{"id":300189,"date":"2019-05-27T06:06:23","date_gmt":"2019-05-26T20:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=300189"},"modified":"2019-05-27T06:06:23","modified_gmt":"2019-05-26T20:06:23","slug":"30k-donated-to-help-rebuild-tinian-churchs-social-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/30k-donated-to-help-rebuild-tinian-churchs-social-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"$30K donated to help rebuild Tinian church\u2019s social hall"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Tim Chen, president of Tinian Entertainment Co., second from right, joins Tinian officials during a recent get-together.
(CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tim Chen, president of Tinian Entertainment Co., has donated $30,000 to the Friends of San Jose Church Tinian, with the amount to be used to help rebuild the San Jose Church social hall on Tinian. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are so incredibly fortunate to have friends around the world who care about Tinian and who are willing to help us rebuild our church,\u201d said Dawn Sarmiento, co-chair of the non-profit organization. <\/p>\n

Chen described watching the many videos that showed the catastrophic destruction of the island caused by Super Typhoon Yutu as \u201cvery saddening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish nothing but the best for the people of Tinian and I hope that my contribution will help them continue with their efforts to fully recover from the typhoon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Chen said he \u201cfell in love with the pristine beauty of Tinian the minute I stepped onto the island. \u2026I have deep affection for the island that goes beyond wanting to invest there. The people are very friendly and the island is very peaceful.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Friends of San Jose Church Tinian is hoping to begin construction of the church\u2019s social hall, which will be used as a temporary place of worship while rebuilding the new church, before December 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI pledge to continue helping the Friends of San Jose Church Tinian by encouraging all my friends to help in any way that they can,\u201d said Chen.<\/p>\n

The officers of the non-profit organization are Sarmiento, co-chair; Richard Lazaro, vice chair; Ian Pascua, secretary and Teruko King, treasurer. <\/p>\n

The non-profit also held a fundraiser at annual Tinian San Jose Fiesta, raising close to $10,000 in a two-day period. <\/p>\n

All proceeds will go toward rebuilding of the group\u2019s first project, which is the Tinian social hall. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are working on finalizing the design of the social hall and hope to begin construction before the end of the year. We are not quite there yet financially to announce a definitive date but, with hard work and aggressive fundraising efforts and outreach, I am confident that we can reach our goal,\u201d said Kimberlyn King-Hinds, who is a member of the group.<\/p>\n

If you want to make a donation or follow the progress of the group, follow their Facebook page by liking Friends of the San Jose Church Tinian. (PR)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tim Chen, president of Tinian Entertainment Co., has donated $30,000 to the Friends of San…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":300190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-300189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}