Late posting: Visitors to Cotabato July 10 & 11

We were preparing for the upcoming event of my husband 70th birthday celebration on July 12, 2009 . There were many concerns prior to the event:
1. the spate of kidnappings in cotabato city
2. the bombing in front of the cathedral
3. and the upcoming protest of the town folks to close shops on July 10.
I was worried lest no people would come to the party but my son Roy had already arrived Philippines from USA for his father's birthday. My daughters high school friends from Manila Rachelle Yu and Hershey Buena  were set to come for a vacation. Joemar Ledesma ( my brother Jun's son ) was taking a leave to be here and Jackie Tan (Luna's daughter) was coming home as well. My other children Emil, Martha and Marion were all prepared to host the homecoming break except sadly for Tom and Angel who needed to attend to their new born Tyler for some very serious congenital heart conditions. We also intentionally let grandson Dylan stayed home in Manila to be with his parents.
Our visitors came in two batches on July 10 and July 11. July 10 was when the city was closing shops in protest of kidnapping, bombing and terrorism. It didn't dampen our excitement though as we went to the airport to welcome them. We toured them around town, the school and the store. But what we did mostly was to feed them with food, specially those popular here in cotabato city like haluan soup, pastil, native chicken barbecue, lechon, crispy pata, crabs, sweet ginataan, green mangoes, lanzones etc etc. Everybody here in cotabato love my visitors. We took precautionary measures to make their stay safe too. Lucas and I were simply thankful and extremely grateful for their goodwill in coming to this special occasion.