Goldfuss update (April 9)

Dear Praying friends,

The big news of the past week for our family was that on Monday night, April 2, at 11:43 PM, Caralyn Joy Goldfuss was born. That is the official spelling. But, since "Cara" means "face" in Mexico, she will be known south of the border as "Carolina." One lady in our church called her "Caro" for short— that means "expensive"! I hope this is not the case. Faith and Caralyn came home on Thursday and the first two nights Caralyn slept from 12 to 6 AM. That was a real blessing. Faith is extremely happy as today, April 8, was her original due date. Caralyn came six days before that.

Here are some prayer requests from our church family.

• Erasmo has been told that his hand will not be operated on again until June 5th;
• Matilde, Erasmo's wife, is still recovering from a kidney infection;
• Guille has been quite unwell lately and has now lost her voice;
• Sra. Maria has been told that the only help for her varicose veins is a dangerous surgery;
• Juanita is still struggling with an infection that is rather debilitating.
• While Faith is home from the hospital with Caralyn, she is still having some trouble walking from her sciatic nerve problem and all of the anesthesia. We are reminded that the Lord uses these different trials and difficulties for His glory and our good, even when we may not understand His reasons.

Despite all of these trials to our church people, it was a huge blessing to see today's services extremely well attended. We were packed. All of the adult chairs were filled and many of the children had to get their little chairs out of the SS room to sit in church. The SS hour had some excellent banter back and forth over some different points. We praise the Lord that Sras. Maria and Gloria were able to attend after not coming for over 2 ½ months due to health problems. It was a blessing to all to see them today. We also had four or five first time visitors today and a man showed up as soon as our services ended. Please pray for Alma and Angeles (apparently two single moms), and for Cristobal, who came as soon as we ended. Pray that God would open each one of these peoples' hearts and save them for His glory. Continue to pray for Morgan who is preaching through Hebrews 11 on Wednesday nights. He has done an excellent job. Pray for his own growth and for more folks to come here God's Word preached. Pray for him to keep on persevering in the faith.

Future Plans:

• We are planning a baptismal service in the not to distant future and so far we have 6 people who have inquired about being baptized. Pray for us have wisdom in dealing with each person.
• We are also praying about the Lord's will in looking for another building.
• We have the BJU mission team coming in the last week of June. There are 28 team members so pray for wisdom in planning that. We are going to be planning some evening evangelistic meetings during their week stay here.
• Pray for safety. The children started a small business last week selling fresh squeezed orange juice. With just a sign out front, (because we cannot allow them out by the street alone), they only had one client during the whole week. The second time the children's client came for orange juice, our other neighbor called saying that that man was a known burglar in our neighborhood and that he had spent time in jail for breaking and entering. However, right before our neighbor called us, it seems as Mikey told the "client" that he could come any day except Sunday as we would be gone. He felt so terrible about saying that when he found out that the "client" was a potential robber. :-) Faith had to stay home last Sunday as she wasn't feeling well, but Mikey volunteered to stay with her for safety's sake. With bat by his side, he spent the five hours watching from the windows. Needless to say, this occurrence has put an end to the budding family entrepreneurship.
  

Thank you so much for praying for and supporting our family and the Lord's work through us here in Mexico City.

With love in Christ,

Mike for all the Goldfi