We are the Goldfuss family, Gospel Fellowship Assocation missionaries to Mexico City. We were accepted as missionaries by GFA in September of 1993, spent 1994 on deputation, and attended language school in McAllen, TX in 1995. On December 9, 1995, we arrived in Mexico City. We have been here ever since.
At first, we worked with the Zartman family in the Cerro de Judío while we began making contacts near our home in Lomas de Padierna. We were able to begin services in our home on February 16, 1997. Since then, the church has moved several times. Although we are presently renting, we are placing before the people the need of having a permanent place for our church.
While more than seven hundred people have visited our services during the years, our weekly attendance remains around forty. We are pleased with the spiritual growth we have seen among our church people. While we were on furlough, they took the work all by themselves and continue to serve in the church when we are there. A sadness to our hearts is the need for the male leaders who were there during our furlough, but are not now. One fell away from the Lord and another has cancer. The women are the majority of the faithful workers. We have seen several saved, which is a joy to our hearts!
Our Testimonies
Mike: I firmly believe God has called me to missions. I made a profession of faith as a young boy, but only to escape the flames of my mother's paddle and not because of any real sorrow or repentance from my sin. I believe that I was truly born again at the age of 23 while listening to a sermon by Pastor Ashbrook about the holiness of God.
During high school, I really had no desire to serve the Lord. I wanted to serve myself: make a lot of money, have a big house, and have a boat to sail on Lake Erie. My senior year of high school, our speech teacher, Mr. Cline, approached me and asked me to play the part of missionary Jim Elliot in the readers' theater play entitled "The Bridge of Blood." I did not want to do that, but I also didn't want to rock the boat, so I agreed to do it. The Lord really used that play to work in my heart. The theme was a saying by Jim Elliot several years before he was martyred by the Auca Indians of Ecuador. Jim Elliot said, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep (his physical life) to gain what he cannot lose (eternal treasures)."
I attended Bob Jones University and my first day there changed my major from Biology to Christian Missions. There is nothing like serving God. There are many challenges and discouragements, but there is nothing also so rewarding as seeing someone truly regenerated by God's Holy Spirit and then going on for Christ in Christian growth. I pray that the Lord will use us to continue to see an even greater harvest of souls for Him.
Faith: At an early age, God softened my heart toward missions by the influence of my parents and my aunt and uncle, who are missionaries in Africa. I was then led to the Lord by my mother in 1976. Believing in my heart that God had His hand on me for a special missionary purpose, I began preparing myself in every way that I could, especially through music lessons and working in our church.