Diana was born in La Chureca.  Her family was one of those families that was there for reasons beyond their control but made a huge effort to live a life that honored God in the midst of such a difficult place.  Her mother Josefina was one of our best teachers all the way up until the dump was closed, and she only doesn’t work for us now because she was hired as a director of another school.  Don Aurelio is still one of our gaurds at Club Esperanza.

Diana graduated from Colegio Esperanza and has been in High School for the past few years.  This year she wanted to do an internship in office administration so, we set things up for her to do that at Club Esperanza with Sheyla…she has been awesome!  Every time I see her I tell her she is the Star of Club Esperanza 🙂  Her insternship is coming to an end and she will soon be graduating High School!  Amen.  She is only just turning 17 years old which is pretty amazing considering the place she has come from.

Her story is pretty remarkable and a testimony too one who chooses to follow the Lord and honor Him with her life.  It is also a testimony to a family that fights for what is good.  From the ashes of a dark place comes a beautifully shining star!

We are sharing Diana’s story because we would like to be able to bless Diana with another opportunity.  We would like to give her the opportunity to do a paid internship to finish out the year.  First of all she is such a huge help.  Second, it will allow her to continue to learn from Sheyla which will be an invaluable experience for her.

We would like to raise $100 a month for the rest of year to give a small stipend to Diana and allow her to continue this great learning experience.  

If you would like to help follow this link (Click Here)

Please put “Diana Club Esperanza.” in the memo line on a check or the note section on paypal.

Thank you and most of all I know Diana would love to know that you are praying for her…please ask God to bless this young woman greatly!!!  Amen.

Here are some really cool pictures from a new mural on the wall at Club Esperanza.  It was painted a few weeks ago by a high school art class from Norfolk Christian School in Virginia.  It is really beautiful so since I am blogging I wanted to share it.  Things are going great at the club and we are faithfully serving our nearly 300 hundred children every day through a fun and exciting summer…hoping and praying for hundreds more just like Diana!

Here are some updated pictures of the ongoing construcion…thank you for your continued prayers!  We have about ten more days to be done!!!!  ahhhhhhh!  

God is good!

    December is definitely the most festive month in Nicaragua, it is like a giant collision of all sorts of fun!  First of all it is the Christmas season and the fireworks have already been going on for a week.  Everybody who has a job anywhere has received their “aguinaldo,” which is a government mandated 13th month of pay that everyone receives in early December.  So everyone is happy out shopping for gifts and spending their money, though sadly many waste it away at the bars as the fiestas are a little more frequent too. Adding to the excitement, the school year in Nicaragua ends in December so all of the children in the country are out of school for a two month vacation!  I imagine they would do this in the United States too if the weather in December wasn’t as miserable as it can be in some parts of the country.  With the school year ending that means there are lots of graduations, graduation from Kindergarden into Elementary school, Elementary school into High School, and the Granddaddy of them all graduation from High School!

    If a country is going to put an emphasis on one thing for its future generations, education is a great focus.  Nicaragua is a country trying to pull out of a few decades of serious hardship and war and unfortunately there are still problems politically.  Also, the quality of education is still subpar, but that can change.  One thing that is certain, there is a great pride in education.  From High School down to preschool these graduation ceremonies are the focus of the family and it shows when everyone shows up.  The graduates are dressed sharply and their parents are there with a pride you can see glowing on their face.  It is a very exciting time for everyone. At our little Club Esperanza we celebrated the graduation of our Kindergardeners into Elementary School.  It was such a sweet time.  The building was decorated beautifully and as all the Lil’ graduates made their way inside, all eyes were on them and they looked sooooooo cute!  Thank you Jesus for Club Esperanza and the impact we get to have on these little lives!

  I was given a moment to share during the ceremony and took the opportunity to encourage the graduates and their parents.  To the cute little graduates, what else more could one tell them then to “just be kids and enjoy their little lives”.  For the parents I touched on the story that most of them know about Jesus bringing all the little ones to himself in spite of those who thought he didn’t have time for kids.  As parents every morning should be Christmas morning when we see our children, and we should treat our children as worthy of our time and worthy of our attention.  Jesus did this for a crowd of children there were not his own flesh and blood, as Christians we should do it for the one child that is our own.

   The purpose of Club Esperanza is to deeply effect the lives of all of these children, and the graduation time is a moment to celebrate this.  Being there with each child and their families together made it all the more impactful.  God is so good!  It was lots of fun.

Would you like to help to buy Christmas presents for the children at Club Esperanza, Casa Robles and Casa Havilah?  

Something we love to try and do every year is to buy Christmas present for every single child under our ministry during our end of the year Christmas celebrations.  Sheyla (director of Club Esperanza) just informed us that our friends who have helped buy presents in years past aren’t able to this year.  So, this is a little last minute but if you would like to help celebrate Christmas in Nicaragua, it would be a huge and well timed blessing!  Maybe the Lord as been putting it on your mind and now you know the need…God definitely works like that!

You can email us at losfarringtons@gmail.com or click here for donation information.

“Christmas comes but once a year, its something quit incredible.  Full of love and Christmas cheer lets make it unforgettable”  

lyrics from…All I Want For Christmas is my Two front Teeth  🙂

Some recent photos of our kiddos at Club Espernaza preparing for their talent show…is there anything cuter than a Preschool talent show?

We had a squash harvest of a local squash called Pipiyan.  On the first load we pulled out twelve dozen squash which made for a great meal at the Club.  The kids had a good helping of “Gizo” which is what everyone in Nicaragua thinks of when they see a good looking Pipiyan!  We hope to plant some corn next.

Our friends from Heritage Baptist Church made a trip down last month and one of the projects they helped us to complete is a Preschool Garden at the Club.  We hope to get things going really well in this little spot so that the children can see the different vegetables grow and then eat them for lunch!  Uncle Chris worked his agricultural magic again and designed and planted the garden.  Last week I took this picture of Winston (caretaker at the Club) and Aura (one of our students).  The cucumbers are starting to climb the trellis, the chiles are sprouting, tomatoes are growing tall, and a few others veggies are thrown in there.  Growing good things at Club Esperanza!

This garden is part of an ongoing Agricultural project from a grant we received through Austin Samaritans in Austin, TX.  It is a sweet addition to the Club.

You may have noticed the new Big Blue fencing in the previous pictures.  We have been spending the last couple of months working on some bigger projects at Club Espernaza thanks to a very generous donation.  This security fence is one of the first projects we tackled.  It allows us to close in three sides of the center so that our children can study and play without the distractions of the surrounding neighborhood.  There are some dangerous aspects of the area and we want to make sure our children and students have as safe an environment as possible.  It has already made a big difference for our teachers, not having random people standing outside the fence looking in and distracting everyone…if you’re a teacher you know the importance of that!

Another area of big project progress is the work on the Dining Hall/Tutoring Center.  You may remember this is the building that was half abandoned on the property when we bought it.  We are right in the middle of installing all of the electrical system.  It is tough work to go back and cut walls that were built without the electrical installed.  But, it is getting done…one cloud of concrete dust at a time!  We really are excited about this and hope to have the building in use come next school year.  Next steps are mudding the walls, putting the roof on, tiling the floor, then doors and windows.  Please keep praying for progress…it is going to be a great building!

We are thankful for your continued prayers and support for Club Cristiana La Esperanza!

If you would like to make a financial contribution please click here.

Have a great week and God Bless!

CLUB ESPERANZA HAPPENINGS

  
We want to send a long overdue “Thank You” to Rachael Paris for her work this summer at Club Espernaza!  All the teachers raved about her way with the kids and how she put them in line, which is a huge compliment because some of these kids are crazy!  Praise God, we so appreciated the extra help during your stay here Rachael!  All the kids miss Teacher Raquel and send you their besitos!  And the girls from Havilah send hugs too!

The third level of preschool had a fun little time planting plants in our garden during “Tree Day” in Nicaragua.  It was so sweet, because they all brought little plants from their houses in cans, bags, plastic bottles…it was obvious they had been growing at home…and we planted them together at the club!  Getting your hands dirty is the best way to learn.

We got an excellent upgrade to our main gathering area….Ceiling FANS!!!  Thanks to a group with Austin Samaritans from Austin, TX we got five new fans installed.  The days can be long and hot here and having these fans installed makes it easier for everybody…especially the kiddos!  It was an adventure putting them in amongst all the action of the day…but they are up and running!  The kids all had a great time with the group as well; playing different games, reenacting Bible stories, and just hanging out together…we only lost once sconce off of a fan!!!  It was a blessed time together at the club.

Lacrosse The Nations keeps our ongoing lacrosse program running at the club.  They make due with a small space, but the kids love the game.  I am pretty sure we are the only place in all of Nicaragua that has Lacrosse.  But the way these kids play, I think it will catch on around Managua.  I know they already have a second location going!

I had a little fun with Josue this day as he was having lunch at the feeding program…I was trying to get him to share his lunch with me, he wasn’t having any part of it.  He had that big chunk of meat and gave me a look like “are you kidding me”.  Smart Kid.  Cute Kid.  We continue to feed nearly 300 children every day of the week at Club Espernaza!    Praise Jesus!

We also had visitors from Florida that are part of an organization called Beautiful Feet.  We hunkered down at the Club for the week working on painting the kitchen and some of the outside parts of the wall that were unfinished.  They also took the kids on field trips to the Zoo, Volcano, Ruby Ranch, Soccer…it was such a blast!  One of the leaders from the group always had a crowd around him…he did some of the craziest magic tricks I have ever seen!  As you can imagine, it was fun to watch all of the students trying to figure out what was going on.  I mean really, I have seen magic tricks before, but I had no clue what was happening!  It was much fun!

We recently received a donation that is going to allow us to begin working on some of the much needed construction projects at the Club.  We mentioned some of these recently when we made our last payment on purchasing the Club land.  Well we are off to a great start.  We replaced the fixed glass windows in the main area with windows that actually open!  It is glorious and with the new fans it is a much better environment to learn, Praise God!  We also put some metal work on the front of the new windows to prevent theft, and they look nice too!  In the near future we hope to finish the exterior wall, improve the playground area, and put a roof on the Feeding/Tutoring Center.  Praise Jesus we are moving one step at a time!  Thank you for your continued prayers!

We have a small computer lab at the Club which we are realizing is a HUGE blessing to offer the students that come for our tutoring programs.  This is a place we are hoping to expand as we finish our second building and have more space.  Please be in prayer for more computers and a perfect space!

We have also begun to grow some vegetables on the piece of land we have down by the lake.  We hope this small crop of Pipiyan (local squash) can give us a good nutritional supplement to our meals at the Club.  The crop has to make it first, but we definitely are happy to be using this land in the new neighborhood.

Life has been fun and exciting as of late and we wanted to share about some of the things that have been going on at the Club.  Finishing off paying for the new location was such an awesome “Proeza del Señor”…Praise God again for that demonstration of His provision!

One of the next steps at Club Esperanza is working to finish the second building that was left unfinished by the previous owner when they abandoned the location.  It is a big shell of a building that we hope turn into our Tutoring Center/Dining Hall.  A multipurpose building…remember “Cafetoriums”???

As we mentioned in our newsletter we had a group of High School Students from Atlanta come down with a friend Jeff Flavin.  This was a trip years in the making and it was awesome…they took the first crack at working on the building.  Clearing the trees that had grown inside, leveling the floor and laying a concrete floor inside.  These kids were troopers, working in the blaring sun in the hottest time of year here in Nicaragua.  It was the end of the dreaded Dry Season where it hasn’t rained in five months, the Sun is brutal, and everything is dead.  They said, we got it…we wanna Dominate for Jesus!

The team also had lots of fun with the kids at the Club.  A father and daughter combo took care of lunch one of the days.  He works as a distributor for McDonalds back home so we made the contact in Managua and gave the kids a really fun treat….MickeyDzzzz at lunch time!

Following up on the Atlanta team was a group from Austin Samaritans in Texas.  I forgot to take pictures of their work times, but they busted some concrete work too.  They “threw mud” at all the unfinished walls.  Basically putting the final layer of concrete on the walls.  Lots of hard work and another step towards finishing the building. 

The Austin Samaritans group also brought the drama…in the form of the story of the “Good Samaritan”.  Costumes and all, they taught the children one of the great parables that Jesus taught.  A very important lesson for children to learn at a young age, do not just pass by those who are in trouble.  Stop what you are doing, help the ones in trouble, and go beyond what you think you are able to do!  It was hard not to smile at all the cute little robbers 🙂

A blessing from the US Embassy Auction…we were able to get two giant tents for 1/4 of the cost at auction.  We put one up inside the building  we are working to finish since there is no roof yet.  This way we could use the space since we have the floor poured now. We used the other tent for shade by the kitchen so the kids don’t have to stand in the sun when they wait in line for lunch…shelter from the Sun. They will provide shelter from rain too since the rains are on their way…we are just about to start the rainy season.  These tents will also give great shelter for the students in our tutoring program that used to meet outside under a tree.  The tree wouldn’t have worked for the rains hahaha!  

Thank you for your continued prayers for Club Esperanza.  Please pray that Jesus’s light, His truth, and His love permeate ever single activity at Club Esperanza and the lives of young people are changed!  Amen.

This is one of our preschoolers…had to add her picture because she is so CUTE!