ZARIFÉ, A Story of Faith

By Jenyve Greenlaw | February 22, 2024

My name is Zarifé Loor and my story begins in La Revancha neighborhood in Manta province of Manabí-Ecuador.”

Zarifé is a girl who is currently 11 years old, but her story with Jesus began a year ago. She studies at the New Generation School in the Urbirríos neighborhood.

One day, a year ago, while she was at recess, she heard a cousin and a classmate talking about a school where they learned about God, the Bible and were also taught language and English, among other skills.

It caught her attention and she felt in her heart that studying the Bible was something she wanted more than anything in the world. So she asked her friend to give her the phone number so she could contact the Hope EC Foundation.

Zarifé’s mother, Verónica Loor, has her own business, a hair salon. This is how Verónica, seeing her daughter’s great interest, contacted us and was able to speak with sister Annabella Franco who is the teacher in addition to her husband Mauricio Abril here at the Foundation. She told them the steps they had to follow to become members of the foundation.

This is how Zarifé began to attend classes on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and also on Saturday mornings where we have our Sabbath school.

The children at the foundation study the Bible every morning before starting classes, sing and pray. She had spent more than a year studying the Bible when she and many of her classmates made the decision to be baptized. It was that on September 23, 2023 that Zarifé entered the baptismal waters, resurrecting to a new life in Christ Jesus.

Her mother Verónica told us that Zarifé in her search for the word of God has been to other churches, but that she had never heard her tell her brother, “Don’t say bad words because the Bible says that that is not correct to do…” Now she saw that her daughter was bringing the word of God into her life in a deeper and more practical way.

Zarifé has just experienced the new birth, she is a baby in Christ Jesus, however she has shared her experience with Jesus with one of her best friends, Scarlett, who also attends the foundation, after she invited her.

Zarifé has gone through very difficult situations, she likes having her own business and that is why she asked her mother for help to buy some cookies and sell them to her schoolmates. After offering them, she sold them all. With that money she again bought more cookies to sell but that particular day she had not sold much and decided to go out to recess and leave her cookies in the classroom. When recess ended and she returned to her class, all her cookies had been stolen.

She doesn’t know who stole her cookies but she knows that God does and in due time He will give her justice and her path will prosper if she stays close to Jesus. He has not left her alone, and she is sure that she must try to start her business again, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28.

Her mother told us that of all her children, Zarifé is the daughter who seeks God the most and that she wants to have independence in her own business. Veronica is very happy that her daughter is attending our program. She is very happy because her daughter has accepted Jesus as her personal Savior and is sharing with others.

At the Hope EC Foundation, we have around 200 children from 5 to 15 years old. There are many children who, like Zarifé, are having a special experience with Jesus. They are also living their lives every day with hope. Our vision is that the gospel reaches each of the homes in La Revancha and Jaramijó (our second missionary project). We are not just a “Support School” more than anything we are a “Bible School” because we teach them the gospel, proof of this are the baptisms: 39 baptisms in La Revancha Project and 28 baptisms in Jaramijó project. “Therefore, said He unto them, the harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few: pray therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He would send forth laborers into His harvest.” Luke 10:2.

Only my husband, our son and I are teaching the children at the foundation. We are working with their parents too, with seminars about home, marriage, and parenting every 15 days.

PRAY: We ask you to pray for Zarifé so that she continues to grow with Jesus as well as for the other baptized children and those who have not yet done so, as well as for us, so that God fills us with His Holy Spirit and gives us Health and wisdom from heaven, to continue working for Him.

Pray for this missionary project, since we need many resources to care for the children. We need our own place, a land and the construction of a simple place, but where the children are more comfortable to learn and develop.

Pray because Satan wants to damage this work through Catholic people who want to convince them and other distractions, which have arisen as a result of the “end of the pandemic.”

GIVE: For the missionary project in ECUADOR, for the two support schools in MANTA and JARAMIJÓ, with which we preach the gospel that reaches many more houses around. We need a monthly amount to support the children and to buy school supplies, for their personal pencil cases, since each child has his own work tools, their folder where they file all the homework and work sheets that they do, etc. Every day we need sheets of paper to print the work to be done the next day. As well as the fuel and maintenance of the transportation (a van) with which we pick them up and return them to their homes.

In addition to all this, we have the urgency to buy a piece of land and build a simple but proper building for the children to be comfortable. We have grown since we started, and on 3 occasions we have enlarged this bamboo house, because we could no longer fit in it, and now it is too small and we have nowhere else to enlarge it. We need to have a place of our own, where we can receive more children, and because the children deserve to feel comfortable.