheeler so we could get access to my leg. My body moved with the bike, so I realized that it was still attached. We finally got my leg out, but I was scared to look.

“How bad is it Adam, just tell me?”

He said, “It doesn’t look that bad.”

I finally looked at it, my leg was intact, but the skin on the outside of my left leg from the foot to my knee had been rubbed off by the tire. Road rash. Blood started to come through the dirt and the black pieces of tire on my leg.

I stood up in total pain but excited my leg was at least still intact. We started laughing because I was OK for the most part, with no major injuries besides the skin ripped off my left leg. I had scrapes and cuts all over my body. I was lucky to be alive as I didn’t have a helmet on. My ATV was not working. We walked it back to the house. Everyone at the house was concerned. They wanted to take me to the hospital. I said, “Just let me take a bath; do you have any peroxide?” All they had was rubbing alcohol. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I just knew it was going to hurt. I soaked the leg and cleaned the area as best as I could. It was the entire side of my left leg, from the knee to the foot. I didn’t want it to get infected, so I drained the tub and braced for the rubbing alcohol. I just decided to pour it on directly to get it all over the large area. I was standing in the shower, resting my left leg on the edge of the tub. I started to pour it all over, and two seconds later, I screamed, like a baby, “Holy shit, that burns worse than the accident!” It was so painful, it felt like I was going to pass out. I fell in the tub. Adam ran up with his family, trying to see what the hell was going on, I was naked, so I told them to stay out. After ten minutes I did another round of pouring. I can’t even explain to you how much it hurt. It was so freaking bad. It was such a large area it was hard to wrap.

We drove home the next day. My leg was killing me, with puss and blood constantly soaking through any type of bandage or wrap. I went to bed that night and woke up with chills and fever in a lot of pain, and my leg was swollen.

My mom took me to a walk-in clinic. The wound was infected. They gave me an antibiotic pill and spray to put on the massive road rash.

It took forever to heal. It was the largest freaking scab you have ever seen. The scab would itch and crack and break all the time. I would accidentally bump it and tear some off. People would point in horror at the grocery store if I didn’t have it covered. About a month in, I was stupidly playing basketball. Of course, I got the side of a shoe down the whole side of the leg, ripping off the entire scab. It was hanging off my leg, connected only at the bottom of my leg. I thought the guy who did it to me was going to pass out. I wanted to fix the dressing and still play, but my friends were too grossed to have me out there. I think it took three months before it completely healed. I would scratch the outside of the scab with delight and relief as it got smaller and smaller. I still have a scar to this day. The moral of this story is to wear a helmet and a shirt when you’re on a recreational vehicle. Also, please, for the love of God, don’t put your leg down to gain control or put rubbing alcohol on a massive open wound.

It’s a miracle I survived my youth: one night, I was riding down the 405 Freeway drunk, standing up in the back of my friend’s pickup truck, surfing the bed of the truck until one of us would fall. We never fell out of the truck thank God, well maybe onetime, that's another story for another time.

Someone was truly looking out for me. It's amazing the lifelines that God put out for me throughout my life, sometimes I would be asking for them, other times I would not realize until later that it was God. Often I would take those lifelines, make promises to Him and then let go of the lifeline when things got better and continue to live for myself. I was 20 when I finally surrendered my life completely to the Lord, when I decided to stop living for myself and start living for Him. I describe that experience in Chapter 6 of my book, The Guide. What has to happen in your life before God get's your full attention?

The bible says: In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:6 NASB

That's exactly what I did, and my life was forever changed in the best possible way. It has not been easy but God is faithful. So what are you waiting for?

*For more crazy stories about my life please read The Guide: Survival, Warfighting, Peacemaking.

#atvaccident #3wheeleraccident #crazyroadrash #lifelines #Godlookingoutforme #theguidecrazystories #proverbs3:6

Before I left for boot camp, I was able to get a semester of college and play some football in the fall of 1988. I was trying to decide whether to go to Orange Coast College (OCC) or Golden West College. Brian was going to UC Irvine to get a degree in biology before going to med school. Reza was going to go play football at OCC or Golden West. So we checked out the schools together—I was going to play wherever Reza decided to go. We both liked OCC and ultimately chose to play there. Golden West would have been a better place for us as their D-line was a “read block”-focused defense much like what we ran at Fountain Valley. OCC ran an attack a gap, “swim” every play type of front for the D-line, which we were not as familiar with. A front is used if you have smaller, quick lineman; we were fast, so once we got used to it, we dominated.

I didn’t start as a freshman but was in a rotation where I would play, and I was on all of the special teams. I love special teams because you can run full speed down the field and hit someone as hard as you possibly can. Playing at a Junior College is different than high school; the games are on Saturdays, but not too many people come out to watch the games. You play for your teammates. I have had many great hits and tackles in football, but there is one that tops them all. It was our fifth game of the season, and it was a home game at OCC. In the second half of the game, we had to punt. At the time, I ran ran a 4.9 – 40. For a lineman, that’s fast. I also had a neck roll like Howie Long, so when I hit someone, my helmet was locked into place so my head couldn’t snap back. I was like a freaking torpedo.

The punt was a high one, and I was the first one down the field. The punt returner caught the ball and had a lead blocker about five yards in front of him. I had to get through the lead blocker to get to the ball carrier. I was flying down the field. As I was coming up close to the blocker, I bent my knees and got low, almost like I was going to tackle him, but I was just going to hit him as hard as I could. There was a massive collision and sound as my helmet, and right shoulder pad made contact with his chest and facemask. He instantly started buckling backward. At the same time, I came up with the mother of all forearms, bringing it up as hard as I could. My momentum and the smashing hit instantly changed his body’s direction. Now he was airborne, flying backward. I was now looking to the ball carrier to put him out of his misery. As the football gods would have it, I hit the blocker so fiercely it launched him straight back into the ball carrier. This knocked the ball carrier on his ass, and the ball came loose, and I jumped on the ball for the fumble recovery! I celebrated with my team and will never forget the biggest hit of my life.

When you work hard for something, you never know when an opportunity will present itself. When you are ready and prepared great things can happen. You put yourself in a position to do good things, remarkable things.

When I think about how hard I worked for a game I loved I want to work that hard for God. I want to do good for God.

Here is what the bible says about this: So, my son, throw yourself into this work for Christ. Pass on what you heard from me—the whole congregation saying Amen!—to reliable leaders who are competent to teach others. When the going gets rough, take it on the chin with the rest of us, the way Jesus did. A soldier on duty doesn’t get caught up in making deals at the marketplace. He concentrates on carrying out orders. An athlete who refuses to play by the rules will never get anywhere. It’s the diligent farmer who gets the produce. Think it over. God will make it all plain. 2 Timothy 2:1-7 MSG

Where there is no vision or hope people perish - Hope of a future produces amazing results... it drives discipline in the present! No matter what we do. So go do good!

*For more crazy stories about my life please read The Guide: A Story of Survival, Warfighting, Peacemaking.

#footballislife #massivetackle #biggesthitofmylife #collegefootball #ilovetohit #tacklingislife

#dr.death #2Timothy2:1-7

I’m a child of the eighties, and it was as amazing as it seemed living in those times. What a time to grow up! I was seven when Star Wars came out. I was ten when Empire Strikes Back was in theaters. I was eleven when Indiana Jones was released and thirteen when I saw Return of the Jedi. I was fourteen when I fell in love with Ghostbusters and fifteen when I watched Goonies and Back To The Future, all of them are in my category of some of the greatest films ever made.

TV was terrific as well. My love of Sci-fi started with my dad because he loved Star Trek, and we would always watch it. I loved to watch The Six Million Dollar Man as a child. When I was eight, Battlestar Gallactica, The Incredible Hulk, and Mork and Mindy TV series launched. The following year it was Buck Rogers. Saturday mornings were filled with HR Puff and Stuff and the fantastic Land Of The Lost. ABC’s Sunday Night Movie and After School Special were always a must, along with The Wonderful World of Disney. My favorite reruns of Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch, Batman, Twilight Zone, I Dream of Jeanne, and my favorite The Munsters were always on.

When I was 11, it was The Greatest American Hero, at thirteen Knight Rider was born, and I was all over the ATeam and Amazing Stories each and every week. I loved it when my dad would let me stay up and watch late-night prehistoric fantasy films on TV like One Million Years BC, When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth, and Creatures The World Forgot. I loved the dinosaurs but also loved the women that were half naked running around. My dad would always fall asleep, and sometimes The Benny Hill show from England would come on, and you were guaranteed to see a girl in her underwear every time you watched. It was glorious!

Who couldn’t forget all of Tom and Jerry’s cartoons, The Roadrunner, The Flinstones, The Jetsons, Looney Tunes, Heman and The Master Of The Universe, The Transformers, Inspector Gadget, Scooby and Scrappy-Doo, and the classic Fat Albert.

The one cultural phenomenon that has stuck with me more than anything from the eighties is the wonderful world of video games. I played Pong on our TV when I was five. I grew up with video games. I remember going to the FV roller skating rink and playing Missile Command, Asteroids, and PacMan. Then arcade games were put in the liquor stores. I remember when Tempest showed up one day. I played a game and had to play more. I rode my bike home, and mom put her purse in a cabinet in the kitchen. I went to it, took out one quarter, and went and played. I needed to play again, went, and got two quarters this time. I still needed to play more, came back, and took more quarters. The next day I got in trouble as she realized all of her quarters were gone.

When I was seven, the Atari 2600 came out as a home console, and it changed everything. All my friends had it, so I would play with them at their house all of the time. I got the Bally Astrocade when I was eight. It came with cartridges, but it was a mini-computer as well. You could program your own games with Basic. They had game cards with what you need to enter to program a game. It was kind of cool, but it didn’t have a full keyboard, just a number pad, so it took a long time to program a game to play, if you didn’t have the cartridge. When I was ten, I was playing Intellivision at my friend’s houses all the time. Nintendo came out when I was fifteen, Kennie Orris and I wasted a lot of hours in his room playing “Punch-Out” and “Tecmo Bowl!” I mentioned I had the first Nintendo Game Boy with me when I went to combat. I played a lot of “Super Mario Land” on that war float! Before we had kids, we always had a “Game Boy,” and I would game a little on the PC.

In my early twenties the first-person shooter PC game “Doom” came out, and that changed everything. A similar shooter game came out that I really loved called “Duke Nukem 3D” in 1996 when I was twenty-six. I loved it so much because it was the first multiplayer game that I could play with someone in separate homes over the phone line. When my friend Brian was in med school, we would call each other late at night, then call each other back with a modem connection on the computer. We spent hours late into the night doing one-on-one matches, trying to kill each other.

All good times until Kymbry would wake up without me by her side and come yell at me like I was doing something wrong. When we started having kids, we had every new version of the Nintendo, Playstation, and Xbox game consoles. I was like a kid in a candy store. I played video games with my kids all the time! When I was thirty-three, “Call of Duty” came out on XBOX, and it was another game-changer. It was like playing in the movie “Saving Private Ryan.” It was therapeutic to me for some reason. When the kids went to bed, I would play, and for the past seventeen years, I play almost every night for a least one or two games or longer. I mostly just play Multiplayer – Hardcore, where I’m going against people just like me, and we are fighting each other in real-time.

When I was twenty-four, I started playing Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games on the computer. It’s like playing “Sim-City,” but you build up your city and army by mining, and when your army is big enough, you attack the enemy. I started playing Blizzard’s RTS “Warcraft” before World of Warcraft (WOW) even existed. Then “Command and Conquer” and Blizzard’s “Starcraft” RTS’s came out when I was twenty-eight. When I was forty, “Starcraft 2” came out, and it was a game-changer for me. You could play with other people just like you in real-time. It’s a strategy game, so you really have to think about defending and attacking while mining for resources to continue funding your army. It’s a futuristic version of chess with a lot more action. I’m a Gold Starcraft 2 player and play a few times a week.

I’m a gamer, and I love to game. In fact, my whole family loves to game. On Sunday evenings or holidays, you would often find the entire Munck family at “Howies Game Shack,” all seven of us lined up in a row with each other. Laughing, shouting, and screaming as we play “Team Fortress 2”, “Killing Floor 2”, “Day Of Defeat,” and “Gary’s Mod.” The family that prays & games together stays together! Howies is no longer around, and my family is seriously bummed. So the next project is to convert our garage into “Muncky’s Game Shack!” Don’t judge me, like your hobby is better than mine?

Maybe you’re not a gamer, but what random things do you do in your life that occupy more time than you care to admit?

However awesome your hobby is, it does not provide sustainable joy, it is not the meaning of life. The brilliant Blaise Pascal who was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and writer said it best:

“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made know through Jesus Christ.”

From personal experience, I can say we spend a lot of time trying to fill the void in our lives with stuff that can only be filled with a relationship with God. Of all of the voices in our culture today, I lean on the words of Jesus the most. Here is what He has to say on the matter.

Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ,“Please give me a drink.”, He was alone at the time because his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food.

The woman was surprised, for Jews refuse to have anything to do with Samaritans. She said to Jesus, “You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink?”

Jesus replied, ,“If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.”

“But sir, you don’t have a rope or a bucket,” she said, “and this well is very deep. Where would you get this living water? And besides, do you think you’re greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well? How can you offer better water than he and his sons and his animals enjoyed?”

Jesus replied, ,“Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again. But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.” John 4:7-14 NLT

Jesus offers us something better than any game, movie, sport, or hobby. His words are the truth we can put our life and trust in!

*For more crazy stories about my life please read The Guide: Survival, Warfighting, Peacemaking.

#eightieschild #80sbesttimetogrowup #ballyastrocade #starwars #indianaJones #backtothefuture #goonies #starcraft2 #fillgodshapedvoid #hrpuffandstuff #john4:7-14

On Friday afternoon, September 17, 1982, at around 4:30 p.m., Brian Lenzkes and I were playing a game of tag with three girls from our class at Fulton school. Planes often flew over our school, but this time, there was a loud crashing sound. We looked up, and right above us, a larger twin-engine Beechcraft 200 plane was flying east, and its right engine/wing was smoking. Then there was a single-engine Cessna 210L that looked like it lost a wing and was in a death spiral towards the earth. We watched in horror as it was spinning out of control and the sound of the engine was screeching as it went down. It crashed with the loudest smashing sound I had ever heard less than a half-mile from where we were. Debris was falling out of the sky. We ran towards the Fulton Park playground structure for cover. We made it underneath the wood structure. After a couple of minutes, lighter debris was floating down. The girls ran home crying. Brian and I ran over to our bikes and headed towards the crash.

When we got there, the plane had crashed on the sidewalk near the intersection of Newland Street and Talbert Ave. The whole plane was over two feet deep in the sidewalk. It looked like a giant can was crushed into the sidewalk. You could smell fuel, blood, and smoke. Firemen arrived as soon as we got there, used gloved hands to pry open the smashed plane, and eventually brought in the jaws of life to open up the compacted wreckage.

We watched for hours until they pulled all of the body parts of the two lifeless men aboard that day. The other plane landed safely as eighteen firefighters stood by on a runway at John Wayne Airport. The crashed plane hit the ground at 4:43 p.m., about fifty feet from a condominium. The single-engine Cessna 210L was on a local training flight out of Santa Ana and had just completed practice landings at Chino Airport. According to the pilot of the Beech 200, at approximately 3,300 ft in a straight and level flight on a heading of 290 degrees at around 170 knots, he observed an aircraft hit his right wing and then made an emergency landing.

I could not shake the terror of seeing this accident for days afterward. The only other time I ever felt like that in my life would be during combat.

Have you ever witnessed an accident or tragedy like that before? Maybe it was even someone close to you. It's hard to forget.

“I will never forget” = “It is seared in my mind”

As I grieve over the loss of life before my eyes. Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this:

The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!” Lamentations 3:20-24 NLT

As you will read in my book one of the most comforting things I have learned with all of the death, and destruction I have seen first hand is that true hope comes from God. The Shawshank Redemption was an amazing film and this quote in the film says it all “Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

*For more crazy stories about my life please read The Guide: Survival, Warfighting, Peacemaking.

#planecrash #scaryday #gregmunckstories #fountainvalleyplanecrash1982 #gregmuncktheguidestories

by Greg Laurie on Jun 20, 2014

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