Meeting with the mayor of Gen. Santos

On Friday, the basketball team was invited to meet the mayor of General Santos (Gensan), the home of Manny Paquiao.  The mayor is Ronnel Rivera and he was recently inducted on May 14th.  One of his goals was to start a ministry division in his office, which was refreshing to hear.  He comes from a family of business people and he has been on the board of directors for various corporations.  His focus is to upgrade the city's health systems and services.  We were able to take pictures with him and his staff and they all were very friendly and happy to see us.  Basketball is the key to the city throughout the Philippines.

We were asking about Manny Paquiao, as there was a possibility that he would attend our game that night and maybe play.  Apparently Manny likes to hoop as well as fight.  We were the team that he owns, the Mindanao Visayas. Unfortunately,  the mayor said Paquiao was with his family at the beach so he couldn't attend.  We rode a motorcade throughout the city to promote the game and we were greeted with warm welcomes.  As we arrived in the arena they gave us a standing ovation.  We easily beat the team we played by about 35 points.  I got to start the game because of an injury to one of our players.  After the game we were waiting for a long time while talking to the fans, because one of the players unfortunately had his wallet stolen.  As I was talking to the fans, I was asking if they were Christian and this group of 3 children around 10-13 responded that they were Muslim.  I had an elaborate explanation of what I would say in that situation but it didn't go as planned.  They understood some English so I made it as simple as possible.  I tried to explain that Jesus loves them and that if we believe that He died for our sins and accept him as our Lord and Savior then we can go to heaven.  I told them that when we do bad things we get in trouble for them.  However, Jesus died so that our bad doings can be forgiven and we can go be with God in heaven if we follow and obey his word.  They proceeded to tell me that there was a Christian church across the street so I encouraged them to go there and learn from the pastor.