Where should I initialize a variable to work in an IF block?

I'm trying to solve this problem on CodingBat:

Return true if the given string contains between 1 and 3 'e' chars.

So far, I have this solution, but it won't compile if I have the "numofe" integer initialized inside the IF block, because other parts of the code won't work with it, and vice versa. So where should I initialize a variable, to be accessible everywhere in the code?

Thank you.

public boolean stringE(String str) {

  int numofe;

  for(int x = 0; str.length() > x; x++){

    if (str.charAt(x)=='e'){

      numofe++;
    }

  }
   return (numofe>0 && numofe<4);
}