There was a time on my mission when I went through a really rough patch. I won't go into great detail because it's really not important why. Suffice to say that I really wanted to go home and nobody would let me. Instead, I was banished to a far end of the mission that required a boat trip and two train trips and over 24 hours to get to. This place had not had a baptism in fourteen years. I told my companion that we would visit members and go to church but that if he even mentioned tracting to me I would beat him up.
Depression was not as big a deal back then as it is now and so, while all of the signs of clinical depression were there, nobody thought I was depressed...they all thought I was just a jerk. In their defense, I really was kind of a self-centered jerk. Also, I refused to bathe and I grew a beard (I was REALLY trying to get them to send me home)
While I wallowed in filth and self-pity, I explored our apartment for any kind of relief of the mind-numbing boredom. I came across some tapes that I hoped were contraband rock and roll. It turns out that they were tapes of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's performance of Handel's Messiah.
I had heard "For Unto Us a Child is Born" and "The Hallelujah Chorus" before...but never had I ever listened to the whole performance. Those two tapes stuck way in the back of our apartment library became the means for me to dig myself out of the hole I had dug for myself.
The music was so beautiful and the performances so wonderful that I began to lose myself in those tapes and listen to them over and over again. As I listened, I realized that every song was taken from a scripture about Christ and I took out my scriptures and looked up all of them and marked them in green. Reading those scriptures while listening to Handel's musical testimony of the divinity of Christ was as powerful an emotion as I had ever felt.
The music became a part of me and it began to lift me up. I shed many bitter tears as I began to realize how little time I had been given to share the gospel in Italy and how much of that time I had wasted. To this day, one of my greatest fears is standing before Heavenly Father and giving an account of that portion of my mission. The music began to renew and strengthen my testimony until I could hardly wait to get out of the apartment. What I desired most of all was the opportunity to share my testimony of Christ and the Restored Gospel with the Italian people.
In the space of three days, I went from a slob wallowing in his bed to a bright and shiny, freshly showered and shaved missionary urging my companion to get up so we could get out the door and go tracting.
Everyone thought I had really gone nuts now and they were starting to seriously consider my request to send me home.
The more I researched Handel's Messiah, the more intrigued I became. I was especially struck by the story of how fast this masterpiece was written and how influenced Handel was. I read about the weeks of largely untouched meals that were delivered to his door as he wrote and how, after writing The Hallelujah Chorus, his servant came to Handel's room only to see tears streaming down the composer's face as he exclaimed, "I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God Himself"
The music became a part of my life and I listened to it whenever occasion would permit. Every part of the oratorio became a part of me...but one part sunk into my soul more deeply than the others...the tenor solo at the beginning.
As I listened to "Comfort Ye" and "Every Valley", I was more and more in awe of how Handel had used the natural timbre of the tenor's voice to emulate a sounding trumpet. I imagined John The Baptist standing in the wilderness and his voice crying forth these words. I thought of Alma and how he desired most to have the voice of an angel that he might testify more clearly of Christ.
And I began to desire the same thing. More than anything, I wanted to sing that tenor solo. That music had become such a part of me that I just knew that I would consider my life incomplete if I could not participate in its performance.
The only problem was that I'd never had any voice lessons and...I was a baritone.
But the desire was much more deep than my voice and I knew that, while I would never sing the tenor solo on a stage, I could sing along with with the music...and I did. I sang along with The Messiah whenever I could. When I got home from my mission, my practice studio was my car and I would often garner strange looks in traffic as I drove along during rush hour. As I sang, I imagined myself in a tuxedo belting out the words...my whole being concentrated upon being one with the music. Every once in a while, I would notice that I could actually hit a note that, up to that point, was beyond my range. When I did, I would strive to be able to hit it again and again until I could hit that note whenever I wanted.
Choristers in church began to ask me to sing in the choir and I learned how to read music. Timmie Debusk was the first such to ask me to sing a solo in church. She was the one who first made me believe that I might actually be able to fulfill my secret desire. When her son lost his battle with cancer, she asked me to sing at his funeral. Although, by then, I had sung at several funerals, it was the first time I had ever sung for someone I knew personally. It was also the last. Although I was able to get through the song, I doubt I will ever again be able to do so. I learned that, what we sing becomes a part of us in a way that what we say never does. I began a new respect and testimony of the importance of primary songs. I began to realize that music conveys emotions that mere speech cannot...which is why people can listen to opera in a language that they don't speak and still understand the story.
I formed the opinion that the Adamic language, being a perfect language would have to convey the meanings of one who speaks that language perfectly...and would, of necessity, be a language that was sung, rather than spoken.
I began to sing The Messiah in singalongs at Christmas time and whenever I could find a performance, I would try out for the chorus. I've sung it so many times that, whenever I hear any part of the oratorio, I can sing the tenor part, words and notes, without having the music before me.
Once or twice I would even be brave enough to try out for the solo part. I never got it, men who were much more talented and much better trained than I was got the part and, as I stood in the chorus and listened to them sing, tears would form in my eyes. It was frustrating to want to be that good and know that I would never be that good. I felt like Salieri in 'Amadeus'...doomed to recognize and desire talent that was beyond my reach. But, while I could hit the high notes required of that part, it was always tentative. It felt like I was riding a bicycle on the top rail of a fence and, if I pushed myself to have the volume and bell-like quality required of a tenor singing that solo, my voice would crack and I would be humiliated. Eventually, I gave up and resigned myself to sing in the chorus forever.
One Fall, Ken Turner called me on the phone. He and I had sung The Messiah several times together and he informed me that a group of churches in Columbus was putting together a performance that was to be sung in The Columbus Opera House. I decided that I would try for the solo part one last time.
I got it.
And an impossible desire that was born fifteen years earlier was fulfilled on a Friday night a week before Christmas when I walked to the podium in a tuxedo, in an Opera house in a small Texas town with family and friends in the audience and a brother in the chorus and I sang the opening solo to Handel's masterpiece.
As I sang, I decided that, for once, I would listen to all of the people who had encouraged me and, as they say in football, "leave it all out on the field". I held nothing back and I was surprised to hear a tremolo that my voice had previously lacked. I was the best I had ever sung and, as I sang, I realized that Alma was right, God truly does grant unto men, "according to their desire"
