Last monday, I had a message from Liz Cox when I got home from going out to dinner with the girlfriends for Stacey's birthday.  Kelley said I should call her no matter how late it was so I did.  She said Jerry had just asked if she would put together a musical number for this Sunday sacrament meeting, and she wondered if I would sing with her and Shawna Murray.  I was immediately intimidated...her and Shawna have amazing strong voices!  But I said yes.  She brought the music over the next morning for me to learn.  It was a trio to "For the Beauty of the Earth" but a completely different tune.  She asked me to sing alto, which is where I am most comfortable.

We got together on Wednesday night at Shawnas' house to practice.  The harmony on this song is really beautiful!  Calvin came a little later to play for us and after we sang it through with the piano for the first time, he was so sweet...his comment was "Holy smokes!"  Like I said before, Shawna and Liz both have AMAZING voices, so I don't take any credit at all for the song sounding good, but it was pretty cool to get to be a part of making this happen.  Liz is a trained, professional singer, so she had lots of ideas and tips to make it sound better.  I appreciated that!  I think the thing I realized most was that I don't have a lot of air!  

Anyway, we practiced for a while, then Tori who was in the kitchen came in to say hi and Shawna said, "You should sing with us too"  So she jumped in and sang with us too.  It was good to have her help on my part cause I was definitely the weakest link.

Sunday morning we met at in the chapel early so we could go through it again.  It sounded real pretty with the grand piano.

So anyway, we sang between the high council speakers (a kind of weird thing...Josh asked me to speak with him in the 12th ward next week  and the talks we were assigned were the ones they gave in our ward sunday.  It was interesting to see her take on the same talk I had just written) and I think it went pretty well.  People were so kind.  Like I said, Shawna and Liz made it beautiful, but I sure enjoyed singing with them.  

The harmony in the song reminded me of songs me and my sisters would sing together.  That was sure the best time when mum would play the ukulele and us girls would sing in harmony.  I'm so grateful to her for teaching us how to sing and for planting the love of music in our hearts.  That could be one of the greatest gifts she gave us.