After striking chords of friendship throughout Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand, members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir boarded an airplane here July 5, ending their second-longest tour.

They carried - and left behind - fond memories during their first South Pacific visit that included 19 concerts played to at least 40,000 people June 14-July 4. The choir sang to large audiences in Laie and Honolulu, Hawaii; Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch, New Zealand; and Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Sydney and Brisbane, Australia.The singers chalked up a significant first: Their concert in Perth was the most distant ever from Salt Lake City - 10,000 miles away.

The choir perhaps received more media attention and public interest than on any previous tour. During the three weeks, the choir traveled 25,000 miles - enough to entirely circle the globe.

"This tour has touched the lives of common people and dignitaries the length and breadth of these lands," said Elder John Sonnenberg of the First Quorum of the Seventy and president of the Pacific Area. "We expect many people to come into the Church as a result."

After singing in the finest halls of the Pacific, including the Sydney Opera House with its famous, billowing arches, the choir concluded its tour in the beautiful new concert hall of the Performing Arts Complex in Brisbane as a featured attraction from the United States at Expo 88, celebrating the Australian bicentennial.

A congratulatory telegram from U.S. President Ronald Reagan described the choir as "America's most renowned musical ensemble."

One critic's comments seemed to sum up the well-attended performances: "When the baton went up and you heard the collective soft intake of breath, you knew a great choral sound was about to issue forth."

The tour carried choir singers into lands of pleasing climate, exotic flora and fauna, and beautiful cities. They made contacts both musical and spiritual with the warm people of the Pacific that exceeded their original expectations, said Wendell M. Smoot, choir president.

"I can sum up this tour in two words," said Smoot. "Exhilarating and exhausting. We never dreamed how successful our firesides on non-singing nights would be. We thought perhaps 200 or 300 people might show up. We were astonished at numbers like 2,000 in Auckland, and 1,500 adults in Perth, where total Church membership is 3,000.

"We found that members of the Church weere starved for anything relating to their faith," he said.

Choir conductor Jerold Ottley felt this to be the most successful tour ever in the choir's direct contacts with individuals. "We did not want to come across evangelically, but the interest of the people has been the chief factor, and contacts were warm and natural," he said.

"There were any number of comments, such as those made by an engineer from Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, who recorded us. He said; `I wish you could be here longer, not just professionally, but because of the feeling of joy your choir carries with it. We need that badly."

The choir left numerous musical recordings to be broadcast during the next month in these countries. They also completed master tapes for a Phillips Records release, marking their first recording on that label.

Michael Otterson, public relations director for the South Pacific, said as many as 40 to 50 media events were associated with the tour, including television and radio news, features and interviews, and newspaper articles.

The tour was also an exhausting one. Singers spent 17 hours of unscheduled time sitting in airports, including seven hours waiting for the fog to lift in Auckland, and a six-hour delay leaving Sydney waiting for mechanical repairs.

Colds, aggravated by the winter season of this hemisphere, plagued several in the choir, and the New Zealand flu, which eluded the immunizations choir members were given, took its toll.

However, the singers enjoyed themselves and crammed a lot of sightseeing into a short time. They also went shopping at every chance. Many left Australia wearing Crocodile Dundee hats and bringing lots of Australian-made koala and kangaroo toys to children.

"We've learned a lot of non-essential facts, too," said Joyce Evans, who traveled with the Choir. "Kiwi fruit isn't laid by Kiwi birds, and water in drains revolves the opposite way in the southern hemisphere.

"After dragging my bag through a dozen airports, I never want to sing, `Carry On' again. . . ."