Church’s benefit concert a certified hit

 Hundreds braved the intermittent rain to attend the San Jose Church Benefit Concert held at the Oleai Sports Complex on Saturday night.

The event, which coincided with the birthday of parish priest Fr. Jesse T. Reyes, featured bands and performing groups like the Aryd Band, Tasi & Aliis, Island Warriors, Maluw Band, Urali, and the Olomway Band.

They entertained an estimated crowd of some 500 community members, parishioners and non-parishioners alike, to support the efforts of the San Jose Church to raise money for the purchase of new air-conditioning units.

Highlighting the event was the performance of celebrated Marian devotee and Filipino singer Fatima Soriano, who was born blind and was diagnosed with end-stage kidney failure and had to undergo renal transplant at a very young age.

The young visionary, who has been featured in various radio and television shows, was on Saipan for the first time and fascinated the crowd, young and old alike, with spiritual songs in Filipino and English.

Soriano, in a spiel before one of her numbers, recounted that she is always asked if she has ever questioned God after everything she’s been through and her ways of coping with the pain and suffering that life has thrown her way.

“I told them no,” said the singer of the theme song of the hit Filipino telenovela 100 Days to Heaven. “I do not question or doubt the Lord’s love for me. I trust in Him and I just believe that there’s hope. For all of us right here, the message is the same. We offer our sufferings. Let’s not try to carry the burdens-never on our own. We have God’s love, which is bigger than all our sufferings.”

Encouraging the crowd to offer everything to God and let Him “take care of everything for us,” Soriano said, “Everything happens for a reason in a person’s life and we all have a mission. The Lord has a mission for us to fulfill while we are in this journey called life. The most important journey that we can take in our lifetime. is about going back to the heart.”

Soriano said people should take the journey back to God’s heart, back to other people’s hearts, and back to one’s own heart and not carry anger, guilt, doubt, and other burdens.

“Journey back to your own heart and see who you truly are,” said Soriano before dedicating a song to the birthday celebrant.

Soriano’s presence was key to the great turnout, said parish council president Manny Mangarero.

Mangarero disclosed that it was Gov. Benigno R. Fitial’s idea, along with Reyes, to bring Soriano to Saipan for the fundraising concert.

“When they looked around for a religious singer, she was contacted by the governor and we were able to plan it out and here we are,” he said, describing Soriano’s singing as so “beautiful” that “it’s giving me goose bumps.”

According to Mangarero, the parish council took about three and a half weeks to plan and coordinate the event.

“We’ve got a lot of people from different churches on the island and I’m very happy that they’re here to give us this support because our church really needs it,” he told Saipan Tribune.

Over a thousand tickets were sold at $20 each and Mangarero said proceeds of the ticket sales, including that of the raffle ticket sales sold for $1 each, will help San Jose Church buy three air-conditioning units to make parishioners “very comfortable” in the forthcoming holidays.

The raffle draw gave away various prizes, including the grand prize of a roundtrip ticket to anywhere in the U.S. from Delta Air Lines.

The council president described the island community as “very, very generous” regarding church causes. “Although the economy is bad, our church is doing good. It’s doing fine because of the generosity of the people,” he said. “I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to all the people of Saipan who are here.Those people that are not here and are here with us in spirit, I also thank them.”