Open Hearts Nicaragua - Farrington Family

There is a pretty commonly held refrain, “Water is life”. That is 1000% true, especially this time of year in Nicaragua when it is a million degrees, hasn’t rained in months and pretty much everything is dry and covered in dirt. But even more than that, at Ruby Ranch water is fun!!!

Sooooo we have a bit of an emergency. The 160 foot well of life and fun was acting up and needing some attention. Upon deeper inspection, there was some serious work to be done. Replacing old pipes, installing check valves, pulling the pump, all this on top of the routine maintenance.

Total Repair Cost: $3,059

We need your help…this was totally unexpected, and there is a camp planned for this weekend! Work has already started in faith…because as we said above Water is so important! So we pulled the trigger even tho we don’t have the money.

God is our great provider and if you feel a stirring to help turn the water back on at Ruby Ranch, we will be so blessed to have your help!!! Please Donate here if you can or use a button below!

And so everyone must have ice cream!!! Sheyla our long time director posted these fun photos the other day on our Club Esperanza facebook page. This page is a great way to keep up with all of the daily happenings at the club, we post lots of fun pictures and little tidbits of information. It is in Spanish, but if you don’t speak Spanish don’t worry, pictures are like math and fun…they’re all universal languages!

That we have been at our new location for ten years sort of caught us by surprise because in reality we have been working in this community for over twenty years now. But when Sheyla realized this, we definitely needed to have an ice cream party. Most of our kids we are serving now don’t remember our old school and how we ended up where we are. In fact if you haven’t read about our story, here are some older blog posts about having to tear down our old school, finding a new location, and being able to re-open to continue serving these families God had called us to serve.

Everyday hundreds of children and their families pass through Club Esperanza. A preschooler laughing with their dad, a mom and her tweener that is in her last year before high school, one of the elders in our neighborhood coming for a meal, a young nursing mother leaving their weekly meeting, a boy with a lacrosse stick practicing for their next chance to win a trophy, our amazing kitchen staff preparing hundreds of meals, our amazing teachers and staff, Pastor Roberto preparing for Sunday…so much going on and it is all so very good!

Our goal is simple. We want to allow God to use us to reach every person who comes through Club Esperanza with His love, truth and kindness. That they may come to know Jesus in a personal way as their savior. We will be here as long as God allows it! But for ten years…these kiddos loved their ice cream!

In another post on the facebook page, you’ll find all of these fun photos of our older students who had recently brought Biblical stories to life. They created some very impressive art work and all of the students passed by to learn the story. We absolutely love that we are able to provide resources and the setting to allow our students to have the best education possible. Thank you to all who help and support Club Esperanza…we couldn’t do it without you!

Club Esperanza is fully funded by generosity of others. If you would like to know more information about our annual budget and current needs please email us at losfarringtons@gmail.com

If you would like to donate you can find that info here…or use a button below.

If you have followed our ministry over the years you might have heard about La Iglesia Hashem Adonai. Profesor Roberto, who is now Pastor Roberto, has been a teacher at our school in the dump ever since it began over twenty years ago. He has served for so many years faithfully to the poorest of the poor here in Managua. Almost five years ago now he felt a call into pastoral ministry after a couple of years taking seminary courses. Soon after we had a great conversation and Roberto started a church, meeting at Club Esperanza. Praise Jesus for that because God is using this little church to deeply impact hundred of lives!

Last year in the fall Roberto asked about the possibility of hosting a Men’s Retreat for his church. We talked and prayed about it. He had such a burden to get away with the men from his church and invest in them, encourage them, address their difficulties and insecurities head on, present them to the Lord and let God take care of them. The Lord gave us the idea to put on a retreat at Ruby Ranch during the winter break, but the details had to all work out. Well we put the word out to our home church Christ Journey Church in Miami and immediately we had movement on making this happen. Then just two weeks ago a group of men came down from Miami to join with a group of men in Managua to retreat together and grow closer to Jesus!

It is actually hard for men down in the neighborhood we serve to get away. Firstly most of the families live from payday to payday so missing work would be a difficult sacrifice. Then the additional factors of their families safety while they would be gone was another obstacle. But it was so awesome as the Lord worked it out, we settled on a weekend overnight stay out at Ruby Ranch that fit perfectly for what God had in store.

We arrived together and had a time of praise and worship, then Noel shared his testimony. It was so encouraging to hear the honest vulnerable testimony of a man who just a few years ago found Jesus at Roberto’s church and has turned his life around in not just a 180, but as he said it was more like a 180 plus another 180 plus another 180 plus another one! He now lives in a way that honors his wife and two sons, he honors the Lord in faithfully working to support his family, he has a sweet relationship with Jesus and loves serving at church. Amen to all of that.

We had a strong contingent of young men in the group too, so we took full advantage of our short time together and made the hike up to the Chapel at Ruby Ranch for some time together watching the sunset in the wide open beauty of God’s creation! It was fun to race the younger guys up the mountain, exploring an old hiking path for an extra adventure and then get to the cross as our final destination.

Our brothers from Miami led us in a time of reflection on the book of Acts and what it mean to be a man of God in the full Biblical sense of the term. This set the tone for the rest of our time together. Young and old we were all encouraged to be men who have given our lives to Christ, pray constantly, give generously, lead and disciple others, love our neighbors, and remain in communion with God on a daily basis.

We also had the great camp experiences together that you might expect on a men’s retreat. We put together a giant bon fire, because you know when men get together they like to play with fire hahaha! A bonfire is such a great time to sit together under the giant open sky. At Ruby Ranch, we are so far away from the city lights, the stars are innumerable and it is just amazing.

The younger guys stayed up late into the night coming and going from the cabin, running into the woods with flashlights, rekindling the fire at about one in the morning, and just having a time of adventure that just isn’t really available in their daily lives living in the urban setting of Managua. The older men stayed up late too, but that was because the Nicaraguan baseball league was in playoff season and they wanted to catch the Boer Indians game on the radio…their was a power outage in the stadium so the game was delayed well past midnight LOL!

God was so good to us and gave us an outstanding time together. One of the older man gave his life to Christ and is soon going to be baptized. The younger men had the time of their life, but we also saw their hearts turn deeper to Jesus. One young man shared at church when we visited on Sunday about what an amazing time he had. What I loved is that this young man had brought his entire family into the church, and several of the young men on the retreat were friends of his that he had invited. I was so encouraged knowing these young men, should they push aside all of the darkness of the world that surrounds them in that neighborhood, can make a HUGE impact. These young men could steer the future of an entire neighborhood into a place of hope, of honestly, of integrity, of joy, of friendship, of strong marriages, of strong families…these young man can change the future! That is our prayer, amen!

The retreat was a success! I know we speak for Pastor Roberto in saying how thankful were to have our brothers down from Miami. Please keep La Iglesia Hashem Adonia in your prayers…we want to see God use this church to make a great impact on Nicaragua! It is happening…

If you would like to give to support our ministry you can do so here or use a button below.

Krista and I want to wish you a Merry Christmas from Nicaragua! Our lives are full and we are blessed this season to be the parents to our four lovely and handsome growing children! We are also very thankful for you who pray for us and support us financially! We committed to living by faith as missionaries over 17 years ago and our well has never run dry. We praise the Lord for that!

Looking into the New Year we know God has so many amazing plans for our lives down here, the lives we have an impact on, and your lives wherever you are…so cheers to the blessings of God on all of our lives this new year!

From everyone in our extended families at Casa Robles and Casa Havilah we wish you a Very Merry Christmas!!!

And Merry Christmas from everyone here at Quinta Havilah too!!! We all look forward to seeing more of you who come on missions teams, as families or individuals next year to visit and serve with us in Ministry!!!

And HAPPY NEW YEAR from our amazing teachers and staff at Club Cristiano La Esperanza!!!

Again we are so blessed by your love and generosity towards our family…if you would like to support us you can find that information by clicking here.

God bless you in 2023!!!

Christopher & Krista Farrington

Our Christmas party was such a huge success and we wanted to tell you all thank you so much for helping to make it happen! It was an incredible time filled with joy and fellowship, all of the children at Club Esperanza and their families felt so very loved. God is always encouraging us to push further and do better. We do all of this so that these little ones might be blessed, that they would grow in the truth and love of Jesus, and that they would be kept safe! Thank you for making this Christmas so special…

Merry Christmas! … ¡Feliz Navidad!

“Said the king to the people everywhere
Listen to what I say!
Pray for peace, people, everywhere
Listen to what I say!
The Child, the Child sleeping in the night
He will bring us goodness and light
He will bring us goodness and light“

We bless you this Christmas and ask that the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace, Our Savior Jesus born in a manger…would bless you with Goodness and Light this Christmas!

If you would like to make year end giving, please do…everything we do in Nicaragua is entirely done by your generosity. Click here for that info…or use a button below.

Hello family and friends. Today is #GivingTuesday and we want to take this day to say thank you for all of you who continue to support and pray for our ongoing ministries down here in Nicaragua. We are faith based missionaries and are supported entirely by donations. We are proud that 100% of donations you make come all the way down here to Nicaragua!

If you are considering giving today or in the weeks ahead to end the year please consider helping us in Nicaragua. Maybe you would like to become a monthly giver, that would be amazing! There is a box to check for that option via Paypal and National Christian Foundation Buttons. We would be very blessed by any donation this giving season. Here are three recent posts with specific ways to give…

Our donation information is linked here…or use buttons at the end of this post…Thank you!

Help us to buy Christmas Presents for all of our kiddos at Club Esperanza (Click for the story)

A little family update…Support our family living as Missionaries here in Nicaragua.

Lending a Hand…ways we help families to get into a home of their own in Nicaragua!

“Give to others, and God will give to you. Indeed, you will receive a full measure, a generous helping, poured into your hands—all that you can hold. The measure you use for others is the one that God will use for you.” – Jesus in Luke 6:38 –

God Bless you from all of us in Nicaragua! God Bless you generous givers!

Chris & Krista

We are very thankful to celebrate another Thanksgiving together! We have so much to be thankful for in our lives, but most important to Krista and I is our family. The last few years have had big challenges, but we know there are so many friends who have had similarly hard years. We try to see the Lord’s hand in any of our trials, we pray through them together, and we are thankful for another day we have together! Friends, we are so very blessed by you…your prayers over our family and your support for us as missionaries. God is so good, and we are thankful! Happy Thanksgiving…we hope you had a great one!

We have had birthdays go by these past few months. Mason turned 15 in September, Chris turned 44 in October, and most recently our Isabella turned 13! Bella is a teenager now which is so much fun. All of our kids have their own personalities but we are thankful that everyone enjoys each other too, that is a huge blessing! Mason and Aliyah have both been playing on a club soccer team and this fall on the Varsity soccer team of a local school that allows them to play Varsity sports even though we are a homeschool family. Juliette and Bella still enjoy playing outside and actually playing with their toys all set up in their room too…that is fun for mom and dad because we know those days of playing with toys are passing by as our youngins are growing up. Video games have invaded as well. But you know what, as addicting as those can be, it is so fun how they are able to connect with their cousins and friends back home playing Fort Nite and those types of games. Although, have learned why we always heard about “screen time” when we would visit home hahaha!

School is going well too. Technology is a huge help in that area of our life. Mason and Bella have a online English class, we have a great math program on the computer and most recently Aliyah has been enrolled into college courses at Taylor University through their dual enrollment courses that allow high school students to receive college credits. Combining all of that with our Sonlight cirricullum has really made us feel like we are able to give our kiddos a good education. We have really loved homeschooling…it is a lot of work, but such a blessing! Aliyah is a Junior, Mason is in 9th grade, Bella in 7th and Juliette in 4th…pretty soon we will be entering into that stage of life having a High School Graduate. But until then we will enjoy every minute we have with them!

That is a brief update on our little famlia…we put a little slide show of pictures of there. We would love to hear from you! Our email is losfarringtons@gmail.com and we also still use facebook. We love your prayers and support!

Very Thankful, Chris & Krista Farrington

Christmas is the best time of year as we celebrate the birth of Jesus and the hope that brings to the entire world! The families that we serve don’t have the resources for big celebrations, so we would love to start Christmas in an exciting way for them!

Our Christmas party is the second week of December. Our goal is to have a Christmas present for each of the over 320 children that we serve…we will also be inviting their parents to have a Christmas meal together at Club Esperanza!

$15 will help to buy a Christmas present and a Christmas family meal…

Can you help to make this happen? You can help by donating $15 for one of our kiddos…Or maybe for 2 or how about 10 of our students, or 25 or 100 of them! Whatever you can give is a sweet Christmas blessing from the Lord…a Christmas gift to a child in Nicaragua!

Our goal is to raise $4,815 for Christmas at Club Esperanza

You can donate with the PayPal and NCF buttons below or follow this link to donate by check…

This is going to make these boys and girls feel very loved! THANK YOU!!!

We hope that you all have a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving weekend back in the United States and we pray that your Christmas Season is filled with Hope, Joy and Peace!

Love, The Farringtons…and all the kiddos at Club Esperanza!

One of the more difficult things we encounter down here is seeing people with steady jobs unable to make strides in life towards owning a home because of the lending practices and the incredibly high interest rates…30%,40%,50% depending on where you go. We want to share some stories from the past few months where the Lord has led us to help families overcome that hurdle. Please read until the end where we share how you can get involved to help!

God is merciful and when he gave us the idea to lend to families with no interest we got very excited, because He also gave us the idea that as they pay back the loan it goes directly to ongoing ministry projects down here. Basically, it extends a one time donation to our ministry into a monthly donation. At the same time we are lending a hand to a family to buy a home we are supporting ongoing ministry.

Isabel is a single mother with four children who are teenagers and pictured above. She has worked with us at Club Esperanza over the last seven years. We met her when we came to the new location just outside the dump and she has been a faithful part of the staff ever since. Last year when we were donating beds and we had finished all the houses, her family was last on the list. We walked down a narrow ally around the back of a building, her son was there studying for university in a tiny space with a make shift roof over a single room they all lived in together.

Isabel never complained about their circumstances and always was faithful with what little they had. A few months ago she had a dream opportunity to buy a house that was offered to her at an incredible price. She wasn’t able to afford it and the banks would be impossible…when she came to us, we felt the Lord say not to let this pass her by. We sat with her, analyzed her situation and lent her the money with a plan to repay it a way that fit into her salary. God made her dream come true and it was so incredible to visit her in her new home just last week!

Noel and Yara have both worked with us at Club Esperanza for a number of years. They have two beautiful sons who are both students at the school, probably the first to come greet you if you paid a visit. They are also faithful members of the church that meets at our school on Sundays…just a hard working family that loves the Lord. Like many young families down here they had lived with extended family in one bedroom ever since they were married. Earlier this year they approached us about an opportunity to buy a piece of land right next to the school…we prayed about it and God made a way for us to lend them the money buy this land to start to build their own future together.

They moved all of their things and have a place of their own now. They are faithfully building little by little on their property, but it is their home and their land. Praise the Lord! What felt impossible for them to do without taking a high interest loan they could never afford, God made Possible for them. Amen!

“Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.”

-Jesus (Gospel of Matthew 5:42)

In some situations we have the opportunity to help families that already have land. Carlos is one of those situations, he has worked at Quinta Havilah with us for a number of years and we have seen him get married, have their first child and obtain land of their own. God moved on our hearts to help Carlos build a home on his land. Prior to Covid, we had teams come down every Spring to build homes and Carlos would have been a perfect candidate. Hopefully in the future those teams will return, but in this case God used us and friends who support our ministry to make a way for Carlos and his young family to have their first home…no debt, just a place to raise their children. Amen to that!

Lastly we want to highlight Daniel and Mercedes and their family. If you have ever been down here to work with us, we probably went together to Miss Ruby’s house and spent time upstairs praying and worshiping the Lord together. Daniel and his family have been keeping good care of Miss Ruby’s for the last five years now…they are such a blessing and do everything they can to keep up the house. This recently included the need for a new roof, which we were able to do Praise the Lord! In our monthly ministry construction projects often come up and it is so awesome to be able to complete them when the need is great…like a roof that the water pours through every time it rains!

What is next? Henriette has worked in the dump community for over twenty years now, dedicating her life to teaching the children and helping them to escape the difficulties that surround them. She also developed our “Juntos para una Inclusion” program that helps families with children that have special needs and disabilities. She is a faithful woman of God and we would like to help her buy a home. She has rented her entire life and it would be amazing to set her up to pay off a loan instead of paying rent every month…what a blessing that would be for her and her family of five!

As you read these few stories, know there are many more. So, please keep praying for this ongoing aspect of our ministry…Lending a hand to help families live together under their own roof! Here are some ways you could help…

$500 would be able to help a family like Yara and Noel make small steps in building their home.

$1500 would replace a roof on a small home

$6,000 would build a home on land that is already owned.

$15,000 would help someone like Henriette buy a home and land for the first time!

Remember, that these types of donations when turned into a loan become a long term monthly donation to our ongoing ministries at Club Esperanza, Casa Havilah, Casa Robles, along the Rio Coco and other places the Lord uses us to do His work.

We would be blessed if you donated to this aspect of our ministry…Lending a hand to families in need! You can find the donation information here or use one of the buttons below.

Thank you and please keep our family in your constant prayers!

We wanted to share an update on weekend camps that have been going on out at Ruby Ranch. You may remember we shared this post in the Spring about the exciting new possibilities with the construction of two bunk houses. Well it has been six months full of camps and Praise Jesus it has been outstanding! Brinson and Todd have been in a constant rhythm of hosting and facilitating at the Ranch.

It is a strong burden we have to make Ruby Ranch available to local ministries, and sponsoring camps is an amazing way for us to join supporters who may not be able to be on the ground here in Nicaragua with local churches that are leading people into a personal relationship with Jesus!

Click here to partner with Ruby Ranch by sponsoring a youth camp…

Over the last few months we have hosted youth groups from local churches in Managua, local women’s ministries, churches from the southern region of Nicaragua and the North, as well at the entire leadership of Verbo Church…God is moving in people’s hearts and we are so blessed to be a part of that, and hope you are encouraged as well. There is so much fun to be had a Ruby ranch with hiking trails, sports fields, the water slide, soccer pitch, trampolines, etc… So, when the groups come and are able to spend two nights with their friends it becomes such an incredible time to go deeper in relationship with one another.

One of most important parts of the retreats is making it an environment where God’s Holy Spirit is free to move in the lives of everyone who comes. Each church uses this setting to go deeper into Bible study and discipleship and also to share the Gospel to some who have received Christ into their lives for the first time and get baptized at the bottom of the slide! Such great things.

An incredible part of camps for our family, is the opportunity to go out to the camps and have a very specific time of prayer and prophecy over the campers. (1 Corinthinans 10-12) As a team we end up praying over so many people young and old, leaders and members, pastors and elders. It has been a great opportunity for all of us at Open Hearts to pour out into people through prayer. It is just an awesome way to serve and be used by the Lord…God is moving in great ways! Amen.

Thank you for your continued prayers and support! We love and appreciate you!