Open Hearts Nicaragua - Farrington Family
Open Hearts International Children's Relief Mission
A little family update…
Since switching from doing paper newsletters by mail to sharing almost entirely on our blog, one of the things we sometimes omit is sharing family updates. Having your support for our family means so much to us and we want to give a little update and let you know we are doing well, our kiddos are growing up, and life is charging along…
Our daily life consists of a lot of random and wild ministry happenings that can hardly ever be predicted, while at the same time Krista keeps us all sane by bringing at least some order to our lives everyday at home. Homeschooling four kiddos (two high schoolers) is quite the task but all of them are doing really well with school. Having online classes available has been a huge blessing and has helped to keep things pretty consistent. Aliyah is actually preparing to start doing college courses in certain subjects…getting college credits as she finishes her final years of high school. We are super thankful to have so many resources for homeschooling. Krista can testify, that it is not an easy task being a full time teacher for all four grade levels at the same time…but God is good and we are blessed! Life at home is full of lots of fun and laughter…and maybe some crazy moments too, but we are doing well!
Even with its unpredictability, all things are going well in ministry too. Chris will head out to Club Esperanza on a weekly basis, stopping by Casa Robles and checking in with the boys and house parents. Krista has been joining the Tuesday morning prayer meetings at Club Esperanza and most recently hosted the women for an online seminar of The IF Gathering. The randomness comes in the phone calls from the rio coco, the house constructions projects, bug infestations, the repair projects we don’t anticipate, the crazy administrative things to keep everything going, the earthquakes, you know totally normal stuff…but it is an awesome Jesus journey that we are on, and we love it!
Mason and Aliyah have both gotten into a local club soccer team. It has been a great experience for them on many levels. Mason is 14 playing with an Under18 team of all older kids. He is in the starting line up on occasion and has gotten significant playing time. It’s a huge challenge to be the smallest and youngest, but he is fighting through that. They are winning games which is fun…he started in a 4-2 win over Colegio Bautista last week! Bautista is the school our boys from Casa Robles go to, so that was extra fun.
Aliyah is doing really well too! She joined the varsity girls team at NCA in the fall and this club team grew out of that. They are winning some games too and are in the middle of a big tournament with other Managua teams this week. An added bonus is these teams are run almost entirely in Spanish, so that has been a big help in both of them to grow in their second language.
Sports can be a great place to share Jesus with others and lead in a direction that glorifies God even while you compete fiercely. We are proud of both of them in the way they have been a good influence on their teams. Teenage years can be tough, but when a group of kids get a focus on the greater things of God in the middle of those years, it can change their lives for ever. That is our prayer for these teams!
Life here at Quinta Havilah is always full of fun and activity too. A big part of our lives and ministry changed over the last few years. We used to have lots of visitors stay here with us and join in ministry. That slowed down a great deal with the worldwide pandemic, but we are starting to have friends visit again. This doesn’t mean we haven’t had to maintain the property and keep things on the up and up. The rainy season is starting so things will be green again soon and we are constantly making improvements at the Quinta. Thank you to all who have helped with that, your generous support has helped so much to sustain us all! Being down here all these years with extended family close by on the same compound has always been such a big part of our ability to sustain life. Not only do we have a place to live, but we have a constant bit of support with each other. One big part of being together is BIRTHDAYS! We celebrated a bunch of them the last few months…most importantly is Krista turned 40! We had so much fun with her birthday, and Juliette’s, and Gigi’s, and Papa’s….birthdays galore! There are probably more, but these are the only pictures I found on my phone 🙂
Having good friends down here also makes life a joy and we are blessed to have people in our lives that we love and call friends. We don’t get to see each other all the time, but those friendships are also a very big gift to us! We may have on occasion piled into the back of our 4 ton truck and gone to watch fireworks on Nica Holidays! We make it out to movies, get together for Taco Tuesdays, play some poker nights, go to the beach for surfing and sun, and sometimes just lounge around together watching sports. We have lots of normal moments in life that we enjoy too!
We will say goodbye for now with our family picture from Easter. Isabella and Juliette are both doing really well too. As those of you who have been parents know, when you watch your youngest move through stages of life and there isn’t one to follow them up it can be kind of sad. So, we are loving these years where they still both enjoy playing with Playmobil sets in their room for hours on end and hanging Christmas lights in their bunk beds to make the nights a little bit more fun. Bella loves to read and will sometimes disappear for an hour to get a few chapters in of a Nancy Drew book or keep working her way through the Lord of the Rings. Juliette loves to make pancakes for everyone for breakfast before they wake up…we would have pancakes for breakfast, lunch and dinner if she could make the menu! They are both doing so very well, thank you for all of you who bless us by praying for our children!
God Bless from our little Farrington Family in Nicaragua!
Thank you for supporting us financially on this adventurous life Jesus has called us to. We don’t take your support for granted. We love it that in all these years of living as missionaries on faith we have never run out of funds. Our family has been supported and so have all the great ministries God uses us to do!
We love you all and hope you have a great weekend!
Los Farringtons
One Comment on “A little family update…”
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So glad to see everyone doing so well and the kids are definitely growing up quickly. I miss our trips down there. If I ever get back down to see Chasen, Katie and Alex, I would love to stop by and say hello!! Keep up all the great work you do! Vicki Brokaw