Important News
Dear Prayer partners,
The Lord gives grace.
1. Yesterday was extremely difficult. Mike's sermon was about why we have to deal with sin in the church. He preached the last 20 minutes directly to one church member--the lady in the last update. Michael needed to lovingly administer the 3rd step of church discipline from Matthew 18. It was very difficult to have her present in the service, and we had 5 visitors. But it was very necessary. What was strange was that the people had planned a surprise birthday celebration for Mike after church. Imagine with me how it was........we literally went from, "Dear sister, if you continue in your adultery, we will need to love you, but consider you to have never known the Lord"......with people crying everywhere to ......."Happy Birthday to you." Amazingly, it was a wonderful birthday celebration with great fellowship, and the people did not want to leave. Everyone showed love to the one that was disciplined.
2. We were wiped out and slept later than normal this morning. Mike had a very important counseling session early. They arrived an hour early. We were still in bed. This was heart wrenching situation #2 with another family that has been in our church for over 8 years. Carissa said, "Mom, I think you need to come too to help because they don't look very good." That lasted for over 5 1/2 hours. We (Mike and I) finally ate breakfast at 4 pm which is our normal lunch time.
3. Around 6 pm., Cheri came running in. She had slipped in the garage and went to catch herself. In the process, she tried to grab something to keep from falling and cut her pinky finger on a broken piece of glass inside of the garbage bag. When she came in the kitchen, I knew it was bad because it was half-way through her finger. The problem was that I couldn't get it to stop bleeding. It was so bad that we had to put a tourniquet on her arm. Mike was down the mountain visiting. He had the one car (as the van is still not fixed from the fraud). Carissa was calling him to come get us half way, I was yelling for Mikey to run to the end of the road for a taxi, the rest of the kids were running all over the house getting our shoes, purse----- and I still could not get the bleeding stopped. The tourniquet was turning her arm purple and she was howling. Mike was calmly visiting. As he answered the phone, all he could hear was screaming. With the tourniquet, I was finally able to stop the bleeding.
In the meantime, Mikey was having trouble of his own. Our neighborhood taxi men were drinking and gambling and wouldn't come and help us---so he had to flag down another taxi. After the 40 minute trip down the mountain, the ER doctor took one look and said that we needed to call a surgeon. The final good news was that she missed the tendon and the main artery!!-- which seemed like a miracle to me after all of the blood.
4. On the way home at 10:00 pm, Carissa called on the cell phone to say that my mom called and said that my sweet Aunt Mary was rushed to the hospital with a brain aneurysm. Aunt Mary and Uncle Dave Naff served The Lord for over 40 years in Liberia, Africa. They are amazing people and are the main tools that the Lord used to lead me to missions. My mom had just talked to Aunt Mary at 7:30 pm. They were sharing prayer requests. At 8:30 Aunt Mary yelled out to Uncle Dave that her head was hurting. He called the ambulance. By the time I called my mom, they had life-flighted her to a hospital in Charlotte. I was able to be on Skype while mom called my cousin Marilyn and my Uncle Nelson Grover, whom many of you know.
We JUST received word that my Aunt Mary is in the presence of her Savior.
If you are one of my many many precious family members hearing this through this letter, please forgive us for not calling you one by one. I encouraged my mom to get some rest tonight. This is very hard on mom, but she is so strong in her Lord. She is so happy that her dear sister is with her Lord. Please pray for my Uncle Dave as we are his only family. Please pray for my Uncle Nelson as his wife (my Auntie Vyla) went to be with The Lord the exact same way just two years ago.
As my Cristi just wrote on Facebook, "please pray with us that all of these things will continue to make us more like Christ."
With much love,
Faith for the Goldfusses
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