Decided I would try this out, cause right now everyone is, and see how it goes...Yea I'm a day behind so today there will be two...simple...
Day One- Favorite Song....
That one is easyish....I've been singing since fifth grade and have listened to and sung quite a few songs in my day...But one has always stuck out above the rest..Prayer of The Children. It was originally done by Kurt Bester, and the first time I heard it was back in my senior year of high school. I've probably heard it before, but that was the first time that I can remember. Our Acapella teacher Mamma J. had presented the song to us and asked if it was something that we wanted to sing..Of course we said yes. Also finding out that it was her favorite song as well kinda put some pressure on us to make it a good one for her and for the people that came to see the concert. Her dad was the first one that got the chance to listen to the song and he was rather tickled as he said with it. We started learning the song about I think it was 2 weeks before the concert, and come concert time we were all pretty excited to sing the song. We went through the evening like normal, we were the last ones to go on stage and this was gonna be the last song of the night. When we started to sing the song it just kinda flowed out pretty dang awesomly. About halfway through the song mamma J. started crying and it was hard for some of the choir to keep a dry eye as well, but the song never faltered and it was a great end to an awesome Christmas concert. Ever since that concert I've always wanted to sing that song with a quartet o a sextet of guys o mixed with girls o whatever, but the chance never came up, until I went on my mission. I was in Madrid Spain and our mission had a lot of musical talent in it that we used for the work multiple times. We always did an Easter and Christmas concerts with a few little ones mixed in between. I was always wanting to be in them, but I was never close enough to be in the city for rehearsals and such. One of my companions that I had about 4 months prior to this worked with the Spanish T.V. before his mission and got with an old co-worker and asked if we could put on a concert for the station, that would be broadcast over the country and a few other ones. They agreed and we were on our way...there was just one small problem, I was living outside the city at the time....so bummed...BUT about 3 weeks into rehearsals and things I was transferred not only to an area that was so much closer that would allow me to join, but I was living with the director of the choir. So I was in. I was stoked to be a part of this huge concept that we were gonna try to accomplish. We did have a lot of good singers but the T.V. station had some pretty strict guidelines for the show. They had given us maybe 6 weeks to prepare and they were gonna come and see what the lists of songs that we had and they wanted us to sing all of them, they were going to pick from a list of 2 and those were the ones that we could do. I joined the choir and it was so helpful that my companion was in it as well, so I didn't have to bug him by making him go all the time. Well I was stoked for 2 reasons...1 I've been wanting to be a part of something musical in my mission for basically my whole mission...the concert would take place a month before I go home. 2 If they pick the group of songs that we want them to, we would get to sing prayer of the children as a sextet, and I got asked to be a part of it! So we practiced all the some 25 songs and when they came we sang them for them and they picked the one we wanted! SO stoked was I!
There was gonna be six elders singing the song, two from each part. 2 bases, 2 baritones, 2 first and 2 second tenors. The elders that were asked to sing we, elder Hanagarne, elder Pew, elder Sharette, elder Egbert, elder Murdock and myself. We started practicing the song after rehearsals about 2 weeks before we were going to be performing. WOW....right? We actually sounded really, really good together, and it quickly became a favorite number amongst everyone in the choir. The big day came and I was in pain...the day before after the last rehearsal I was jumping down the metro stairs and finding out two months later I had torn all the ligaments in my ankle..needless to say it hurt...I spent my birthday in pain in my apartment while my comp went out o work with another elder. The day of the show I was so drugged up it was hilarious! We had to get to the concert hall pretty early in the morning, because we were living with the director and he needed the help. So we set out around 7 in the morning so we could get to the theater and get things going. He wanted to have few rehearsals with our group as well. So we all showed up, it took us a while because of said above issue with my ankle and the fact that the drugs hadn't quite kick in yet, so I was slow. We got to the teatro monumental, which by the way is the second oldest theater in Spain. It had no microphones o anything that would make it so we could be heard other then us being loud enough, So cool. The inside of the place was just amazing.
Anyways....
We got there got everything set up and got underway. People started to show up and we started rehearsing. Our sextet had rehearsed earlier and needless to say we were pretty nervous. The show started and the cool thing about this one, is while most of the other concerts were mainly members this concert was 80 percent non member. Which just made it that much more magical to us that all the hard work paid off of getting people there.
We got to our song and walked up, I was so excited to do this number. We started the song and it went amazing. Honestly I give all the credit to the Lord and him making it so we could get the message across. Everyone enjoyed it and it is still talked about the most till this day. Some of us got copies of the song and we were pretty stoked to get them. I don't know what it is about the song but it has such power behind it and I could sing it every day if I had the chance to. It has a way of bringing people together and changing hardships and all that jazz. Just a great song.
No comments:
Post a Comment