The LDS Church announced its all-Spanish Christmas devotional service for 2008, "El regalo de navidad."

The devotional will be in the Salt Lake City Tabernacle on Temple Square Thursday and Friday at 7 p.m. and Saturday at 3 p.m .

The devotional will be presented entirely in Spanish, with some parts in Portuguese.

There will be a 450-voice choir that will sing Christmas carols from Spain and Latin America.

Part of the presentation will include the performance of children and adults from Brazil.

"The purpose of this devotional is not to spread the culture," said Daniel Wilson, producer of the devotional. "It is an opportunity to express the [Hispanic-Latino] through music at the same time that we show who we are, where we are from and what we believe."

Although the LDS Church organizes the devotional, members of all faiths are invited, Wilson said.

"We want to encourage members of the church to bring their friends," he said. "It is a program for the Spanish speaking-community with an inspiring message."

There will also be a Christmas message by Elder Claudio R.M. Costa, a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy.

As part of the program, the choir will sign together with an "Estudiantina," which is a musical style of singing from Spain.

Alexandro Gomez, choir director and a former BYU music department student from Guadalajara Mexico, said the devotional "unifies people who speak the same language, but have different ideas into one single goal."

Gomez also said Utah has a rapid growth of Hispanic-Latino population.

One of the purposes for this devotional is to integrate people with a different language, so they do not feel segregated, Gomez said.

Copyright Brigham Young University 3 Dec 2007