Thanks MicroGuy; I've gotten as far as I can with trying to load the test client after using the config file. 
The error I received was:  'Failed to open mempool file from disk. Continuing anyway.'

I tried to copy the mempool.dat file over to the testnet folder, but am now stuck with the Gui screen of 'Loading the Wallet' and my testnet debug.log files shows 'Imported mempool transactions from disk: 0 successes, 0 failed, 0 expired'

So I'm currently stuck at the moment unable to proceed.  I'll keep looking for fixes, but the closest thing I could find was a bug from the bitcoin core wallet with the same issue - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/9813

If anyone has ideas, let me know.

i guess you are not one the testnet branch if you build the wallet from the github source. try a git clone -b testnet https://github.com/Stouse49/Goldcoin-GLD.git or use git checkout testnet and git pull to get on the testnet branch in the Goldcoin-GLD directory. delete the .goldcoin/testnet4 directory and try again.