Mother's Day Program

This post is a way late but still wanted to talk about our fun Mother's Day dinner and program. Mother's Day here in the DR (May 29) is two weeks after the U.S. celebration.  A week previous to the big day,  I was asked to sing for the senior missionary Mother's Day Family Home Evening program.  I decided to have some fun and put together a barbershop quartet to sing a couple of good ol' oldies.  Just by chance, I brought my music binder on my mission and in it is the barbershop music "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" and "Heart of My Heart."

Paul Westover (Bariton), Jon Fuller (Bass), Steve Bentley (Lead)
 and Randy (Tenor) - "Chimi and the Chinolas"

With a little help from three other senior missionaries, Steve Bentley, Jon Fuller and Paul Westover--all by the way sing quite well-- and five rehearsals, I knew we could give everyone a special treat!.
Adding to the fun though, I played a little trick on the unsuspecting senior missionary audience by saying that my Dominican singing friends Bismark Brito, Alwin Nunez and Jose Rodriquez--which all the seniors missionaries know--were delayed on a public bus and were going to be way late.  Acting disappointed but hopeful,  I told everyone I have an idea...I will call on some volunteers from the audience and have them help me sing the two easy songs.  After some pretended unfamiliarity with the song and a few lines of off-key warm-up practice, we all broke into full volume with four part harmony and plenty of gusto!  The audience was pleasantly surprised and realized that had been lured into this delightful little ruse.  "I can't believe that you pulled people from the audience like that and you sounded so good" several commented.  We practiced five times previous to show time and pulled off a fun and enjoyable program.  Everyone laughed at our quartet name, "Chimi and the Chinolas" (the Chimi is the name for the famous Dominican hamburger and Chinola is the Dominican name for Passion Fruit. We had fun and provided a special tribute to our awesome wives and mothers! Randy