Goldfuss update (8/28/2012)

Dear Praying Friends,
I’m sorry not to get an email update out to you all since the END of our trip. We made it back to our home in Mexico City a week ago Saturday about 5:30 PM. What a trip. The Lord brought a lot of unexpected things into our paths during our 7000 mile round-trip journey. At the same time, He also brought so many blessings. It was so easy to focus on the difficulties, but last Monday morning, Faith and I woke up and decided to just pray and thank God for all of the blessings by giving thanks in everything. It probably took us over 30 minutes to mention each of the blessings that we could think of and thank the Lord for His goodness even in the trials. Then we did the same thing at breakfast with the kids.

We were able to get the transmission fixed and didn’t seem to have any more problems with that on the way back down. That was a tremendous blessing. The Lord also provided four new tires for the van. When the tire man brought the van up to me when it was done, he advised me that the rim that we had for our spare tire didn’t fit our van. :-( It was great to have that be known in Waco, Texas instead of on the side of the road in Mexico and unable to change a spare tire.

After we got the transmission fixed, we left Waco on Thursday morning. We made it down to McAllen about 4 pm. We had to buy a couple more things at Walmart to bring back—we waited so that they wouldn’t melt and put them in a cooler—choco chips, etc. Then we got the oil changed and headed over to the border. We crossed the bridge into Mexico to register our trailer, but got stuck on that with paperwork for over an hour. We had to return to the US side that night to wait for some paperwork to be faxed to us from Mexico. You are not going to believe this, but we had a hard time just getting back into the US due to the customs agents who wanted to know where we’d come from—um, er, well, just came from the US over to Mexico and right back—and with a full trailer, they were very suspicious. Sigh!!!! So they went through the trailer and finally let us go. Until they let us enter, we felt like people without a country— in the middle of both countries and not able to enter either.

So we had another overnight stay in Texas. We Left about 10 the next morning for the international bridge crossing again and were able to get the trailer paperwork in about 3 hours. Then we headed off to Monterrey—about a 3 hour trip. We got the green light at the bridge so we didn’t have to unload anything. About 26 miles into Mexico there is another customs place, and we only had to open up and the man looked at a couple things and sent us on our way. Thank you Lord. There is about an 80 mile long toll road that leads to Monterrey and we were pulled over by the Federal Police who gave us a hard time about permissions and such, but after about 25 minutes, they sent us on our way as well. In all the fuss about showing them permissions and papers, the back door of the trailer didn’t get locked correctly. 20 minutes further up the road we were stopped by another federal policeman—who only stopped us to inform us that the back door to the trailer was wide open. My heart sank. We had hit some pretty rough road and without the lock on the back, the door had jarred open—we aren’t sure where. However, it appears that we only lost one thing while driving with the door open. All the suitcases were still right there at the back door still intact and in place. We made it to Monterrey about 6:30 PM and had a nice evening with the Zartmans, fellow GFA missionaries. We left the next morning, Saturday, about 5:30 am. We were stopped by the police about 10 minutes into our journey, again without incident and then again about 3 hours later. They kept me a little longer but at last we were again free to go.

Around 4 pm, we made it to Mexico City. If all goes well, we can normally make it home in about an hour from the top of the city to the very bottom edge where we live. But we were stopped by the city police here. They said that I wasn’t allowed to carry cargo on the central freeway with a trailer. So, I asked what I needed to do. Answer? Go with us to impound your van and trailer. “Um, How long is it impounded?” I asked. ”Until Monday.” “OR,” he continued, “We could just arrange things right here so that you could go on without a problem (i.e., a bribe.) I said, “Well I am a Christian and a pastor and I can’t do that before the Lord, so let’s just go get it impounded and I’ll have to come get it on Monday.” The policeman looked at me, handed me back my papers and said, “Go ahead. God bless you.” And we made it home. It felt like we would never ever get here, but praise the Lord for His kindness and protection. We serve a very great and kind and good God.

To commemorate the long trip, the kids came up with a song sung to the tune of the 12 Days of Christmas—although they could only fill in 9 things. ”Nine different cousins, eight crowded people, seven thousand miles, six new tires, five police pullovers, four days stuck in places, three flat tires, two attempts to get over the border, and one broken transmission. And after all that, on August 18, we FINALLY arrived home. We had not pulled into the driveway for literally 30 seconds before the phone rang and a young man asked if he could come get some counsel and he would need to stay overnight. We immediately felt right back in the saddle. :-)

It appears that the ministry went well with God’s blessing in our absence. They had VBS with a few problems that they solved. Six men preached and taught SS. The attendance was a little lower than we would have liked. Pray that some will follow Christ and not just us. Praise the Lord that overall, there was good faithfulness in the core believers.

I’d like to share a special blessing/prayer request. The men divided up the book of Jude with each taking several verses for the Sunday school hours in our absence. They were studying about false teachers and the need to contend for the faith that has been delivered to us in Scripture. A newer man was asked by someone else in the church to teach the children’s Bible story during VBS (we were unaware of this us). The first morning, he mentioned something about heaven and how all of us are going there. Beto, the youngest man who has been helping with teaching and preaching, (about 25 years old,) heard that phrase and thought, “If we are supposed to contend for the faith, and I don’t say anything to this man, what we are learning doesn’t do any good at all.” And so after VBS that day, he kindly talked to the man about what was said to all the children. (This is an older man about 60 years old or so.) The man condescendingly put his arm on Beto and said, “Don’t be such a legalist, man.” So, Beto has followed the first step in Matthew 18, and we need to follow up on that with the second step. Please pray for S to see the error of that and to humble himself to accept correction. Praise the Lord for Beto standing up for truth. School started this past Thursday. We don’t have any school teachers to help this year, so please keep Faith in your prayers for strength, wisdom and Christ-like responses. If anyone would like to help come teach, don’t hesitate to ask, or certainly plan on coming second semester. :-)

*** On a humorous note, yesterday I preached on thanking the Lord for all things without grumbling or complaining, and we returned home to find our garage and living room flooded. We laughed while we cleaned up the mess. Cheri reminded us that at least our bedrooms—on the second floor—were not flooded.

Thank you for your prayers and encouragement and support.

In Christ,
Mike for all the Goldfii

Prayer update/going across the border

We wrote the following email this morning travelling down from Waco, Texas
to McAllen. We went over the international bridge into Mexico about 6:30
PM, but had to come back due to some paperwork that we still need. Please
pray that the Lord would allow us to obtain the right things tomorrow and be
able to get over. Mike

Dear Prayer partners,

Well, we are so thankful that the Lord allowed our van to be fixed! I know
that you will be happy to hear that the Lord moved a couple, the Storms,
from one of our supporting churches in Houston to cover the cost of the
transmission AND they wanted us to put on new tires! We are also very
grateful to Jack and Mollie Lee for housing us for the whole time that the
transmission was being fixed. That was no small feat!

We are now on the road again and headed for the border. Yesterday we called
the Zartmans to let them know that we were finally coming---and Mrs. Zartman
said that there were big roadblocks in Reynosa set up by the drug cartels
because they were upset that a couple of drug members had been killed. Memo
from our church also wrote to warn us. Evidently he heard about it on the
Mexican news. So we began our trip this morning from Waco, Tx. We now need
to get down to the border and across----and then go the three hours to the
Zartmans in Monterrey before dark for safety reasons. Then on Friday we
need to drive the last remaining 10 hours to Mexico City. However, we can't
arrive before 10 pm because we cannot drive in the city limits on Friday.
That is our day not to circulate.

Thank you for praying for us!

In Christ,
Mike, Faith, Mikey, Cristi, Carissa, Matthew, Cheri, and Cara Goldfuss

Quick update (8/11/2012)

Dear praying friends, 

We have been in the midst of a whirwind!  It has been 6 years since we took a furlough---and we plan to take one in about 3 more years.  Since we have not taken furlough in a long time, our mission granted us one month to be with our parents.  Faith's mom has been ill for a number of months. 

The doctors are testing mom's thyroid.  While we were there Faith's dad was also having problems.  They determined that he basically has a lazy esophagus.  He also has a hernia.  They were doing better when we needed to leave, but it was still hard to go.  Before we left we were able to help with few things around the house, but they were much more of a blessing to us than we were to them.  It made Mike feel good to have our whole family be able to help chop and stack wood for his mom.  I think she is pretty well set for the winter.  

Mike has been able to preach each Sunday while I have shown the slides.  It has been a blessing to be able to get reaquainted with a few who pray for us so diligently.

The trip back has been very eventful.  We had a blowout from PA to OH.  Later we had two more flat tires in Kentucky to Tennessee--3 flats in less than 800 miles.  :-(  We have spent about 7 hours total by the side of the road in close to 100* weather.  The Lord has showed His grace even in the midst of the trials.  We've been thankful for each hour of progress that was made in the right direction.  

We are now in Waco headed toward Houston for a meeting tomorrow.  However, the mechanic yesterday told us that we have some pretty serious transmission problems and we need to have that fixed before we go back into Mexico.  So we are going to Houston tonight and coming back tomorrow night.  Hopefully, we'll be able to get the van in early on Monday and they will make quick work of the transmission.  Please pray for the Lord's will regarding getting back to Mexico.  We had hoped to make it back on Tuesday, but that doesn't seem likely now.  We rely on your prayers and the Lord's timing.   

Thank you for praying!

Mike and Faith for the rest of the Goldfii