Dear praying friends,
Thank you again for all of your prayers.
Please pray for the
many new people that have been coming. All are in need of salvation.
- Luis----a friend of the Gabriel and Lilliana. He has come out of that sect "the perfects."
- Betty and Yolanda cousins of Lilliana --they both want to bring their families.
- Silvia---friend of Eric and Delilah
- Miguel and Ester---friends of Marta (who has had trouble with her health)
- Ivan and Claudia and family---friends of Juana and Reme
Others who are not so new, but
still in need of salvation
- Eric and Delilah---Morgan's brother and sister-in-law
- Cristian---Morgan's brother
- Marbella and family
- Ester, Lydia-- and families
- Sr. Juan and Sra. Angelica
Two families who need encouragement right now.
- Nico and Lilliana--They have not been faithful in church. *****(After I wrote this, Nico was almost in an accident where there were 3 tractor trailers involved. He said that literally it was either hit the semi or go off of the cliff. Somehow the car stayed on the road. He said it was literally like the Lord held his vehicle on the road. Because of this, Nico came to talk with Mike and was at the special services that we had on Wednesday night. Pray that this is not just a passing emotion but truly the Lord's work in him.)
- Marcos and Ruth--Ruth has gone back to work to help with the family's needs. Now Marcos has been able to quit his nighttime taxi job--which means that they get to see him in the evenings. Pray as Ruth's working is still a big strain on the family, and Juana (the grandmother) is taking care of the girls during the daytime.
We have a serious problem that we would like you to bring before the Lord. There is a family that has been coming to our church for a very long time. They have been "helping" people from the church who have financial needs by connecting them with two rich ladies who then give them loans. The loans are at 10% interest per MONTH and basically strap the people because they don't realize what that implies. Then the church people can barely pay the monthly interest. We have asked this family to stop being the middle people between the church people and the ladies, but they will not. We asked to go and talk with the ladies who loaned the money with one who received the money, but they would not take us to meet them. The one who borrowed the money has never met these ladies. They eventually had Mike meet 8 hours later with 2 ladies who we later found out were really their neighbors instead of the ladies that they originally said lived in a very rich section of Mexico City. There have been so many lies. The situation is very sad and confusing because of all of the lies. Please pray. It appears that there are no ladies and that this church family is loaning other believers money at a tremendous rate of interest.
There is much more information which gives reason to suspect them and also to suspect them as being the ones who took the offering last fall, possibly to loan to others, but we have no concrete proof. What makes the situation worse is that this family is going to other church people and turning them against the one who owes the money and against Mike. In this case, the person has already paid 3x what he owed and he still needs to pay more because of the ridiculous interest. This family knows that it is not biblical to charge a brother interest. The brother also realizes that he gave his word to pay. So it is a very difficult situation. We now believe that a family who left the church over 4 years ago may have left because they ended up paying 4x what they borrowed from the "ladies" that this family "helped" them find. We were not fully aware of that situation at the time. So as you can see, this is affecting the church.
The Lord helped us get through the situation about two months ago where the men were not wanting to help the new growing Christians. We are so much better as a church now even though that situation was very hard. We have all grown because of it, and the people are wanting to be patient and help all of the new people that are coming into the church. ---SO we know that the Lord can also use this situation for his honor and glory.
GOOD NEWS: We had 20 different people come to the TEACHER'S TRAINING CONFERENCE that Victor LaBelle gave to our church people. The response was wonderful!!! And because of that, we are having another practice session in 5 weeks at the end of July where each teacher and assistant can teach for 5-10 minutes and Victor will give helpful feedback to help all who participate. To thank all who have been teaching and will be teaching, Faith, Mikey, Cristi, and Carissa held a small banquet. (Pictures are included). This also gave Faith a chance to teach our kids how to host an elegant occasion. Everyone had fun----even Mikey who kept running into the other room to check the score between England and the United States in the World Cup. Praise the Lord we had such a wonderful response----and for the desire to serve the Lord through teaching!
Happy and sad news: We have talked about Victor Ramirez Aguirre. He is a young man who began coming to our church around Thanksgiving and was saved, and grew like a weed. He was planning on living here, but a job fell through and then his parents asked him to go home to Spain because both of them are having health problems. Last Wednesday,Victor preached and then Carissa made 2 farewell cakes that we enjoyed with the church. We are sad to see him go, but he is excited to tell all of his friends and family what he has found in the Lord. He is now living in Logrono, Spain. If anyone knows of any missionaries that live near there, please write us. We are only familiar with missionaries that are in the Barcelona area.
NEED FOR A TEACHER: We are now beginning to advertize for a need for a teacher for SECOND semester. The Crockers are able to stay until Christmas before they need to go back to the States to raise full-time support. Although we are trying to figure out a way to keep them here, we want to cover the possibility that they will not be with us second semester. Our need is great. We need to cover 5 students (5 of our 6 children) for 40 classes. Each child will be taking 8 classes. Of course Faith will be teaching the students full-time along with the needed teacher.
Thank you again for upholding us before the throne of grace. We depend upon your prayers!
How could I have almost forgotten?????
We are in the middle of having the BJU team. I wrote most of this on Sunday evening right before they came, but our internet was not working---so we could not send this letter. We had a special service on Wednesday that was wonderful. The team has visited many sites in the city while passing out literally thousands of tracts. Pray for fruit from that endeavor. We will be having a Saturday afternoon cookout---at our home, and a full day on Sunday. The team will then be leaving next Monday. Please pray for the Lord's working in all of our lives.
In Christ,
The Goldfusses---Mike, Faith, Mikey, Cristi, Carissa, Matthew, Cherith, and Caralyn
