It took a lot of miracles to make the new version of the Hill Cumorah Pageant a reality, but the greatest miracles may be yet to come.

The Hill Cumorah Pageant, "America's Witness for Christ," premiered July 22, with a new production. Organizers for the production claim it was nothing short of a miracle that brought about the new work. But it is the impact on visitors to the pageant, which concludes July 30, that is expected to bring about the greatest miracles of all."It was overwhelming. It has such a powerful message. How can anyone not have been touched," Elder Robert L. Backman of the Presidency of the First Quorum of the Seventy said after seeing the production on opening night.

Author Orson Scott Card of Greensboro, N.C., said, "The new pageant is not a repudiation of the old pageant, but a fulfillment of it."

He added that the work is put in a language that people can understand and is designed to help make the mesage of the Book of Mormon understandable for today's audience.

Making the Book of Mormon come alive through music in a way that people would be spiritually moved was the object of the new score composed by Dr. Crawford Gates of Beloit, Wis. (See related story on page 10.) Gates, the former chairman of the Music Department at BYU, composed a score of almost 75 consecutive minutes of music for 10 different storylines in the production within a six-month time frame.

The work has what Gates describes as an " '80s classical sound." He said he spent 18 hours a day, six days a week working on the production, compiling almost 3,000 hours of time on the score before it was completed in May of this year. He said the work should normally have taken two years to complete.

"This experience of the last eight months is the most important musical and spritual experience of my life," Gates said. Gates, who has composed almost 700 songs or pieces of music in his lifetime, also wrote the score for the pageant that has been used since 1957.

Pres. Richard Christensen of the New York Rochester Mission expects the new pageant to have a significant impact on missionary work. He said the new production has aroused interest in the pageant throughout the upstate New York area.

He said the excitement caused will bring people out - which will have an impact on missionary work.

The new excitement was evident on opening night when an audience of more than 7,200 was at the hill to see the premiere, despite the presence of a John Denver concert in the area.

"It was the biggest crowd I've seen here for a long time," said Roger Adams of Pittsford, N.Y., president of the pageant.

Adams sees the pageant this year as doing more than just bringing people to the hill. He said the problem in the past has been that the production was always viewed as spectacular, but the theme often did not come across to non-members.

The new production has eliminated long dialogue used so frequently in the original pageant. It also follows the Book of Mormon in chronological sequence.

"The miracle of this production is the book itself," author Card said. "Time after time when I came to a problem the answer to the problem was found in the book."

The new production begins with Lehi in Jerusalem and ends with Moroni depositing the plates in the hill and issuing a promise to those who would read the book. It covers 10 different storylines, highlighted by the appearance of Christ in America.

In addition to a new script and score, the production features state-of-the-art special effects and almost 10 times the number of props from what was used in the old pageant.

Music for the soundtrack was provided by the Salt Lake Children's Choir, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Utah Symphony. The score features more than 89 different instruments including the Tabernacle organ. Robert Peterson, a former Broadway singer, is the narrator.

One of the new props used in the pageant is a special setup in the scene of Christ's visit to the American continent. The mechanism allows the actor portraying the Savior to be lowered slowly from a height of 40 feet above the ground to the stage and then at the end of the scene to be taken up in the air the same way.

In order to set up the stages, the hill itself had to be re-landscaped. Rain delayed that work, making it difficult to get a contractor to do the work at the last minute. The new sets had to be fabricated under last-minute pressure, and the music, soundtrack, and script all had to come together in a short time. Each element of the production had faced a serious delay in coming together.

Even after things appeared to be shaping up in mid-July, the pageant faced other challenges. A storm wiped out one-third of the lighting less than a week before the opening and part of one set was not in place for the premiere until hours before it opened.

But the opening night still drew rave reviews. Media interest in the event has touched almost every area of the state as well.

"I think people will be touched by the new pageant," director Charles Metten said. "It has a vibration of positive feelings."