Gethsemane: The Story Behind the Song Every Latter-day Saint Child Wanted to Sing with Melanie Hoffman

In this episode of Why We Believe,with host Nathan Gwilliam, award-winning songwriter Melanie Hoffman shares the canyon drive when words for Gethsemane hit her like a thunderbolt after months of fearing how to explain Christ's suffering to children. She sat at her kitchen table and words poured out as she wept through writing the bridge about the hardest thing ever done and the greatest pain ever known. Every child who received the album wanted to sing that one song.

Years later, a Tabernacle Choir member told Nathan this would go down in history as their greatest recording. After videos by an Oregon couple, Jenny Phillips, and three-year-old Claire Crosby built momentum, the church included it in Children's Friend and selected it for the new hymnbook. Steve Schenk called the night before release to tell her personally. Melanie reveals how 47 years of self-employment walking by faith fulfilled her patriarchal blessing promise that she would never want.

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