This is a picture at one of his son's weddings.On Friday night it was a benefit for the Opera by Children program that he is involved in and some local people are trying to get going in the schools here. It was a rather intimate setting at the home of our Stake President with about 25-35 people. They had food before and a meet and greet afterward. He mostly told of how he wanted to be an opera singer when he was a child and how he became one, interspersed with some of his favorite show tunes and why he liked them.
On Sunday night the highlight for me was the story he told about an old Jewish Rabi he met while doing a study abroad in Israel. He was one of the few who still know how to chant the Torah the way it used to be done. The Torah was never read but sung and the older versions have the musical accompaniment written along with the text. He sang a couple of the opening lines for us and said that on the occasion mentioned in the scriptures when Jesus read from the scriptures it was not actually reading but singing. He said that this old Rabi once visited the US and chanted some of the Torah in a meeting out in the west somewhere near a Navajo Indian reservation. There were some Navajos present who immediately recognized the tune and got very excited. They asked him where he got that music. It was the same tune as that handed down through their culture for centuries.
He also told the story of how he was approached by President Hinckley, then an apostle, about his role in the temple film. He was told he would have to take 6 months off to do it and could not tell anyone, even his wife, what he was doing. At the end he bore his testimony including his testimony of how real Satan is strengthed by his experience playing that role.
1 comment:
Mom would have loved to be with you. She always wanted to meet Michael Ballam and I tried several times to introduce them, but it never quite worked out. Sounds like you had an enjoyable time.
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