and I'm loved by You, it's who I am...

After an amazing two weeks in the northeast, Mark and I arrived home late Friday night.  We were tired but mostly happy that we get to spend a whole week in Louisiana (we leave Saturday for Denver and Estes Park).  It has been such a blessing to reconnect with friends and be back in our neighborhood.  Sunday at church, we sang a song I had not heard before but the lyrics touched my heart.  Before you read my thoughts, take time to listen to the song yourself.

Lyric 1: You tell me that you're pleased and that I'm never alone. 
God is pleased with me!  I needed that reminder as I continually fall short of His glory and struggle to keep Him #1 in my heart and life.  He is pleased with me....thank you Lord!  God is always with me.  I also seem to think that He's not there with me when I'm going through tough times or need to decide something, but HE IS!  He wants me to rely on Him

Lyric 2: 
You're a Good, Good Father
It's who you are, It's who you are, It's who you are
and I'm loved by you
It's who I am, It's who I am, It's who I am

God is a good good Father!  It is who He is.  In Him, there is NO darkness, NO sin, NO evil.  He is my good Father who knows what is best for me.  HE LOVES ME and that is WHO I AM.  I am loved by God.  He loves me with an everlasting love and being loved by God is who I am.  My identity isn't found in my occupation or in my relationship status or in my successes or in my failures.  Being loved by God is who I am and that never changes. 

When Jesus was baptized, God spoke not words of an agenda or ministry plan but words of a powerful reminder of His identity.  He is God's Son and God is well pleased with Him.  This jump started Jesus' ministry and for so many of us, we need this constant reminder of our identity.  We are God's children, loved by God, and He is pleased with us.

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven,

 “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.

Mark 1:9-11

Lyric 3: You [God] are perfect in all of your ways to us.
Yes God is perfect. His ways are perfect.  His timing is perfect.  His responses to our prayers are perfect.  He is always trustworthy and always true.

Lyric 4: As you call me deeper still
God is calling me and all of us to a deeper, closer walk with Him.  Our relationship with God is the most important relationship.  He wants us to continue to go deeper in our walk with Him and discover more of His character and heart.  He wants us to multiply our talents and go deep in our walks. 

I praise God for the chance to worship at our church on Sunday and to hear this song that I've continued to sing everyday since.  Feel free to comment or share what stands out to you from this song. Thanks!

The Prayer of Faith

The team with Ms. Bonnie and her grandchildren

It was a overcast Tuesday morning, and the clouds looked as though they could unload their burden anytime.  The team from Allen, TX, made up of high school students and a couple leading the group, piled out of the van at Ms. Bonnie's home.  It was our second day at the job site and there was energy and excitement in the group for another day serving Ms. Bonnie and praying in the community.


Due to the threatening weather, we decided to go on a prayer walk first thing.  After saying a word of prayer as a group, we split up into three groups to canvas the neighborhood.   On prayer walks, we walk around the neighborhood praying for the area and with anyone we come across.  My group prayed with a couple people and after about 20 minutes we made our way back to Ms. Bonnie's.  We were the first group back so we spent a few minutes praying for the other groups and then started working.

About five minutes later, another group made it back, so I encouraged them to continue to pray for the last group while they started working.  About thirty minutes later, the leader came up to me and said "Let me know when I should be concerned that the other group isn't back yet." I encouraged him that normally when groups are gone for this long, it means they're having a conversation with someone so let's keep praying for them.  Another half an hour passed so we went out on the front porch to look for them, then we caught glimpse of the bright green volunteer shirts.  A collective "praise the Lord" was uttered and we ran out to meet them.

It was obvious from the huge smiles on their faces that something great had happened.  They went on to share with us that for the first twenty minutes of their prayer walk they hadn't talked or prayed with anyone so they stopped on a street corner and asked the Lord for someone to interact with.  No more than two minutes later they ran into someone right in front of a convenience store and they prayed with him.  He then connected them to the owner of the store, John*, and they talked with him.  He began asking them questions and discussing differences in their beliefs.

John was open to discussion and hearing more about the gospel so the group, right in the middle of the store, clearly shared the good news of Jesus Christ with him and all those around.  "It was so amazing, God is so good" shared one team member.  As the group finished telling the story, the rain cut loose and started pouring on us.  We retreated to the porch where we thanked God for the amazing prayer walk and prayed that He would continue to work in John's life. Please join us in praying for him.

What a challenging reminder that I need to pray with expectancy; not just hoping God will answer, but believing He will according the promises in His word.  Mark 11:24 "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."


*name changed

Celebrating One Year of Wedded Blessings!

I'm so thankful to God for this first year of marriage.   Mark and I had the unique opportunity to celebrate our one-year anniversary trapped inside due to heavy snowfall in Indiana.  As you can see from the picture, we won't forget this day easily. Mark and I have had a wonderful first year of marriage and we know it's because Christ remains at the center of it!

Granted, it wasn't all bliss.  Whenever you put two selfish, sinful people together, there will be conflict.  We both have had to learn a lot about serving one another even when it's not convenient or easy.  We are continuing to learn how to listen when our spouse is upset without responding defensively.  We are challenged to make sure we keep dating each other.  We have had to share our Saturdays because Mark likes to make a to-do list and Katie likes to-do nothing!

I'm not exactly sure what our second year of marriage will look like but I can only imagine there will be more learning!  We are praying that soon we'll both be full-time with the ministry to serve God and what He has called us to.  We are currently at 67% of recurring giving (check out the "Ways to Partner With Us" tab to learn more).   This season of ministry partnership development has taught us about how we're wired and how we can begin to think we are self-sufficient.  We are reminded daily that God is the one we are called to rely on and He is our provider. 

Leading up to our anniversary, we spent 10 days sharing about our call to ministry with friends and family from Mark's home church along with a 3-day visit to Chicago to recruit interns at Trinity International University.  It was such a blessing to meet more of Mark's home church family and to thank them for their Godly influence into Mark's life. 

Mark and I were blessed in so many ways by our time up north and here are some of the highlights:

1) spending lots of time with our nephew Clark and niece Chloe

2) sharing about intern opportunities at Trinity

3) having opportunities to share with Mark's mission board and families from his home church about our call to missions
4) introducing the game Pandemic to anyone who would play with us. It's so good! 
5) being blessed with free places to stay every single night including two nights in a hotel! Thanks to everyone who housed us and fed us!

 Thanks for taking the time to read our blog!
God bless,
Katie :)

Who am I trying to please?

  It was January 2nd and I had decided I didn't care about New Years Resolutions. It wasn't that I was already giving up on the ones I made, I just didn't really care about setting any.  But as I was doing my devotions and I came across this passage, Luke 6:6-10: 

 "On another Sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Get up and stand in front of everyone.” So he got up and stood there.
Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?”  He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was completely restored. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus."

The Lord started stirring in my heart something I had been thinking about for awhile: my tendency to be a people-pleaser.  My motivation, decision making, my work ethic as well as other things are often dictated by my desire to please others, or gain their approval.  As I read this passage, the part that stood out to me was that Jesus had the man stand up in front of everyone.  If it was me, I would've healed his hand discretely, not to cause a scene or upset the Pharisees.  I would've whispered to him "meet me in the back in 20 minutes" or something sneaky like that, but instead Jesus takes him upfront and uses the healing to confront the Pharisees and me.  

 As I was thinking about it, I realized how sinful this mentality of people pleasing is.  My motivation needs to be to please God and to bring His name glory at all times. I started exploring more of this theme in scripture and I came across Galatians 1:10 "Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ."  "Whoa, hold on, I'm not that bad" my flesh tried to argue, but I knew this is what I had to grow in this year.  So please pray for me, pray that I will be a God-pleaser rather than a people-pleaser.  That the Holy Spirit will continue to convict me when my thought process and decision making is not focused on bringing God glory! I know it will be an ongoing journey, but I thank God for convicting me and for all of your prayers!

-Mark

Lessons from the swing set

This past Thursday, Katie and I had the chance to build a swing set for a family that I had worked for this summer.  To only call it a swing set would be an understatement, we spent about 10 hours putting the play fortress together.  We even had to break out the work lights so we could get it finished.  At the end of the day, it was awesome seeing the huge smiles on the kids' faces as they played on the new swing set. We had a great time working together and learned a lot in the process.

After Katie and I were accepted as long term missionaries, we entered a phase of ministry partnership development (MPD). This involves contacting and sharing with churches, friends, family, and anyone who will listen, about our ministry and calling as well as how they can partner with us.  I think we both expected that as we started doing MPD everything would just fall into place and we would be a well oiled machine.  However, we soon discovered that this is not quite the case, it has been challenging learning how to work together in this.  We both had some expectations of how it would go and who would do what.  By God's grace, we were making some progress, but it all seemed rather disjointed. This brings me back to the swing set.

Sometimes ya need a little success! Driving home Thursday night, there was some new life in the car.  We were both worn out, but there was a feeling of accomplishment, of look what we can do when we work together.  As we talked about what made it so easy for us to work together, this is what we came up with:

Manuals are awesome!  Without the manual for putting the swing set together, we would've been lost and unsure of where to start and how each piece fit together.  I think this has been one of the harder things about MPD, there really isn't a set manual, step-by-step instructions for going about this.  Even though Katie has been doing it for years, we still had to figure out how the Mannings were going to do it. 

We had clarity on our roles and we're confident in those roles.  I had studied the manual before we even began.  So I knew how we would go about the day and what would be most helpful for getting the job done.  I was confident in screwing all the pieces together and Katie was confident in being one step ahead, pulling the pieces and hardware out for the next phase so once I was finished, I could move right into the next phase.  In MPD, we're still trying to figure out what there is to do, much less who can do what, which leads to some unmet expectations and feelings of paralysis.  We want to work together well so we need to continue to extend grace to each other especially since we've only been married 10 months and both full-time missionaries for 3 months.

We also learned that it is FUN to work together, something we had started to question.  It was great getting to see each other in their areas of giftedness and encourage each other with the different tasks we were doing.  It's fun to labor together with your spouse in the work that God has for us.  

I'd love to tell you that now things are going awesome and we're making tremendous progress on our ministry partnership development, but the reality is the whole thing is a journey.  Each day we continue on and God is using this journey to refine us.  When you think about it, the same is true for each one of us, even though sometimes we don't see it, or we want to fight it.  Praise the Lord that He is sovereign and has the perfect plan.  Katie and I thank God for the refreshment He gave us in the form of a disassembled swing set and for all He taught us through it.

Psalm 66:10-12 "For you, O God, tested us; you refined us like silver. You brought us into prison and laid burdens on our backs.  You let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance."