Our Privacy Commitment

Privacy Policy

We value your trust and handle personal information with care, transparency, and respect in accordance with privacy standards and biblical stewardship.

Last updated

1. Introduction

Messages of Hope respects your privacy and is committed to handling personal information responsibly. This Privacy Policy explains how Messages of Hope collects, uses, stores, shares, and protects information when you visit our website, read our articles, use our Bible and media features, subscribe to our newsletter, contact us, submit a prayer request, or make a donation.

Messages of Hope is an independent Christian support ministry. It is not owned, operated, sponsored, administered, or officially affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church or any of its organizational entities.

For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, “Messages of Hope,” “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to the ministry responsible for operating this website. “You” and “your” refer to visitors, subscribers, donors, and other individuals whose information may be processed through our services.

Please read this Policy carefully. By using our website, you acknowledge that you have had the opportunity to review this Policy. Where consent is required by applicable law, we will seek it as appropriate. Visiting the website does not, by itself, mean that you consent to every form of data processing described here.

2. Personal Information We Collect

The information we collect depends on how you use the website.

2.1 Information You Provide

We may collect the following information when you use our features:

  • Contact inquiries: Your name, email address, and the message you submit through our contact form.

  • Prayer requests: Your name, email address, selected prayer category, and the prayer request you write.

  • Newsletter subscriptions: Your email address and the information associated with your subscription.

  • Donations: Depending on the method used, the donation amount, currency, donation frequency, payment method, transaction identifiers, and information required to process or verify the donation.

  • Communications: Information you provide when you contact us about the website, a donation, your personal information, or another matter.

Please provide only the information necessary for your intended purpose. You do not need to disclose personal details that are unrelated to your inquiry or prayer request.

2.2 Information Processed Through Donations

For PayPal donations, our website sends the donation amount, currency, and whether the donation is one-time or monthly to the relevant application endpoint. PayPal handles its checkout process and may provide us with payer and transaction information needed to verify a completed donation and send related emails.

For PayMongo donations, our website receives the donor’s name, email address, donation amount, currency, and selected payment method. These details may be sent to PayMongo as payment metadata and processed by our application to coordinate payment verification and donation-related email notifications.

Our website does not intentionally collect raw card numbers, card security codes, or bank login credentials through the donation forms described in this Policy. Payment details and additional information required by a payment provider are handled through that provider’s payment process.

If you donate by scanning our GCash QR code, the transaction is handled through GCash and the payment flow provided by the relevant financial service. Our website does not receive an automatic payment confirmation or donor record from the QR code itself. Information made available through the payment provider or separately provided by you may be handled differently.

2.3 Information Processed Automatically

When you visit the website, our hosting infrastructure and external services may process technical information associated with your request, such as:

  • Internet Protocol (IP) address;

  • browser type and user-agent information;

  • date and time of access;

  • requested page or resource;

  • referring page or website, where available;

  • response status and technical error information; and

  • information associated with loading images, articles, audio, video, or other external resources.

The precise information collected depends on the website feature, your browser, and the service involved. We have not independently verified every field collected by our hosting provider or third-party services.

3. How We Collect Information

We may collect or receive information through the following means:

  1. Directly from you, when you submit a contact form, prayer request, newsletter subscription, donation form, or other communication.

  2. Through our application and website APIs, when a feature sends information to our application for processing.

  3. Through service providers, when payment providers, email services, newsletter services, translation services, Bible tools, or media providers process information in connection with your use of the website.

  4. Through browser storage, when supported features save preferences or temporary results in your browser.

  5. Through hosting and technical infrastructure, which may record information needed to deliver, secure, maintain, and troubleshoot the website.

Some services receive information directly from your browser, while others receive information through our application or server. The applicable process depends on the feature you use.

4. Purposes and Legal Basis for Processing

We process personal information only for purposes relevant to operating the ministry and providing the requested features, subject to applicable law.

These purposes may include:

  • responding to questions and contact inquiries;

  • receiving and responding to prayer requests;

  • managing newsletter subscriptions and distributing ministry updates;

  • processing, verifying, and acknowledging donations;

  • sending donor receipts or transaction-related messages and internal donation notifications;

  • providing Bible lookup, search, and translation features;

  • delivering website content, audio, video, and other requested resources;

  • maintaining website functionality, diagnosing errors, and preventing misuse;

  • maintaining appropriate records and responding to requests concerning privacy or transactions; and

  • complying with applicable legal obligations.

Depending on the circumstances, processing may be based on your consent, your request for a service, the legitimate and proportionate needs of operating and securing the website, compliance with legal obligations, or another lawful basis available under applicable data protection law.

Where processing relies on consent, you may withdraw that consent subject to applicable law. Withdrawal does not necessarily affect processing that occurred before withdrawal or processing that has another lawful basis.

5. Contact Forms and Email Communications

When you submit a contact form, the information you provide is transmitted through EmailJS and its configured email service to the designated recipient mailbox.

We use this information to review and respond to your inquiry, address relevant concerns, and maintain necessary correspondence. We do not operate a separate website database for contact-form messages in the reviewed implementation.

Your message may remain in the email service, recipient mailbox, sent-mail folder, or applicable backups according to the retention settings and practices of those services and the people who access the messages.

Please do not submit passwords, payment credentials, government identification numbers, or other highly confidential information through the contact form unless it is specifically necessary and an appropriate method has been provided.

6. Prayer Requests and Sensitive Information

Our prayer-request form allows you to share prayer needs and related information. Depending on what you write, a request may reveal religious beliefs, health conditions, family circumstances, addiction, financial difficulties, or other sensitive personal information. It may also include information about another person.

Prayer requests are submitted through EmailJS and the configured email service to the designated recipient mailbox. We use them to receive, review, and respond to prayer requests as appropriate.

Please share only what you are comfortable disclosing and avoid including unnecessary sensitive details about yourself or other people. If you submit information about someone else, please consider their privacy before doing so.

Prayer requests are not a substitute for professional medical, mental health, legal, financial, or emergency assistance.

Because prayer requests may contain sensitive information, access should be limited to people who need it for the relevant ministry purpose. The actual retention period depends on our mailbox practices and the applicable service-provider settings; a fixed deletion schedule has not been established in this Policy.

7. Newsletter Subscriptions

If you subscribe to the Messages of Hope newsletter, we collect your email address to manage your subscription and deliver ministry updates, articles, or other newsletter content.

Our newsletter subscription process uses a website API and MailerLite. The email address is sent to MailerLite for subscription and newsletter-delivery purposes. The subscription form also asks you to confirm your agreement to the relevant privacy information.

The application checks the consent field during submission, but the reviewed implementation does not separately record a timestamped consent record or forward the consent flag to MailerLite. You should therefore not interpret the checkbox as proof that a separate consent-evidence record is retained.

We may use MailerLite and related email infrastructure to prepare, manage, and send newsletter campaigns. The provider’s account settings may affect subscription management, suppression records, delivery information, and whether email opens or link clicks are tracked.

Unsubscribing: You may unsubscribe using the unsubscribe mechanism provided in the newsletter email or by the email service handling the subscription. Our website does not rely on a separate custom unsubscribe page for this purpose. If the unsubscribe link does not work, you may contact us using the privacy contact details below and request removal from future newsletter distributions.

Unsubscribing from the newsletter does not necessarily delete records that a provider must retain for suppression, security, or legal purposes.

8. Donations and Payment Processing

Messages of Hope accepts donations through the payment methods currently made available on the website, which may include PayPal, PayMongo-supported payment methods, and a GCash QR code.

8.1 PayPal

PayPal processes its own checkout and payment activities. For completed donations, our application may receive information such as the payer’s name, email address, PayPal identifier, transaction or subscription identifier, payment status, amount, and currency.

We use relevant information to verify donations and send donation-related emails, including donor receipts and internal ministry notifications. Recurring monthly donations may involve subscription information needed to identify the relevant payment.

8.2 PayMongo

Our application receives the donor’s name, email address, donation amount, currency, and selected payment method when the PayMongo donation process begins. Some of this information is transmitted to PayMongo as metadata associated with the payment.

After payment, our application may receive payment status and transaction information through the payment provider’s API or webhook. This information is used to verify completed donations and send donor receipts or internal donation notifications.

8.3 GCash QR Donations

Donations made by scanning the GCash QR code are processed through the relevant GCash payment flow. Our website does not automatically receive a record of the QR transaction through a website payment callback. If you separately provide donation information to us, we will handle it according to the purpose for which it was provided.

8.4 Payment Provider Responsibilities

Payment providers may independently collect additional information, use fraud-prevention measures, apply their own cookies or similar technologies, and retain transaction information under their respective terms and privacy policies.

Please review the relevant provider’s privacy documentation before completing a payment if you would like to understand its independent processing practices.

Messages of Hope does not claim that donations are tax-deductible and does not currently promise an official donation receipt or tax certificate. Any donation-related email sent by the website should not be assumed to be a government-issued tax receipt.

Donations made through Messages of Hope are donations to Messages of Hope, not donations to the Seventh-day Adventist Church or any of its organizational entities.

9. Browser Storage and Local Preferences

Certain website features use your browser’s local storage or session storage to remember preferences or reduce repeated requests. This storage is different from a traditional browser cookie, although it can still store information on your device.

Based on the reviewed application code, these features include:

  • Selected radio station: The website may store the selected station’s stream URL in local storage so that your listening preference can be remembered.

  • Translation cache: Translated article content may be saved in local storage to avoid repeating the same translation request. The reviewed code does not provide a general automatic expiry or cleanup process for this browser cache.

  • Daily Bible verse: The website may store the date and daily Bible-verse response for caching purposes.

  • Bible preferences: The website may save reading or search preferences, such as Bible translation and book or chapter settings.

  • Donation verification: Session storage may temporarily contain a payment identifier, verification status, or related result information to support the donation-completion process within your browser session.

These features do not constitute a user-account system. The reviewed code does not establish a separate user profile or account identifier for these preferences.

You can clear local storage and session storage through your browser’s site-data or developer settings. Doing so may reset saved preferences, remove cached translations, or affect the convenience of a feature. Clearing browser storage does not delete information already received by our servers, email providers, payment providers, or other third parties.

10. Cookies and Similar Technologies

The source-code review did not identify an explicit first-party cookie-writing implementation, a cookie-consent manager, or a dedicated analytics or advertising-tracking SDK. However, a source-code review alone cannot establish that no cookies or similar technologies are used anywhere in the deployed website.

Our website uses or may load third-party services, embedded media, payment-provider pages, external images, and hosting infrastructure. Those services may use cookies, local storage, tracking technologies, or other methods under their own policies. Actual behavior can depend on the provider, the page visited, your browser settings, and whether you interact with the service.

Accordingly, we do not claim that the entire website and every third-party service are cookie-free. We will update this Policy if our verified practices materially change.

You can manage or clear cookies and site data through your browser settings. Blocking some storage or third-party content may affect the operation of certain features, payment flows, or media players.

11. Translation and Bible-Related Services

11.1 DeepL Translation

Our website currently uses the DeepL API to provide translation functionality. When you request a translation, the article content or text selected for translation and the target language may be sent from our application to DeepL for processing.

The application may temporarily cache translated content in server memory and may also save translated content in your browser’s local storage. The reviewed server-side cache uses a nominal 30-day time-to-live, but expired entries are removed when the relevant cache key is requested again; this is not a guaranteed deletion schedule for every cached item.

The application may process an IP address for rate-limiting purposes to help manage repeated requests. The reviewed implementation keeps rate-limiting information in server memory.

DeepL’s independent data handling, retention, and any applicable subprocessors are governed by its own policies and account terms. We have not independently verified its current retention settings for our account.

11.2 Bible Search and Verse Services

Bible lookup, search, and daily-verse features may communicate with external services, including BibleQL, bible-api.com, OurManna, and Google Blogger services, depending on the feature used.

A Bible search may transmit a search phrase, Bible passage, book, chapter, or translation preference. Search terms and requested content may reveal a visitor’s religious interests. These requests are processed to provide the requested Bible-related feature.

The external services may receive technical request information and apply their own retention and security practices. We have not established the retention periods or all processing locations of these services.

12. Blog Content, Images, Audio, Video, and External Links

Our website displays articles and other content retrieved from Google Blogger and may load images or resources hosted by Google, Blogger, or image services such as Unsplash, Pixabay, and Pexels.

The website also provides audio and video features that may connect to external media or streaming providers, including JetStream, 3ABN-related streams, StreamGuys, TuneIn, Faith FM, Hope FM, Iono.fm, and DXBH, depending on the feature and selected station or stream.

When your browser requests an external image, audio stream, video, iframe, or other resource, the relevant provider may receive technical information such as your IP address, browser information, referring context, the requested resource, and playback or access information.

External services may set cookies or use other technologies that we do not control. Their processing is governed by their respective policies and practices.

Our website also links to third-party websites and social platforms, including Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, YouTube, X, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and WhatsApp. When you follow these links or use a sharing feature, the destination service may receive the page URL and other information associated with your interaction.

A link, stream, embedded resource, or social-media reference does not mean that Messages of Hope operates or controls the external service. Please review the relevant provider’s privacy policy when visiting or interacting with its services.

13. How We Share Personal Information

We do not intentionally sell personal information to third parties for their own independent marketing purposes.

We may disclose or transmit information to the following categories of service providers when reasonably necessary to operate the website and deliver requested services:

  • Website hosting and infrastructure providers, including Vercel, for delivering and maintaining the deployed website and its application endpoints;

  • Email form services, including EmailJS and its configured email service, for contact and prayer-request submissions;

  • Newsletter services, including MailerLite, for managing subscriptions and delivering newsletters;

  • Email providers, including Gmail/Google SMTP, for donor receipts, internal donation notifications, and other necessary communications;

  • Payment providers, including PayPal, PayMongo, and the relevant payment service used for GCash QR transactions;

  • Translation services, including DeepL, when you request translation;

  • Bible, search, content, image, and media services needed to deliver the website features you use; and

  • Professional advisers, authorities, or other recipients where disclosure is required or permitted by applicable law, necessary to protect rights or security, or necessary to address fraud, misuse, or a legal claim.

The information shared depends on the feature. For example, a contact message is sent through the contact-form service, whereas payment details are sent to the relevant payment provider.

Service providers may process information under their own terms, privacy notices, security arrangements, and subprocessors. We do not control every aspect of their independent processing.

14. International Data Transfers

Some service providers may process or store information outside the Philippines, depending on their infrastructure, account settings, and service arrangements.

The reviewed source code does not establish the actual processing location of every provider or the complete transfer arrangements for every service. Where personal information is transferred across borders, we intend to handle the transfer in accordance with applicable data protection requirements and appropriate safeguards, where required.

For further information about a particular service provider’s processing locations or transfer arrangements, please consult that provider’s privacy documentation or contact us.

15. Data Retention

We retain personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, subject to applicable legal obligations, legitimate operational needs, dispute resolution, and security requirements.

Retention may differ by information type and service:

  • Contact inquiries and prayer requests may remain in the relevant email service or mailbox until they are no longer needed, subject to applicable mailbox and backup practices.

  • Newsletter information may remain with MailerLite while a subscription is active and may be retained in suppression or other records as needed to respect unsubscribe requests and meet applicable requirements.

  • Donation and transaction information may be retained by payment providers, email providers, and relevant mailboxes according to their respective practices and applicable requirements.

  • Certain donation-related values and translation results may be temporarily held in application memory.

  • Browser preferences and cached content may remain in local storage until cleared by you or removed by the browser or application.

  • Hosting, technical, security, and provider logs may be retained according to the relevant provider’s settings and policies.

The reviewed source code does not establish a complete, fixed retention schedule for all these categories, nor does it implement a universal deletion process for every system or provider. We will assess and update our retention practices as the website’s systems and operational arrangements develop.

16. Data Security

We take reasonable steps to protect information handled through the website, including using application endpoints and service providers to perform relevant functions. However, no website, electronic transmission, storage system, or third-party service can be guaranteed to be completely secure.

Access to personal information should be limited to people and services that need it for legitimate purposes. We intend to address security risks, maintain appropriate access controls, protect credentials, and reduce unnecessary collection, disclosure, and retention of personal information.

Security measures may depend on the capabilities and settings of our hosting, email, newsletter, payment, and other service providers. We cannot guarantee the security of systems operated independently by third parties.

If you believe that information you submitted through our website has been exposed or misused, please contact us using the details below so we can review the concern.

17. Your Privacy Rights

Subject to applicable law, including the Philippine Data Privacy Act of 2012 and its implementing rules, you may have rights concerning your personal information. Depending on the circumstances, these may include the right to:

  • be informed about the collection and processing of your information;

  • request access to personal information held about you;

  • request correction of inaccurate or incomplete information;

  • withdraw consent where processing is based on consent;

  • request blocking, erasure, or destruction where legally applicable;

  • object to certain processing where the law provides that right;

  • request data portability where applicable;

  • raise a concern or lodge a complaint with the appropriate authority; and

  • seek remedies available under applicable law.

These rights are subject to legal conditions, exceptions, and limitations. Some information may be retained where necessary to comply with legal obligations, maintain appropriate transaction records, respect unsubscribe requests, protect security, or establish or defend legal claims.

To submit a privacy request, contact us using the details in Section 20. Please describe your request and provide enough information for us to identify the relevant record. We may request reasonable verification before acting on a request to help protect your information.

Where information is held directly by a third-party provider, such as PayPal, PayMongo, MailerLite, EmailJS, or a media platform, you may also need to exercise your rights directly with that provider.

18. Children’s Privacy

Our website is intended for a general audience and is not specifically designed to collect personal information from children.

If a child submits personal information, a prayer request, or other content, a parent or legal guardian may contact us to raise a concern or request appropriate action, subject to applicable law and any legitimate need to retain the information.

Please avoid submitting unnecessary personal details about children or other minors through public or free-text forms.

19. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy when our website, features, service providers, data-processing practices, or applicable legal requirements change.

The updated version will be published on this page with a revised “Last Updated” date. Where required by law, we will provide additional notice or seek consent for material changes.

We encourage you to review this page periodically to remain informed about how personal information is handled.

20. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, want to make a privacy request, or have concerns about the handling of your personal information, please contact Messages of Hope:

Ministry: Messages of Hope
Privacy Contact Email: fromdarknesstolightministry@gmail.com

Please use the subject line “Privacy Request” where appropriate and avoid including passwords, payment credentials, or unnecessary sensitive information in your message.

Final Statement

Messages of Hope seeks to handle personal information responsibly and transparently while providing Scripture-centered content, ministry communications, Bible-related resources, and donation services. We will continue to review our practices as the website develops and will update this Privacy Policy when necessary to reflect material changes in how information is processed.

This Privacy Policy describes Messages of Hope’s practices and does not represent an official privacy policy or statement of the Seventh-day Adventist Church or any of its organizational entities.