They've packed up their Lancaster house.

Gotten rid of the furniture.

Put some of their 20 years' worth of stuff in storage. Disposed of other things.

Now all their remaining belongings are packed into the back of a van.

After church this morning, they'll say their final goodbyes and set off on a 50-hour drive to their new life.

Missionaries in Puebla, Mexico.

Keith and Dawn Goodling and their teenage son Tyler are leaving today for Mexico — leaving behind Tyler's two older sisters and the rest of their extended family in Lancaster.

They've been used to a comfortable American way of life, but they're about to immerse themselves in a new culture and a far simpler style of living.

The Goodlings know it seems they are sacrificing everything they've worked for.

But these nontraditional missionaries, who heard God's call to spread the Christian faith in midlife, don't see it that way.

"It's about obedience in what God calls you to do," Keith said.

"There's such blessing," Dawn said, "in obedience."

The missionary lane
Keith Goodling jokes that the headline for this story should be: Former pro bowler strikes out for the mission field.

It wasn't quite such a straight path.

Keith, 46, was on the Professional Bowlers Association tour from 1981 to the mid-'90s, when he retired. He bowled nationally in 1982 and then regionally starting in 1983, when he and Dawn, now 45, married.

They bought a house on College Avenue and had three children: Danielle, Kara and Tyler.

Along the way, the Goodlings, who had been regular churchgoers, developed a deeper faith commitment.

"There came a point in both of our lives ... when we truly realized that it was more than a relationship that had an insurance policy," Keith said.

The Goodlings' middle-class life was shaken in 2002, when Keith lost his job.

"We basically said, 'God, whatever we have is yours,' " Dawn remembered. "... We're willing to do whatever you want us to do."

Believing they were being led to free themselves from debt, the Goodlings put their home up for sale.

In May 2004, they sold the house to a missionary couple. The buyers had an opportunity to return to Japan for two years; they asked the Goodlings to rent their house in the interim.

That's when the Goodlings began attending NewSong Fellowship Church on Prospect Street, and where one Sunday they heard the pastor, Dr. Jamie Mitchell, talk about a vision of sending 500 people on short-term missions trips in five years.

Keith and Dawn applied and were approved for a mission to Puebla to teach English as a Second Language classes.

It was a good experience, Dawn said, but the family didn't see it yet as a calling.

"We just kind of put it on this 'interesting' pile," she said.

They went back in 2005 and 2006. By then, overseas missions work was more than just interesting. It had become a call from God.

The Goodlings moved into a missionary apartment at Wycliffe Village in Willow Street while they went through training with the Cross World mission agency and took a missiology class at Calvary Church.

They were approved in June to go to Puebla as full-time missionaries and spent part of the summer at the World View Center in Portland, Ore., learning how to live cross-culturally.

When they returned to Lancaster, they lodged at Faith House, on the NewSong Church campus.

'Paring down'
And now it's time to leave.

"We'll take what fits in the back of the van," Keith said. Five other suitcases went south with a NewSong missions team.

"It's a process of getting rid of things and eliminating and paring down," he said.

Packing up the house was a wrench. "I grieved over 20 years of memories," Keith said.

"It was a chapter of our lives that was over," Dawn added.

The new chapter opens in Puebla, the capital city of Puebla state, about 60 kilometers southeast of Mexico City.

In Puebla, a city nearly 7,100 feet above sea level ringed by active and inactive volcanoes, the three Goodlings will live in the new Los Heroes development of 13,000 homes.

Because no church buildings are permitted, the Goodlings will be planting a network of indigenous house churches in Los Heroes.

Their first task will be an immersion program in learning Spanish.

Like many other missionaries, the Goodlings have had to raise their own financial support, meaning finding donors to underwrite their family income needs and the costs of their ministry in Puebla.

Although they're still about $700 a month short of what they need, CrossWorld, a 76-year-old mission agency with nearly 400 missionaries, has given them the OK to proceed.

They're getting significant support from NewSong and its daughter church in Mountville, along with a church in Louisiana; other backing is coming from individuals.

Keith has been working as a software developer for Elexio, an Elizabethtown company, and will continue doing contract work for the firm from Puebla.

Friends can keep track of the Goodlings' work at their Web site, www.lifebytheword.com.

"People have told us there will be a time when you get there ... the reality will hit you that you're there and you're not going home," Keith said.

Over the last few weeks, though, the rush of closing out their old life and saying goodbye to friends has kept them from thinking too much about the coming move.

"It's almost surreal," Keith said.

The next step
Today it's real.

The Goodlings will be "commissioned" by NewSong at a 10 a.m. service at the Lancaster Bible College chapel.

They'll say goodbye to their oldest daughter, Danielle, 22, a newlywed living in Virginia, and their middle child, Kara, 19, a college student who will be staying in Lancaster.

Tyler, 15 this week, is going to Puebla; the uprooting is probably most difficult for him, Keith and Dawn said.

The Goodlings are a close family, and Dawn said leaving behind two children, Keith and Dawn's parents and their friends has been the most difficult part of preparing for the mission field.

But it's not really a loss, Keith said.

"What [God] has is even better than what we might think we're losing or leaving behind," he said.

They hope their story will show what can be done when Christians surrender their lives to God's will and follow wherever that leads.

They're not super-spiritual or special, Keith said.

"We're overwhelmed continually," he said, "that he would choose to use us."

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Helen Colwell Adams is a staff writer for the Sunday News. Her e-mail address is hcolwell@lnpnews.com.