5 Minute Monthly: February!

February has come and gone, and here in the Mann home things are chugging along at what seems to be a rather fast pace. Yet, the reality is that our lives move very quickly, so it's important to capture the moments and remember each season. I especially feel this while experiencing the first months of my son’s life. Time goes by, and I want to embrace every minute. So here I am in March, now looking back on a month that brought budding friendships, little surprises, answered prayers, and so many firsts for Josiah. I am thankful for the moments and I am excited to share a few with you. 

Life Happenings 

One thing that was surprisingly non-existent in the Northwoods Wisconsin during February was: SNOW. This was the weirdest and warmest winter we’ve had in the area in a long time. But no snow meant more opportunities to get outside with Josiah and get the two of us some fresh air. My days have largely been spent at home with Josiah as we figure out life together. Having a baby is hard, but I think Tyler and I are blessed with our firstborn being a pretty easy baby. The smiles are much more frequent than the tears! Josiah has started to smile and coo, and that has been bringing a lot of joy to my days. The older he gets, the more entertaining he becomes, and we are blessed to watch all of it. Tyler has been enjoying his job in carpentry, and has really taken a liking to doing small electrical jobs and finding his niche in that. He has also been working most Saturdays, so Sunday is the day we cherish and protect as a family. At the end of February, we had our first big adventure as a family when we traveled to Florida for Tyler’s brother’s wedding. It was such a special time with family and Josiah did great on the plane, even though they were long travel days. Through our experiences this month, the Lord is showing us in little ways how to grow stronger as a family. Some days are hard; there is miscommunication, tears, and exhaustion. But through it all, we are learning how to lean on each other and work together through the hard days. And somehow, I seem to remember all the happy days so much more. 

Ministry Update

Two themes stick out to us from this month of ministry: Balance and Relationships. One thing Tyler and I have been talking a lot about is the balance of family care and mission focus. Paul said it well in 1 Corinthians 7:33-34:

"But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband.” (ESV)

Paul’s concession is that a

single person is able to have more focus on things of the Lord, and that a married couple has worldly things that also occupy their time. But that does not mean that families are not called to missional living too. They just must not neglect their family in pursuit of kingdom work. And this is the balance that we are trying to discern! Tyler likes to equate how that learning process is going for us to training for a race: that first run might be one of the shortest in training, but it feels the hardest because there’s no training history yet. And that’s kind of where we’re at: we’re still newly married, and very newly with a son, and we’re trying to pursue our calling in mission work. It may feel hard now, but we know we’re just getting started!

The other theme of this month’s ministry is relationships. Even though we don’t know how long we will be in Hayward and we plan to leave in August, we don’t want that to stop us from diving deep into the relationships we are building here. We feel that is our ministry while state-side. We have been loving getting to know people in our area, and especially in our church community. We are part of an amazing small group and we love how open everyone is and can be. It is special and shows the love of Christ when someone invites you into their inner circle so quickly and we have felt that greatly with our small group. We are looking forward to growing these relationships in the months to come. My sister-in-law and I are also starting up a young women’s bible study, and we are excited to see where the Lord takes that. 

Our support raising has been continuing on. We are thankful for all of the people who have chosen to invest in us both spiritually and financially. We are learning that having a family makes raising money a little slow going for multiple reasons, and it can (unfortunately) become easy to lose motivation but our prayer is that we don’t lose sight of our goal and continue to press on. We still hope to leave in August, and we pray to that end.

Pray with Us

Thank you for reading along as we continue to support-raise. We are thankful for all who give and we truly are grateful for every dollar. If you haven’t yet, would you consider joining our support team? Please reach out to us by phone, email, text, this site, in person, or some other way to let us know! Thank you and God bless!