Daniel Premiere

Last night, we premiered Daniel to an audience of about 1,000 at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah.

It's always an anxious evening -- partly because of concern about how the audience will respond, partly because of concern that the technical side (blowing the only bulb we could find for our projector) might not hold up, partly because I might mess up my brief little speech, and partly because I'm still not that comfortable in a tux.

But everything held up just fine, and it was a wonderful evening of celebration of what we are blessed to be a part of and to celebrate the results of the hard work and devotion of a lot of people.

Ken (Agle, my brother/producer) did a pre-show that was a "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" type game show using Liken trivia. Then Dan Beck did a fun opening number where he sang a fast-paced tribute to Likens 1 to 7. That was followed by bringing a few of us on stage to introduce the new Liken management team and my aforementioned speechlet, which I managed to get through without botching it too badly. Then Lauren, who played Amelia in the past three Likens, came up and introduced the new imaginer child, Devin, played by a delightful 6-year-old named isaiah Smith. After that, it was house lights down and start the movie.

The audience responded well, laughing in the right places, applauding at the end of songs where appropriate, and afterwards, many people came up to me and thanked us for the work we are doing.

All in all, a wonderful night of celebration. Would love to savor it for awhile, but there is a huge workload piled up, so I'll try to enjoy the feeling for another day or so, then we're back at it with Samuel come the crack of dawn on Monday.