Open Hearts Nicaragua - Farrington Family

Many of you will recognize Fredder who grew up in Casa Robles. We have shared stories on numerous occasions about the awesome things Jesus is doing in his life. Fredder is still doing amazing. You may recall how he had left Robles and ended up back in La Chureca for a time before God moved in his life and brought him to the Northern Mountains of Nicaragua to work with his Uncle in a carpentry shop. He left the darkness behind him and took the Lords hand, getting his high school diploma via exams, taking leadership in his local church, entering into University to pursue a degree in English Education as well as a second degree in Theology at Universidad Martin Lutero. All the while keeping the first things first in his life and making Jesus his number one priority.

In the last year Fredder has taken a job up in the mountains of Matiguas teaching English to the public schools there. It is an amazing opportunity for him to serve in this remote region. As he is going from school to school he is able to share the love of Jesus Christ and the Gospel of Salvation. This young man is doing amazing and we are so proud of him!

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Now to our Special Request…Will you help us to buy Fredder a motorcycle?

When I recently got to see Fredder while he was visiting his grandmother, I asked him about life. He told me about his job, about the five different schools in these very remote areas and how he rotates to each school during the week. Then he shocked me when he said that three schools are pretty close by, but to get to two of the schools I have to walk for two hours on mountain roads to get there! I almost coughed up my drink….TWO HOURS!?! I asked him more details and he said no cars or buses can go on these roads. Then he added that most roads are safe but only one of the days he has to really be vigilant because other teachers have been robbed on the road. This young man is truly serving the Lord!

As we talked more, we realized it would be a huge blessing to buy Fredder a motorcycle. The reasons are pretty obvious and I really think it is attainable. The bike would need to be a mountain type motorcycle which is a bit more expensive, we have found some used ones available. Would you be willing to help? Our goal is to raise $1,700…if you can help the links are below…thank you!

$1,700 for Fredder’s motorcycle (click here for donation info)

You can conveniently donate via Paypal or NCF…just click the highlighted words

“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written:

“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news!“

Romans 10:14-15

Thank you friends for your interest in our ministry here in Nicaragua. Please continue to pray for Fredder in the this great journey the Lord has him on. One of the things brewing in his heart is a call to the Nations. He is involved in national leadership with the Assemblies of God, he is studying at the University level, and he has many friends like you all…it will be so fun to see what God has for him in the years to come!

God Bless from this beautiful land of lakes and volcanoes!

Chris & Krista Farrington

Hello from dry, sunny, hot and sweaty Nicaragua! We are in the peak of the dry season and it is brutal, but we are praying for the rains to come soon, will you join us in praying for that? Amen Amen Amen!!! We hope this update finds you well wherever you are and that you had a wonderful Easter celebration. We took this picture as we gathered together with friends on Easter Sunday. It was a wonderful time together to celebrate the most important weekend of our Christian faith. Jesus is alive!

Before we share some stories of the past months we want to ask for your support. We are so blessed to have spent that last 18 years serving the Lord here in Nicaragua. We could not do it without your prayers and generosity towards our mission and our family.

Would you consider becoming a monthly giver? Each of the donation buttons below have the option to make your gift a recurring donation. It would help to sustain our family on mission if you were to support us in that way.

Thank you and we pray the Lord would bless your generosity…now on to some fun Spring Happenings!

Semana Santa Pool Party…when it is Easter week, every one is off of school, and the weather is just about the temperature that melts the soles of your shoes, well there is only one thing to do. Pooooooool Party! Many of you know the kiddos from Havilah and Robles, well we were so blessed to have friends in town that wanted to help throw a big pizza pool party for everyone. God has blessed each of the children in very special ways and we love being a part of their lives to care for them on the daily basis. But you know what, we don’t always take the time to get together and just relax. So this was perfect.

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Monday Night Men’s Group…Our friends the Boones lived in Nicaragua for as long as we have but felt the Lord leading them back to the US a couple years ago. Nicaragua, and what God is doing here is still a huge part of their hearts and we were so proud to host their sons, Cohen and Tito who traveled down with their buddy Kade to bring their Monday Night Men’s group to Nicaragua. These young men are only in High School but have a passion for gathering with guys, being transparent about their struggles, and drawing closer to Jesus together. They started at their school in California and wanted to bring it to Nicaragua.

It was awesome! They reached out to their former classmates at school here and put out the invite. These young men gathered for three nights, ate meals together and worshiped the Lord together. We all know that there are so many temptations in this world for young men who are trying to live their lives for Jesus…it was such a blessing to see these guys tackle those things head on! This was really great for our son Mason too, he was so pumped to see his friends again and to get involved with Monday Night Men’s group. It is something that will have an impact for years to come. The Nicaragua chapter is already coming together!

And you know what happens when boys get together? There may or may not end up being a wrestling match! It was quite the show between Abdias and Kade, nobody got hurt and Kade, who is a state qualifying wrestler in California came out the victor. I was just impressed Abdias was willing to give it a go…these boys had a blast together!

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Semana Santa Vacation Bible School…Club Esperanza was closed down for Easter Week. This is actually the biggest Holiday of the year down here. But for many of our kids at the Club it is a bit of a sad time because life at home is really hard. Sheyla our school director and her husband Roberto who pastors La Iglesia Hashem Addonai were not about to let their little ones suffer. So they threw together an awesome couple of days of fun and we got to participate along with our friends the Youngs who were in town with their three girls…we had a blast!

There were was all sort of fun and games, it was hot so we incorporated lots of water into all the games. But then there was also flour involved and somehow everyone just became a giant crowd of water and flour flying in all directions. It was like we were becoming a giant human pancake batter, we were just missing the eggs! We also provided meals for everyone to eat together, but for me the best part was the time we spent worshiping the Lord together. It was so special to see the presence of God descend on a group of kids who were just praying and singing. You could feel God’s Holy Spirit touching their hearts and see it as tears ran down their cheeks. I didn’t take many pictures of that time, but I tell you that it took me by surprise and I was so blessed to be there with them! Then of course we closed out our time with a big ol’ jam session to the song Church Clap….Praise the Lord!

Food Is a Blessing…in many parts of the world food is readily available and in many more parts of the world it isn’t. We sometimes take that for granted, and one of the harder parts of serving in the places that we serve is knowing that there are people we know who wouldn’t have food during their vacation time. But we serve a God who calls us to go out and do something about it. So we did. We went shopping, packed up some 50lb sacks and went to visit the homes of the families Pastor Roberto knew would be in most need during Semana Santa. It was a blessing to be invited into people’s homes, hear their stories about life, pray together and bless them with a big ole sack of food. It is a great act of worship to give someone who is hungry something to eat. Maybe today someone comes to mind in your life who you know is hungry? God is with you, step out and worship the Lord by giving them something to eat. Amen Amen Amen.

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Family Update…Gigi turned 94 years old! Can you believe that? We all gathered together to celebrate her….Aunt Grammie and the Wilsons came down for the party too! Gigi is such a thoughtful and classy lady. For every one of our birthdays we receive a hand written birthday card blessing us and encouraging us in life. And as you can see, when Gigi goes to a party she always looks good! It was very special to be able to celebrate her on her special day. She has lived a long and exciting life and has many stories to tell, we are very blessed to have her in our lives.

Our Juliette had a birthday in March as well! She turned 12 years old which means by next year, all of our little babies will be teenagers. We are going to enjoy every moment of this twelfth year of Juju’s life. Our baby girl finds the beauty in everything and we often get a surprise of a little bundle of flowers she has picked while wandering around the Quinta. She is a very helpful little sister, bucking that trend of the being the baby that always has everything done for her…in fact if we let her she would probably want to be in charge of everything and get it done! We are very blessed by our baby girl…Happy Birthday JuJu! We had a great Daddy and daughters tea time at the only place in Nicaragua that has Boba!

E-Clips in Nicaragua…you all may have heard that there was a Solar Eclipse happening early in April of this year. Well by golly I was sitting at my desk and couldn’t believe what I saw. The craziness of all the celestial happenings made it all the way to Nicaragua and were visible from my desk…it was AMAZING!!! Okay Okay just kidding…is this a really bad dad joke? We were sad to not have the front row seat many had in the United States, but it was very cool to see all the pictures on social media, they were some incredible images. God’s creation is amazing!

We love you and bless you friends…thank you for following our lives and supporting us as we serve the Lord here in Nicaragua. Hope you have a beautiful spring!

The Farrington Family

In this digital age if you would like to bless Aliyah with a graduation gift, here is a Venmo or Zelle link…

On Zelle Aliyah can be found using aliyahkfarrington@icloud.com

We want to take some time on our blog to reflect on the last twelve years at Farrington Family Home School Academy…that is not a real thing, but it is fun to say! We have been on the Nicaragua School Calendar which explains our 2023 balloons, Aliyah actually graduated in December. Our life is pretty out of the ordinary so we figured having a graduation party in March would fit right in with our craziness!

We homeschooled our kids which means we were deciding to be teacher, counselor, coach, principal, superintendent, janitor, maintenance and IT…for four different grades simultaneously LOL! We loved every minute of it and needless to say 97% of these “jobs” were done by Krista…she is amazing at them all! I think I was the IT guy and janitor, ok and maybe the coach too. We were blessed to have Sonlight Curriculum through all of elementary school, middle school and into High School. Homelife Academy in Florida kept us in line with grades, testing and diplomas. Big River Academy has had amazing online courses as the the kids have gotten older. We were also very thankful to Nicaraguan Christian Academy for allowing our kids to participate in Varsity Athletics. The pictures above and below is what twelve years worth of Home School material looks like! Praise the Lord!

One of the blessings of Home Schooling, is it also allows for our children to Dual Enroll in their later years of High School. We are thankful to our friends who directed us to Taylor University. For the last two years Aliyah has been taking College courses at Taylor. So, while she is graduating high school, Aliyah actually already has a year of college completed.

As Aliyah looks to the future she has so many options. She may attend University somewhere as she has been accepted to some and applied to others. She may take some time to travel with friends. She may find a job and take advantage of the number of Universities that allow you to work online…or travel as she studies online. There are many options before her and we are excited to see what the Lord has in store!

Please keep our Aliyah in your prayers…and if there are any jobs, great internships or missions opportunities out there that you know of, please pass them our way!

We love you Aliyah and we are so very proud of you!!!

We love the impact that we have for Jesus in the lives of kids here in Nicaragua! We call our ministry centers Kid’s Clubs because the Lord has called us here to Nicaragua to bring relief and hope to the lives of young people. It can sound funny when we constatly say we are going to the Club today, or yesterday I was at the Club…reminds me of a funny Saturday Night Live Skit from years ago. But when we go to the Club…we go to serve, we go to Love, we go to have fun…it is the best type of Clubbin’!!!

It was time for some touching up of the walls on the playground at Club Esperanza. Hundreds of kids go running all around this playground all day long every day of the week. We had fun painting and definitely learned a lesson…painting in the shade is much nicer than painting in the sun!!!

Our girls and friends from team hungry came up with a great art project to end the day. We had some extra paint after painting all the walls. So we gathered the entire sixth grade class and created a mural for them with the personal touch of each of their hand prints. It was really fun to watch them run back and take photos afterwards of their own hand on the wall. Sixth grade is a special year at our school, it is the last year before being promoted to high school. So, it was fitting to have this awesome group of kids leave something special at the Club!

Out the Kids Club in Los Brasiles the clubbin’ took on a little more of a feeling like the show Fixer Upper….and it was Demo Day with our friends from Mission For Nicaragua!!! Sparks flying and walls crashing down all to make more space all of these beautiful little faces! God has as special plan and a purpose for each and every one of them! Halleluia!

If you are American reading this you may not have ever thought about the bed you sleep on at night, or maybe you have. To be able to sleep comfortably at night is actually quite the privilege and in a large percentage of the world the more common way to sleep is on an old mattress with one two or three other family members. So, one of the most rewarding projects out there at the Club in Los Brasiles is the project to provide beds for families that need them. We are called as Christians to be the hands and feet of Jesus, and this week our feet walked in the neighborhood and our hands gave the gift of a new bed!

And the blessings just kept coming….do you all remember Connie and her mother Teresa? Well Connie celebrated her 15th birthday and we had a little party at the Club for her! You see, when we say party at the Club it sometimes makes you think of one thing, but Praise Jesus these parties at the Club are part of the best things in life! Not only was the party fun for Connie, we also celebrated her mother Teresa’s new marriage and were able to bless them by helping to build a room on their home for the girls to have their own space. God is good and we love the way he provides! Thank you friends!

Lastly on a personal note, Our kiddos love it when friends come to visit us in Nicaragua. It is a real blessing and might often result in a visit to Pops Ice Cream, or maybe two visits! We are loved and blessed and love serving the Lord in Nicaragua!

Come clubbin’ with us one day soon!

The Farringtons

Would you consider becoming a monthly supporter of our family here in Nicaragua? These Donation buttons above both have the option to make the donation a “recurring donation”.

Having monthly support is a HUGE blessing to us as our family and ministry grow.

Thank you!

As we head into this new year of 2024 we want to start the year off by recognizing all of these amazing graduates from Ileana’s School down at Club Esperanza! We had a full class of excited preschoolers heading into elementary school, and a overly full class of graduates heading into High School!

We absolutely love the graduation time because every parent is full of pride and every child is filled with excitement and accomplishment. We serve a community that lives heavy under the weight of poverty and to escape that cycle takes great effort, it takes dedication…and a little help. God has placed us in this little community and we are so blessed to be able to be that little bit of help! 

Some of the families are decades long friends and some of these graduates are ones we have established close relationships with in recent years. A particularly special aspect of this year, is we had some of our graduates that have been with us at Club Esperanza since their first year of preschool. How amazing to be able to invest in a child’s life for the long haul! God has such great things for each one of them!

This is our group of amazing men and women of God who serve every day down at the Club! Thousands of hours in the books, thousands of hours celebrating, thousands of hours hugging and consoling, thousands of meals served, thousand of smiles, thousands of tears…It was a great year and this group is amazing!

As we look forward to this coming year we will keep on pressing on towards more great things! We start the year with an operating budget that is almost 70% covered by financial commitments. We will have freezers to replace, walls to paint, toilets to fix, leaking roofs to repair etc etc… What we realize every year is that God provides for everything down to last pencil on the last day of school! We know God will do that again this year…thank you to everyone who partners with us! 

If you would like more information about everything that goes on at Club Esperanza please email us ohearts@gmail.com and if you want to donate to this great ministry center you can find that information here or use one of these buttons below! 

Thank you and God Bless your 2024!!!

Chris & Krista Farrington

Open Hearts International had another successful year serving the most vulnerable and impoverished communities. The resources we provided also affected the families of our students, more specifically families who have children with special needs, pregnant and nursing mothers, and families trying to find their own home.

In 2023, Open Hearts International:

• Served 161,250 meals
• Provided education to 390 children
• Awarded scholarships to 210 students
• Helped 7 vulnerable children find full-time family support.
• Gave aid to 13 families with special needs and disabled children
• Provided consolation and assistance to 25 pregnant and nursing mothers
• Put 5 families into their first home
• Supported 17 churches along the Rio Coco in the indigenous region of Nicaragua.

This would not have happened without support from individuals like you. In 2024, we need your help to keep these efforts running and expand our mission. Our additional initiatives next year will include:

• Creating a home loan program for the families of our students at Club Esperanza, along with new textbooks for all our students.
• Roof repair and replacing lead pipes in our rescue homes, Casa Havilah and Casa Robles.
• Establishing more churches in Walakitang, a remote indigenous Miskito community on the Rio Coco that separates northern Nicaragua and southern Honduras.

If you would like to give before 2023 ends, you can find our donation information here. And, if you would like to get in contact with us for ways you can be involved next year please email us at losfarringtons@gmail.com

We Praise the Lord for all of these great projects that are helping to raise people out of poverty and be the touch from the Lord that many have been praying for. We thank you for your giving!

Chris & Kirsta Farrington

Merry Christmas!

We send our Christmas greetings to all of our family and friends. What a wonderful time of year, so many good things to celebrate and be thankful for. We love celebrating the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. This particular Bible verse from the Gospel of Matthew has really impacted our family this year…

²³ “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”. (which means ‘God with us’).”

Our Savior is called Immanuel (God with us) from the moment of His birth. We are Thankful, but sometimes have needs…We are filled with Joy, but sometimes we are living with heavy hurts…We are comforted by God’s peace, but life has many anxious moments…We have Hope even when it seems so far away.

God is with us!

In all that life brings, we celebrate that God knows exactly where we are and what it is like. God laid down everything to be with us, experience life with us, and overcome every sin and hurt that has ever been on that cross. Thank you Jesus!

Happy birthday Jesus!

We hope you are blessed today. We had a wonderful time together this morning…we send you and yours our love this Christmas!

The Farrington Family

Are you looking for a way to support children in need during this Christmas season? By donating to Open Hearts you can support children in Nicaragua’s poorest communities and impact hundreds of families.

This time of year often reminds us how fortunate we are and how others face seemingly endless cycles of poverty. When you join in supporting our mission here you make an immediate impact on these children’s lives and give them hope for a different future!

Merry Christmas friends, and Thank You!

We had our annual Christmas party on Friday. What a very special time together! The Buzbee’s cooked up a big ham, we had lots of presents under the tree, caramel popcorn, singing and dancing. We just had a beautiful evening together laughing and celebrating the year as a big old extended family!

You can see how our group photo just kept growing and growing and we still didn’t have everyone in the photo! We are blessed beyond measure…and we love having fun toghether!

These boys are full of life and laughs. Look at those ties, I liked them so much I exchanged my elf hat with Denis and stole his! Everyone is doing well in life and growing strong in the Lord. The school year ended very well with Elery being chosen to represent his class in leadership as he enters his final year of primary school. As you may know, in Nicaragua we are entering our two month long “summer vacation”. All the kiddos will be visiting their families at different times so please be in prayer for that. 

The evening had a great surprise moment as the kids brought their end of year dance to the Buzbee home and did a special performance for us all…it was quite impressive! Opening presents was a highlight and by the end of the evening the kids were all playing and the adults were drinking coffee and hot chocolate. But, you know once presents are done there are always candy canes on the Christmas tree! The boys went on the attack, don’t worry we made sure to save some for the girls.

As we finish the year we also want to recognize Saxkia, she is a High School Graduate! This is an amazing accomplishment and something we are all so very proud of her for. Her next steps in life will include enrolling at Keiser University here in Managua in an accelerated English Program. We are looking forward to what God has for her. Way to go girl!!!

We want to thank you for your prayers and support over these last eighteen years of Robles and Havilah making huge impacts on lives here in Nicaragua. Some of you give specifically, but also know that when you give generally to Open Hearts this is some of the awesome stuff the Lord is doing!

We bless you and thank you…Merry Christmas!

“Behold, a virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel…“God with us” –Matthew 1:23

This is a great opportunity to give for #GivingTuesday, we could use your help!!! In just a couple weeks, we will be having a Christmas party for over 300 kids at Club Esperanza ! For many of our students, getting a Christmas present at our annual Christmas party is the only present they will get this year…so we need your help!

Will you make a $50 donation to make Christmas happen for our amazing kiddos?

You can find donation info by clicking on this link here, or use one of the buttons below…

Thank you friends!!!