Updates

Our Friend Viky

We lost a good friend last week. Viky passed away after a four year battle with breast cancer at the age of 36. Viky was one of the first teachers I met at the mission school 14 years ago and she became a good friend. Viky taught English although she graduated from college with a law degree. Perhaps she decided to teach because her mother was the principal and her sister worked at the school as well. I think she didn’t want to have to move to a big city to practice law and wanted her 3 young children to grow up near their cousins and grandparents.

Viky and her husband, Erik, and three children, Isabel, Sophia, and Andreas.

But teaching wasn’t how we became friends, it was through her cooking! Viky was a great cook. Viky learned that I loved an Ecuadorian dish called “Churrasco” (I only loved it for the quantity of food it had: Beef, rice, fried eggs, avocado, and french fries). Viky invited me to her house many times while I was a volunteer and every year when I came back to visit. When Grace and I moved here a few years ago she made us bread constantly.

Viky also helped us with our scholarship programs and more recently with our food drive last year during the Covid lockdown. Even though she was going through chemo, she was very concerned about other families, especially those with young children who were in need. At one point we were testing out a pilot project for data entry in Ecuador which Viky ran since she knew English and was an excellent worker and could instruct and manage the young people we were going to hire. Unfortunately, she received bad news soon after we began the project and had to give it up.
We will miss Viky terribly.  We will miss her friendship. We will miss her determination and care for others. We hope that the work we do to continue to help more families will make her proud.