CoD V.1.6.7- Yet Another Reason to Become a Missionary!

So I have this friend whom God called before He did me- and she's always talking about all the free stuff that people give missionaries. So far people've given her an ipod (if I remember correctly), a camera, and a life-sized inflatable moose, among other things.

This past weekend I experienced this generosity first-hand: my boss's brother, Manuel, who owns a pharmacy, got two tickets to a platinum box at a Raptor's game and decided, since I'd have no major sports events for the next two years in Tanzania, that he'd like to take me.

Of the four major North American sports (baseball, football, basketball, hockey?), basketball is the only one i grew up playing and loving. The last time I went to a Raptors' game Vince Carter was still playing in Toronto, and they still sucked. Surprisingly though, the Raptors are actually doing well! I never expected it to happen in my lifetime (basketball fans in Toronto generally just laugh and nervously change the subject when speaking about the Raptors) so I decided I couldn't pass up this opportunity (the Raptors having won 8 of their last 9 games at home), and accepted his invitation.

The platinum box turned out to be not a metallic cube, but a small room well stocked with free pizza, steak, chicken strips, springrolls, nachos, popcorn, ice-cream, anything you wanted to drink (but I only drink water!), and a hostess.

The Food at our Platinum Box

The rest of our Platinum Box (and Casablanca on TV! commercial)

Kelly, our lovely hostess

Kelly and I

Manuel and I

So then there was the game itself. After trailing most of the game the Raptors caught-up right at the end and actually overtook Seattle (oh yeah, they were facing the Sonics), but Ray Allen sank a shot at the buzzer, literally, to send the game into overtime. Toronto won 120-119, with Bosh scoring 27 (but Allen top-scoring with 36). Exciting game right?

Raptors warmup

Raptor girls and 'Rap-torr' the hyper dinossaur

CB4 taking a free-throw

Belinda and Tai Domi had courtside seats. If you don't live in Canada you probably don't know who this is.

All good so far, here's the weird part- I felt so guilty about going! I don't know why, I felt guilty that I was getting this special treatment, and I didn't even want to tell anyone I was going. It's pretty weird. And while there, I certainly enjoyed the game, but all the time at the back of my mind i kept thinking about how much those players made (Chris Bosh- $4.2 million/year. Ray Allen- $15 million/year), and how much it costs for the anti-retroviral drugs that would prevent an HIV infected single mother in East Africa from developing full-blown AIDS and orphaning her children at 14 and 16, instead of at 4 and 6 ($8 per month, which they can't afford). I thought of how many people cared so much for three points on a scoreboard (home crowd of around 19,000), but so little about stopping the child sex-trade in South-East Asia.

And then I thought of what a hypocrite I was, routinely spending 16$ on sushi and stealing two months off the life of a person made in God's image, while at the same time attending a Raptor's game. No fun. I think i'm spoiled, or broken, or past my best-before date or something...