A report from Rexburg

It’s been a gratifying day.  My wife and I did interviews with the film crew working on our little project centered on Robert Cundick, and we were also present when one of his sons was interviewed.  Bob’s wife, Charlotte, was also there.

We had dinner in the Manwaring Center, on the campus of Brigham Young University – Idaho.  As it happened (was it really a coincidence?), we were seated at a table with a man who had sung in the BYU choir for the debut performances of The Redeemer in the DeJong Concert Hall at BYU-Provo and at the Salt Lake Tabernacle.  Without our prodding or prompting him, before he knew who we were or that we’re working on a film, he said that that experience had changed his life.  He had come to BYU without any real intention of going on a mission, without any real commitment to the Gospel.  He just wanted to play basketball.  But The Redeemer had turned him around.  And now, he was bringing his daughter and her new husband to experience, in a live performance, something of what he had experienced back then in 1978.  He wouldn’t be able to talk with them, he said.  He knew that he would be in tears throughout the performance.

It was a very good performance.  I myself, stone-hearted Scandinavian though I am, teared up at three different and very specific places.

As Bob wished, there was no applause.  The invocation and benediction are enclosed within the music and, at the end, the large audience left the magnificent auditorium of the BYU-Idaho Center in reverent silence.

We visited with Charlotte and her family afterwards, as well as with the conductor, Eda Ashby.  It was nice, too, to chat with Clark Gilbert, the president of BYU-Idaho.  I’ve known and admired him since he was the CEO of the Deseret News and of Deseret Digital Media.  Then we closed off the evening in very interesting and often quite substantive conversation with Mindy Madsen Davis, one of the daughters of our longtime friends Truman and Ann Madsen, as well as two of her sons and a friend.

It’s richly rewarding to renew old acquaintances and to meet new people, and to talk about the things that really matter.  Fortunately, our experiences in the Church allow us to do that quite often.

We’ve enjoyed our brief time here in southeastern Idaho.  This is a good community.

Posted from Rexburg, Idaho