About Us

Pastor Mark Fuerstenau, has been appointed by the bishop of the West Ohio Conference as the interim pastor for Spencerville Trinity UMC, at least through December.  Mark is a retired local pastor who has served churches at Middle Point, Kossuth, and the Mount Cory/Pleasant View Charge (Bluffton/Mount Cory area) over the past 15 years.

Born and raised in southeastern Michigan, Mark moved to Nome, Alaska, in 1977, to teach school at Nome Public Schools.  He says he "Went for two years and stayed for 23."  He did just about everything one would normally associate with life in Alaska.  He mushed a dog team for five years, obtained his pilot's license and flew his own bush plane, raced snowmachines 1,200 miles across the the historic Iditarod Trail in the annual Iron Dog Gold Rush Classic snowmachine race with his son Harold, and piloted a commercial herring fishing boat on the Bering Sea for five years.  He also took a two year break from teaching and bought the Nome Nugget (Alaska' oldest newspaper) which he operated as the editor and publisher for two years.  

He retired from teaching in Nome in 1999, and moved to Delphos, Ohio, to be closer to h is aging parents, and to be near Harold who was enrolled in the auto mechanic's program at UNOH in Lima.  He subsequently worked in corrections for 15 years, at Lima Correctional, the Auglaize County Jail, and finishing out that career as executive director of the WORTH Center in Lima.  

He was called to the ministry as a part time local pastor while he was with the Auglaize County Sheriff's Office.  He retired from corrections work in 2014, and took on a full-time two-church charge at Mount Cory/Pleasant View, retiring in 2020, after six very successful years there. Mark has published three books, two are autobiographies of his parents, "Of Ashes and Soot", and "The Eighty-nine Year Adventure", and one, entitled "From Camping to Glamping" for prospective campers on choosing the right equipment.

Mark met his wife dj, who was a special education teacher in the Sidney, Ohio, area in late 2003, on match.com. She was also a local pastor who wasn't currently serving a church. They were married in August of 2004, by the pond on her family farm.  Shortly thereafter, dj was appointed as a supply pastor to Elida Zion United Methodist Church, near Spencerville, where she served for nine years, while Mark was serving at both Middle Point and later Kossuth Zion UMC.  She retired when they moved their "tag team ministry" to Mount Cory. They retired to a bungalow on Lake Loramie, in 2020, where they currently reside with the many critters that visit their yard and their cat Goldie, who has her own Instagram page, called "Going West With Goldie."

As the facilities manager for Trinity UMC, Jenny cares for several aspects of the building and custodial staff. She has been a part of its congregation for several years. In addition, she is a store manager for two CVS stores, having worked there for 10+ years.  A mother of 3, Jenny and John have been married since 2001. In her time with Trinity, she has offered her time to serve in ministries and missions such as Trinity's Fill-A-Stocking, movie nights, and the annual drink station.