"Hey, Remember that One Time We Met ALEX BOYE?"

The summer after I graduated, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir did a concert at Wolf Trap. During the concert, Alex Boye performed two solos with the Tab Choir singing back up. Amy, Matthew, and I were all sitting with different people, so we were sitting there texting each other about how much we loved him. The three of us have this maybe only slightly far-fetched dream of one day singing in a Gospel Choir, and he's kind of our inspiration. While Matthew's been on his mission, we've been sending each other Alex Boye music, which in our case means he sends me mp3 files of Alex Boye songs and I send him back names of songs to look up because frankly technology makes no sense to me. Just last week he sent me a recording of him singing "How Great Thou Art" which I'd actually never heard before and it was beautiful. Anyways, a couple weeks ago, Women's Chorus was asked to perform at the Christmas lighting ceremony at the River Woods shopping center in Provo. I freaked out a little bit when our director told us Alex Boye would also be performing.

So we get there and we're waiting to perform when all of a sudden, this golf cart drives past us and pulls to a stop a few feet away. Out waltzes Alex Boye and his security guards. My friend Holly and I sneakily followed them to a tent that was right in front of where we were about to perform, so I'm pretty sure he heard us sing! Alex wasn't supposed to go on until about an hour after we finished, so me and Amy and our friends Holly and Katie went and explored all of the adorable shops. Katie showed us this awesome art gallery they have. A lot of artists were there selling their paintings, and Ames and I kind of fell in love with this one painting of the scene in Les Mis where the bishop gives Jean Valjean back the candles that he had stolen from him and tells him to use them to rebuild his life and become an honest man. Literally one of the best parts of the entire musical. Too bad we couldn't afford it. Ah well. Maybe someday. Then we went and got some half-priced candy from the cutest shop. It was literally filled from wall to wall with pretty much every kind of candy you could ever want. It was incredible. We still had more time to kill after that, so we decided to go look at all of the GORGEOUS lights. When we were walking around, I felt someone brush past me. I turned and looked and it was none other than ALEX BOYE. So naturally, we followed him through the crowd and stopped him and asked if we could take a picture with him. He was SO nice and even though he was clearly in a rush let us take our picture with him. We were kind of freaking out. I immediately e-mailed the picture to Matthew from my phone, of course. His performance was absolutely credible, and totally worth getting so cold that I couldn't feel my toes. The whole time, Amy and I just kept saying, "Hey, remember that one time we met, ALEX BOYE?" We were starving by the end, so we went and got some Cafe Rio in our choir outfits. Basically, the whole night was a dream come true. I love the Christmas season!