Goldfuss update (September 2)

This past week was extremely busy in getting ready for our big weekend church get together at our home for Carissa's birthday and our "fall festival." Cristiana began her two weeks of therapy last week. Please pray for this. She is still needing a great deal of help for reading. The teacher had to go to a conference from this past Friday throughout this next whole week, so Cristi has some homework to do this week and will do her second week next week.

Nico and Lilliana welcomed their new baby boy into this world on Monday. She is home now next door and we are trying to help them with meals and help in their home while she is trying to recover.

Sylvia was able to go and visit her son Roberto, in the drug rehab for the first two times last week and this week. The only problem is that the visits are only on Sunday and she has missed the last two Lord's days. Please pray for her to be able to work her schedule to be able to be in the the church services each week. She came on Wednesday --and that is a praise.

Teresa has had very high blood pressure and has felt miserable the last 3 weeks. She has also missed the last two Lord's day services.

Miguel--Nico's 12 year old son who has caused some very very difficult problems for his parents. I was able to go to their home about a week ago and seek to give some very stern and biblical counsel to both parents and son. Nico said that the next day Miguel disobeyed. Nico didn't want to but knew that he needed to apply scriptural discipline. He did, then hugged Miguel and Miguel hugged him. He went the whole last week a happy boy. Pray for Miguel to understand that he can't just reform his life but that he needs a new birth. On Friday, Mikey and Miguel helped me move many things from our neighbor's (Tent, tables, chairs, etc.,) to our home. It was drizzly but Miguel really wanted to help and he was a real blessing. So also was Mikey. Please pray for these two young men to experience God's saving grace in Christ.
Birthday Party/Church get-together. We had a "western" theme for the church get together and it was amazing how many people came who dressed the part.

There were approximately 85 people present.

We had two horses attend. :-) We had them for 3 hours. The children all loved that. In the meantime we had other games and fun.

Ivan (the young man that had his hand caught in a tortilla maching last week) and his wife Claudia and their little girl Carolina came! Many people in our church, although they didn't know them personally, said things like, "Oh, you are Ivan. We have been praying for you!" It was such a blessing. They were amazed at how many people cared. As a result, they came on Sunday to both of our services. Praise the Lord and thank you for praying for them!

NO RAIN. The forecast was for thundershowers all day long and it rained about 10 minutes before we were supposed to start and then stopped. It remained cloudy and then the SUN actually came out for a while. From what we understand, the whole rest of the city was getting heavy rain. We may have been the only place in our whole big city where there was no rain and even a little sun. :-) Praise the Lord.

It started to sprinkle when Mike gave the devotional and that cut things short. Going along with the theme, the point was that---" some trust in horses and some in chariots, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God." Please pray for several neighbors who also attended who have not heard the gospel before.

Sunday: we were missing about 12 normal people but we were unbelievably full. Again, Ivan and his family came, Martha's family who came several years ago but we haven't seen them since also came. There were probably about 7 or 8 of them. They escaped quickly after church and I wasn't able to speak with them. Please pray that they will return, be saved, and be a part of Christ's church in this part of Mexico City.

Between SS and church, someone told me that there were some people out in front of our church who wanted to speak to me. It was a man, Constantine, his wife Juliana, and daughter (Cristina) with her friend from school (Damaris). The man is an acquaintance of ours from a favorite taco place. He knew that we were Christians. His daughter and friend needed to interview an English speaking person for a project for school and video tape it. So, I answered the questions in about three minutes. They offered to pay something but I mentioned to them that the only payment acceptable was to stay for church. They agreed although the dad had to leave after our hymns because he had to work. We found out that they live very close to us up here on the mountain. I told them we would bring them home, but they took off quickly after church. Then, they came back when we were all loading into the van. They had accidentally taped something else after church and taped over our conversation. I said we could do it up at our house so we invited them to dinner along with Juana and Reme and their whole family.

We had a tremendous opportunity with them over lunch and they have been attending a New Life Christian (or not so Christian) church five streets from our church but are very upset over the constant appeals for money and the disorder with rock music. We have been praying as a church for believers in other churches which are preaching false doctrine to find us and for us to find them. This may be an answer to that prayer. :-)

Morgan, Gabriel and Francisco all have indicated recently a desire to serve the Lord more. Please pray for us to have wisdom in dealing with each one of these men.

The people are excited about all of the new opportunities for witnessing; yet as in every place, all isn't perfect in Mexicolandia. There are four people in the church that need some personal loving Biblical admonition and exhortation. Please pray for them to receive these things well and to respond Biblically.

Erasmo is somewhat discouraged--he was turned away from 4 hospitals when he had several of his fingers run over and cut off back in December. Seeing Ivan yesterday and realizing that he had his fingers saved made him think that he lost his fingers because he had no money to pay for the operation in a private hospital whereas Ivan's father was able to do that. Pray for the Lord to continue healing Erasmo's fingers that he still has and for him to accept this as from the Lord.

Alberto (Teresa's husband), Alejandro (Guille's husband), Roberto (Sylvia's husband), Octavio (Martha's husband), Fidel (Juana's husband.)--all these men are unsaved husbands of believing ladies in our church. Pray for their salvation.

We have enclosed some pictures of the fall festival. We also celebrated Cherith's 3 year old birthday yesterday. There is a tradition of sticking the birthday person's head in the cake (just a little bit) here in Mexico. So that is why you will see our two daughters covered in frosting. We appreciate greatly all of your prayers. God is answering in miraculous ways!

In Christ,
Mike for all the Goldfusses

Goldfuss Update (August 26)

Mikey has been begging us since he wrote his last update several months ago to write this next update. Since we've been with Memo and Karina from 4:00 til 10:30 tonight counseling them, we finally said yes. We had some excellent conversation with them today, and Memo showed some real insights on certain things. Please pray that the Lord would give them a true understanding of salvation in Christ and for us to have wisdom in talking with them. If you don't have time to read this, please go to the ***** and you can get the requests.

Hello this is MIKEY, and I will tell this week's update.

Reme's neighbor's son Ivan, who is about 18, wanted to have a tortilla shop for a business with his brother. Last Sunday night he was looking at the machine ( he put his hand in it ) ( the machine was on) and it took his hand. His brother was there with him so he turned off the machine..... (and it is hard to concentrate to because my sister is yelling in my ear). ( the baby)
So back to the story, he was fine BUT......... People came to help him so, they were trying to pull his hand out and the skin came off of the bones in his fingers and hand and two fingers were crushed. Yes, I agree with you YUCK..... so 2 hours later an ambulance came... yes 2 HOURS LATER.. They came and got him out and took him to the hospital. They had surgery the next day.
What a Sunday.

Now we move to Monday.

On Monday we got word from Reme about what had happened with Ivan. My dad went to see him, but I wanted to have a day with Dad so I said, ''Dad can I go with you? '' and he said ''yes''. But Carissa my sister said "I want to go too." There goes my day with Dad and then Cristi said I wanna come too. So she came too. No day with dad. It was still fun with my sisters though.
So we went to the hospital to see Ivan. After we did that we went down town. We rode on the subway and my we went to the book store and got books for my Mom's study with the women of our church and then went to KFC. I knew that it would be good to go with my Dad. So after that we went to a big park and we passed out tracts.

While we were there, we heard this guy sing. I don't know if he was showing off to his girlfriend or was just showing off but he sounded like a dying duck . So we got to the middle of the park, our tracts were about gone and a red eyed guy comes up and says ''Oh I just saw your kids and there is a kids concert up over there and blaa blaa blaa blaa blaa''. (parent's added comment---The Vienna Boy's Choir for free) So my dad gave him a tract and we went to where he said to go. Now I thought this was pretty fishy. I don't know if I've been reading too many Hardy Boys books or what, but I didn't like it. So we went about ten minutes and the red eyed guy comes again and said, "Oh thank you so much for the tract. I just read it and it helped me a lot because I am a Christian too." The tract is long to read and I didn't think he read it. Plus when he said, "I'm a christian. I should of said ''Christian!!!! ''how did you become a Christian'', but I didn't. So we went on to where he said for about a half an hour. I was dead tired. So we stopped and asked for directions. A man says, "Oh that place. No, it's all the way back there and I almost fainted, but we walked back to the subway. Oh, and I got to get my shoe's polished so I got to rest by sitting down when I had my shoes polished. Then we went home and the next thing I knew I was studying the insides of my eyelids.

On Tuesday, we stayed home and Cristiana, Carissa, Matthew, Cherith and I all made a jail in our yard for Carissa's birthday party coming up this next Saturday. We are having a western theme, so we need a jail.

On Wednesday dad helped Morgan and Morgan preached.

On Thursday it rained a lot from Hurricane Dean so we pretty much had to stay in the house. That's what I call "rained in." So, it was a pretty boring day.

On Friday, Morgan came and studied with my dad.

On Saturday, my mom had a ladies meeting at Guille's house where they are studying a book entitled, "Lies Women Believe." There were about 15 ladies there--mom said, I wasn't there, thankfully. Each of the ladies said that they really really enjoyed the study and learned a lot.

Today, Sunday, my dad preached on Hell. After the services today, we had Memo and Karina and their three children come over for dinner. They just left tonight at 10:40 PM. Now, I'm very tired. So, I'm going to let my dad proofread this and go to bed. Goodnight,
Mikey

*****

• We have known Ivan, the boy with the hand accident in the tortilla machine, for about 10 years. They came to VBS when they were little. They are presently not attending any church and not putting the Lord really anywhere in their lives. Please pray as we visit him again this week that the Lord would open his eyes to his need of Christ.
• Matilde and Erasmo had a very difficult week. She is still in a lot of pain from gall stones, but they seem to be really trying to put the Lord first in their lives. They were there early ready to serve today (they did the cleaning) and they are trying to help a new couple in the things of the Lord. They have also been witnessing to Humberto's unsaved family.
• Teresa is still very weak with very high blood pressure.
• Nico and Liliana were supposed to go to a hospital this morning for Liliana's baby to be delivered via C-section. They went and there was no antesthesiologist there. So they sent them to "find another hospital if you can." ?????? Unbelievable. They went to several others but the price was way out of their range, so they came home. Actually, the due date is September 6, but most places here schedule C-sections so that the doctors don't have to wait for the mothers. :-( There is such a lack of basic medical knowledge here so please pray for all to go well when the Lord works things out for their baby to come. Mike has also been to their house three times this week to help them with their son Miguel 12 years old. He seems to be responding to Biblical discipline now that Nico has added much love and consistency.
• Tomorrow, Monday, Cristi is starting a new Dyslexia therapy for two straight weeks and three hours per day. We are really praying for a breakthrough for her.
• On Saturday we are having a church get together and have invited the whole church. PLEASE pray for sunny weather as it would be a lot easier to have about 120 people outside than inside. We will be celebrating Carissa's birthday and have invited many visitors. Pray for Mike as he will give a short devotional message. Pray for this to be an excellent outreach for our church as well as a good time of fellowship and a nice birthday for Carissa.
  

Thank you for your prayers,
Mike for all the Goldfi

Goldfuss update (August 19)

Dear Praying Friends,

Thank you for praying for our men last week. This week most of the men were there. We seemed full even though six of our faithful ladies were all very ill. So now could you please pray for the ladies. :).

1. Teresa has been very tired, has a severe headache and needs some tests. The doctor says her blood pressure if very high.
2. Matilde has had another kidney infection this week and has kidney stones. She was in severe pain and crying when Faith visited her.
3. Juana was laid low today by a very bad migraine (as compared to a very good one). :-)
4. Liliana is in her last month of pregnancy and was not able to make it today.
5. Guille was not in church today and we weren't sure if it was due to illness or problems again with her husband Alejandro.
6. Rosy suffers greatly with kidney problems and was also unable to be there today. Please pray that the Lord would give these blessed saints of His grace to deal with the illnesses, difficult home situations with most of their husbands, and that the Lord would graciously save many or all of these ladies' husbands.
   

Thank you for praying for Mike. He had a headache pretty much since last Thursday until this Wednesday. He seems to be doing a good bit better, but still has been a little weak. Caralyn right now has a very very bad cough. Pray that some medicine will take care of that for her quickly if the Lord so allows.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we were able to have a nice visit from two other long-time missionaries to Mexico, Miss Norma Helle and Miss Diana Boss. They had come to Mexico City to renew their papers. It was nice to see them and spend two days with them. Here are a couple of pictures of them this week with Cherith and Caralyn.

A blessing during the last three weeks has been Irvin, Rosy's only son. He has always been a very very quiet boy. He has no father and comes often with his mom. He just started high school this past week. About three weeks ago after our communion service, during our last hymn, "Hallelujah, What a Saviour," I noticed Irvin crying. He's not a very easy young man to talk to, but he came today for the first time ever without his mom (Rosy was sick) and came with his cousin, Juan Carlos, who used to always attend with them. Juan Carlos has probably not been there in over 3 or 4 years. What a blessing. I wasn't able to see Irvin, but Reme said that it was very very apparent that he was singing from his heart. Please pray for the Lord to continue to work in Irvin. We have very fond memories of Irvin and Juan Carlos being the first Sunday school attendees ten years ago when the church began. These two with another cousin, Miguel Angel had Sunday school in our upstairs bedroom. It is such a praise to see the Lord working in them after ten years of seed planting.

Faith is starting a ladies' class this Saturday at 10:00 AM. There is a lot of interest on the part of the ladies to study. Pray that the Lord would help many of them grow and some to come to Christ for salvation during this study.

We will end with a funny story: (well, kind of sad). On Tuesday of this week, Mike heard a knock on the street door. Answering it, he found a representative from one of the two biggest TV stations here in Mexico City, TV Azteca. The man explained that they had been filming some TV programs in the neighborhood and that they were looking for another house to use to do taping. I asked what the name of the program was that they were going to be taping and how much they paid. He said that they paid $800 United States Dollars per day of taping. Wow. The name of the program: "Bellezas Indomables." I'd never heard of that program before (I've never heard of a lot of programs here though) and came back to the house to ask a friend of ours. She said that the program was a soap-opera and that it's not very good. I found out that the translation of that title means, "Untameable Beauties." Unfortunately, they aren't talking about horses. So, I grabbed a tract and went back to the door. I told the man that perhaps any other program would be able to be taped in our home, but not a soap-opera as our home should always be used for God's glory. I gave him the tract entitled, "Are you a good person, a SINNER or a saint?" The word sinner is pretty BIG like that. He gave a very sarcastic laugh.

Later that afternoon when the rest of the family was all together, I told them about that incident. The kids were of course amazed that we were offered so much money, but we explained to them why we couldn't allow our home to be used for that. (Our family devotions that morning were on the seventh commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," and they were able to see the application.) It was encouraging to hear Mikey say, "Dad, I think the Lord was testing us." That was a test. (The neighbor man has been having taping done at his house and they have been there about five times in the last month.) Pray that we will be faithful testimonies to our community and our family.

We thank you for your continued prayer and support,
In Christ,
Mike for all the Goldfi

Goldfuss update (August 12)

Dear Prayer warriors,

Thank you again for praying!

Answers!

Everyone is feeling better---except for daddy--throat and ear infection and sinus headache.

The Lord seems to be working in a number of the men for whom you have been praying. Please continue to bathe them in prayer.

• MORGAN---just loves studying the two days per week that he and Mike have together. This is becoming evident in his preaching.
• GABRIEL---came to the house with his family on Thursday night. Lilliana, his wife, says that he now wants to take the children's home school Bible class. This is an great answer to prayer. Since they walk together for their health, he has suggested that they pray together during the time. Pray for us as we guide him. He is wondering if the Lord has some kind of service for him.
• MARCOS---(the groom who just got married) has been talking about witnessing and wants to lead his family in family devotions.
• ERASMO---has been inviting Umberto and Ortencia over to the house to help them become more faithful to church. He has been doing a good job of answering their questions.
• NICOLAS---recognizes that the Lord is the only answer in helping his twelve-year-old rebellious son and desires spiritual help for him and to guide his family.
• JOSE---is happy attending church with his "new" family. (They were married in the civil ceremony about one month ago after living together for eight years. They are planning a formal wedding in two months.)
• HUMBERTO---(mentioned above) is beginning to see the falsehood of the church they attended previously. This church does not believe that Jesus is God. Pray for he and his wife's salvation. He has been coming on Wednesdays, but has been working on Sundays.
• HUMBERTO---(21 year old son of NICOLAS) really seems to desire to want to give his whole life to the Lord.
• FRANCISCO---is a joy as he loves to learn about the Lord and always wants help in his witnessing.
  

Please pray for wisdom in dealing with each one's specific needs that the Lord be glorified.

UNCLE JOHN, AUNT JENNIFER AND JONATHAN were such a blessing. They have wonderful spirits that encouraged us to be encouraged even through some difficult sicknesses and trials that we had. Uncle John finished painting the outside of the house, and varnished the cabin as well as helped Mike with the septic tank. Unfortunately, the septic tank job helped John become extremely ill. I guess he became more ill than he has ever been in his life. We were sad for that. But during all of this, we were encouraged because three of our families who knew John from previous visits had all of us over to their house. Our people are really learning to be giving.

We found a therapist for Cristi only 40 minutes from our house!!!!!!!!!!! This is such an answer to prayer. The others were over 2 1/2 hours away only up to the center of the city.

Requests:
ALEJANDRO and OCTAVIO'S salvation.

Upcoming events:

• August 25---Ladies Bible Study
• September 1st--Fall festival---at our house. The whole church is coming and we are having them invite unsaved friends that they have been witnessing too. We are combining this with Carissa's big special birthday party. (We only have one big party per child and that's at 8 years old). Since it needs to be on a Saturday it just happens to be falling on Cherith's birthday.
• Janet and Vanessa our two sisters didn't come today. Neither did Memo and Karina and their two boys and baby girl.
  

One special answer to prayer. We had a torrential downpour on Thursday. It was raining harder and harder with hailstones. Since our property is below the road up above, much of the roads runoff was running down OUR DRIVEWAY toward our house. We all went to the garage to watch the river flow down toward us. Thankfully Mike had seen a rain like that before the house was built and had a large drain put in right in front of our garage. The drain was handling the water exceptionally well.

About 10 minutes later, Mike went back out to see the river and the drain was almost full and was about 30 seconds from running over into our garage. The bad news is that our cistern is below our garage floor and the metal door to the top of the cistern is right in the garage. Any overflow into the garage would ruin all the water in the cistern and cause us to have to do a major cleaning of it. Mike prayed quickly and grabbed a broom stick and stuck it as far down as possible to try to get the water to go down. Praise the Lord it worked just at the last second when the water almost got to the garage floor level. The Lord is so good to us in little (BIG) ways like that. Below are a couple of pictures of the storm and it's aftermath. The pictures were taken when everything was abating.

We thank you for your continued prayers,
in Christ,

Faith for the Family

Goldfuss update (August 5)

Thank you so much for praying for us this past week.

Our health was very very bad last week. Every one of the kids contacted the "mysterious" illness during the week with several being much worse than the others. Cristiana and Cherith really seemed to suffer the most, but even the baby had a couple of days of suffering. It was one of the worst health weeks we've ever had here in Mexico and we have had some pretty bad ones. Cristiana is still having a little bit of a problem and Cherith also. Please pray that Lord would allow the medicines to do the job so that we won't have to visit the doctor again anytime soon.

Noemí, the other lady with the land dispute, left on Saturday for Tijuana. We are not sure how long she will be gone. Things are not in the best of shape with her husband Mario here in Mexico City, so she is worried about her relationship with him. Mario needs to be saved. Pray for the Lord to work in Noemi during her stay in Tijuana.

Guille called on Saturday morning around 9 AM while we were getting ready for the wedding. She said that her husband Alejandro accused her and said he had proof that she was running around on him with another man. (The truth would most probably be closer to the opposite of the accusation.) Anyway, Guille was absolutely distraught. Alejandro is a man with a lot of bitterness in his past toward his family. Humanly speaking, he seems like a very difficult case, but we have seen God work in this family in the past in seemingly impossible situations. Guille wasn't able to make it to the wedding yesterday but she was in church this morning. That was a real blessing to see her. The message today was on the joy of our salvation and trials. It was very appropiate for many different folks in our church.

Marcos and Ruth's wedding yesterday (Saturday.) It was supposed to start at 1 PM. We started around 2:30 PM. :-) There were many many Roman Catholic people present (including Ruth's parents), and Marcos and Ruth both thought that the most important part of the wedding was the preaching of the gospel. That was a great blessing to hear them say that. In such a situation, it's easy for them to listen, but I am the one who has to preach. :-) We have found out over the years that it's not what we have in common with people that is important, but the differences. I mentioned that Jesus Christ is the exclusive way to Christ as per John 14:6. I mentioned that saints, the virgin, a human priest, good works, sacraments, neither their church nor my church, would give them peace with God and forgive their sins. I wasn't stoned or pelted with tomatoes.

Pray that our Heavenly Father would work in hearts and draw men and women and young people who heard the gospel yesterday to the Lord Jesus Christ. The service was very nice and the meal afterward was very good. There were probably between 200-250 people present. Pray for Marcos and Ruth and Jimena (Ruth's four-year-old daughter) to keep Christ first in their relationship.

Mike's brother John, his wife Jennifer, and their oldest son Jonathan have been with us since Monday. John wasn't able to escape the sickness on Friday and Saturday. He was laid pretty low. Praise the Lord that he was doing better today and he preached in our worship service this afternoon after Mike did SS in the morning. The message on trials was very good for the Lord's people here. We finished our services today with the blessing of the Lord's Supper. It was a blessing.

We are privileged to have John, Jennifer and Jonathan until this coming Friday. Pray that the Lord will keep them healthy and that we will get much accomplished this week.

Thank you so much,
Mike

P.S. Here are a couple of pix of the wedding.