A Taste of the Motab

This spring, Romney and I both had a really neat opportunity to sing in the venues where the Mormon Tabernacle Choir usually performs. 

First, in March, we had our Stake Conference. Normally we meet in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square, but that lovely building is under renovation and restoration. From what I understand, it won't be available for us to use in the future at all, even when it's done getting all fixed up. This is pretty sad for us. Most stakes have one building that is their official stake center - it's big, can hold several hundred more people than a regular ward building can, and can host conferences. We don't have one. And when our ability to use the assembly hall got removed, we were in a pickle! (I'm acting like this was my problem. It wasn't. I heard about all of this after the fact.)

Well, our stake president occasionally gets to rub elbows with some general authorities, and he mentioned to one of them our predicament. That person suggested that we use the tabernacle. Wow! What a beautiful, historic building! And also very LARGE. Our stake leaders decided that if we were going to use this amazing building, we would need an equally amazing choir to go along with it. They started sending out the message to everyone in our stake and had us all invite friends and former stake members to join us. And more wonderful than that, our stake partnered with a local group called The Other Side Academy, which is a live-in program for rehabilitating people who would otherwise be facing long-term incarceration. It's amazing. And we had probably 50 people from the program join our choir. So we had maybe 250 people. 

I can't really describe the experience! Singing in that space with that many people...well, it was mind-blowing. The last song we sang was The Spirit of God, and we had the primary kids up front, singing along, and doing sign language along with it. The Hosannahs had them making them do this big clap...no matter how I describe it, it will never be enough. But folks were weeping, and talking about it for weeks. It was just incredible. Romney and I both got to sing and I'll never forget it!

Then in April something much cooler happened! Romney has been singing with her institute choir at UVU all year long, and they got invited to provide the music for the Saturday evening session of General Conference. If we thought filling up the choir stands at the tabernacle would be hard, can't imagine the pressure of filling up the choir seats in the conference center! That place is huge! 

Troy and I realized that neither of us had ever actually attended a session of General Conference before. We asked our stake executive secretary to try to track down tickets for us, and we were so grateful that he came through! We got four - one each for Troy, Emma, me, and Nicholas. It was very sweet of him to come along. 

It was quite an experience to attend an actual session of conference. Actually, I'll be totally honest, I really prefer watching from home. Much more comfy, I can knit all I want, plus you know...snacks. And also it's hard to focus on the speaker when you're in an incredibly huge room with thousands of people in it. But it was a neat experience. And Romney's choir was wonderful. They sang Amazing Grace, which was the first time that particular song has ever been sung in General Conference! I heard from a lot of people about how much they loved hearing it.