Sorry I kinda fell off the face of the earth, but here is the latest and greatest on the life of Leah Johnson:

3 weeks ago we finished classes and now we are at the end of our short term trips. so let me catch you up on whats been happening here:

Trip #1 March 7-14: Village of Tidaa
* We went in to work with a church there that GFM has worked with in the past. We drilled a couple of wells and were able to locate water in one, we also did a community service project, Health camp in the elementary school and a medical outreach that was based out of the church.
* The things that the church in Tidaa has gone through in order to get where it is today was a huge encouragement to my faith and a challenge. The earliest believers went through a lot of persecution in order to practice their faith in Jesus Christ. The first Christian from that village is still alive and in the congregation today, and he's been going over the mountains to reach the unreached village of Diuxi about two kilometers away. The first Christians in this particular village were subjected to beatings, public embarrassment, jail time, loss of property and privileges, and some of them were completely rejected by friends and family just for pronouncing faith in Christ and leaving the Catholic church. It was so amazing to me to see these old people that had been tested and prevailed over all the odds through their faith in the Lord, and are now free to worship in the way that they want to. How amazing our God is!

Trip #2 March 14- 21: Town of Tepos
* We partnered with a missionary named Bernardo and his wife. Again we brought in medical teams, taught health classes in the schools and drilled a well, along with helping them construct their church building. I was able to spend a lot of time with Bernardo's wife Synthia and their 4 children while cooking for the team in their household. They are truly remarkable people who truly love the Lord and want to do his will. They have been missionaries in this area for 5 years and in July they will be returning to their home church in the northern part of Mexico since they have raised up leaders in tepos to continue the work.
* This is a pretty cool testimony of how God uses short term trips for his glory: We met a man at the church who told us that the reason he accepted Jesus was because of a medical outreach that GFM did in his village about two years ago. Although they weren't able to do much for him other than give him medicine, they prayed for him and he said that no one else had ever done that before and believed that God could heal him. He then went on to accept Jesus into his life. It's always an encouraging thing to see the fruit of past labors here in towns that we go in to.

Trip #3 March 21-28: Tlaxiaco
* This week we are here in our colonia (our city) we are doing the the health camp at the school with the kindergarteners and also holding a medical clinic both here and in a village and in the jail. On Tuesday night we had a movie at the base, we showed "Fireproof" and about 100 of our neighbors and friends came. We are still in the middle of the trip so I can't fill you in on everything, but I had a lot of fun working with the kids in the school, we weren't able to directly share the gospel message with them, but we were able to love them and pray for them.
* The guys are in a village 2 hours away drilling wells. I heard that they struck water in one well which is good, but more importantly I heard that one of the guys, Jordan, was able to share his testimony with a guy who is struggling with some substance abuse and because he was able to share with him the guy was so excited by what he heard he asked him to go on his radio show and share it again along with the whole gospel message. Praise the Lord! I don't know what happened, but I'll keep you posted.
* This week has been good for me to catch up with my friends in the colonia and in town. I'm hoping to have some more time to visit my precious Mexican friends and spend time building those relationships. I continue to pray for them and I hope that my time in Oaxaca will produce better language skills that I can then use to communicate better with them and go deeper in those relationships and hopefully be able to disciple them.
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There you have it my life for the past month in a crazy, busy, amazing nutshell. I would appreciate it if you could keep me in your prayers as I continue to seek after what God wants for me and for the steps that he has already revealed and laid out for me.

In case you don't know I will be home from April 9th to May 2nd then I will be returning to Oaxaca for language school from May 2nd to June 1stish, then I will be returning to Tlaxiaco for the summer and be down here doing summer teams. After that is still up in the air, but I still believe that God is calling me to stay on next year to staff MTS and then GFM USA either Atlanta or Houston, but I'm not gonna put God in a box things change and usually they do for the better.

Love you all and will see most of you in a little over a week!