Sunday, October 16, 2016

MTC #146 - Of Peace, Preparedness, & Christmas Concert Tickets

This past Thursday night, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang for a group of newly called temple presidents and their wives. It was a very nice and uplifting experience. Several in the group had tears in their eyes as we ended the "mini-concert" and I hoped that we had been successful in helping them feel peace and love.

The 30 minutes leading up to the concert, though, were anything but peaceful for me. As I arrived at rehearsal around my usual time of 6:40, I entered the long corridor that runs underground from the Conference Center to the Tabernacle and quickly noticed that no one else was in the hallway with me. I tried to think why this could be. A little bit of fear crept into my heart and the longer I walked the empty hallway, the more I realized that I must have forgotten an important detail regarding the night's rehearsal. 

As I got to my music locker, I saw someone else! Finally. Craig looked at me and then he put his hands to his head and said, "Oh no. I forgot!" 

I said "What? What did WE forget?"  

"We were supposed to come early for the mini-concert." 

Ug. He was right! We quickly walked to the dressing room to get the right suit on and I was lucky enough to have had a white shirt handy. I looked around and noticed there were a few others that had forgotten as well who were quickly getting dressed. While it was comforting to know I wasn't alone, I felt like I had been injected into the parable of the Ten Virgins. And I was not one of the five wise ones! 

Thankfully, we got up to the loft of seats and slid into the back row just in time to participate. "At least the (symbolic) door hadn't been locked," I thought.

Needless to say, the whole experience was a wake-up call to me to pay more attention to the Choir's weekly newsletter and to not take things for granted. It also made me think about when Christ comes again and how I don't want to "be late" to that event. I want to feel ready, prepared, and anticipating it. 

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Changing topics, Christmas Concert tickets were made available this week on Saturday, at 10:00am. 90% of the people I knew who tried to get some, weren't successful in doing so. After all, it took less than 10 minutes before all of the tickets for the three nights were gone. The website kept giving messages that requests couldn't be completed and there were enormously long "prove to me that you're not a robot" words to type in that made the whole experience very frustrating. As I analyzed the situation though, I realized that there is not a good way to distribute these tickets, period. Random selection, or first come first served--either way, there will be plenty of people who will be left out. There's just no way that the Choir can perform enough nights to accommodate demand. A sad reality, but one that the Church has to acknowledge and do its best to live with. 

If, by chance, you did not get a ticket, here are two things to keep in mind: 1) if you come early enough and get into the standby line, I feel very confident you'll get in. There have always been many ticket holders who just don't show up for whatever reason and that reality allows for many in the standby line to fill up the empty seats. 2) while we will not be performing the full concert on Sunday, we do perform many of the same songs-- and the guest artist will perform that morning, as well. There are no tickets for Sunday so you are welcome to come and partake of open seating.

From today's broadcast, singing "Simple Gifts"

Lastly, I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed today's broadcast. Loved all of the songs and several in my family showed up to listen and watch. The foreign exchange student from Germany living with us for three weeks, Isabel, also came along and loved the whole experience. 

L to R: daughter Rebekah, Isabel, me, son Josh
My beautiful wife Jennifer, and me


Until next time, God be with you.


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