Greg Lonning Speaks at Focus

This past Sunday I went and saw Greg speak in Focus. He did a great job speaking and I believe he had an impact on the people that were there, atleast I know he did on me. He started by reading James 1:2-3 which talks about perserverance and considering it pure joy when we face struggles in our lives. Then he went on to talk about to times when he had to go through very tough struggles. The first was when he was a senior here at Luther and it was the night before his last dual meet before the conference tournament. That night his brother had died in an accident and as you can imagine that would be very hard for anybody. He went on to talk about how Paul Solberg told him that he should wrestle in the dual meet the next night. He wasn't sure if that possible but Paul talked him into it. Greg went out there and pinned his guy the next night. He then went onto win the national title. That would not have been possible had Paul not talked Greg into it. Then the second story was from his last year of coaching at UW Lacrosse. The story that he told was when on of his wrestlers had died from heat exahaustion from cutting weight. Greg said that he took full blame for this kid's death. That would be hard for anybody or coach. The thing that I got from his message that I can use for teaching or anything in life is that no matter what may happen in life you have perservere. In a classroom we may be presented with situitions that could be very difficult to deal with but we can not give up and must make the very best out of the situation. For if we were to make it through our teaching careers without facing some kind of struggle we would be lieing to ourselves. There will always be kids that try to make the class into some sort of circus and try to make other students their puppets. This is what a teacher can not have happen and must work to prevent this from happening. In otherwords we must have to perserve not matter what and overcome any obsticle we may face.