Cardall ready to celebrate life with benefit concert

SALT LAKE CITY — A person cannot go through what Paul Cardall has and not be changed — both physically and emotionally.

Cardall

is one of the 1.7 million Americans born with congenital heart disease.

Although he was able to live a fairly normal life — growing up,

becoming a musician, marrying, having a daughter — in recent years, his

disease progressed to the point that he needed a heart transplant.

After

months of waiting, one false alarm when he was actually in the

operating room until it was determined that the available heart would

not be a good match, he finally received his transplant last September.

\"I'm

really feeling great,\" he says now. \"This gives me an endurance I've

never had before. My 'normal' was always different from everyone

else's. So, now I've been able to do things I haven't been able to do.\"

__IMAGE1__Those

things include hiking in the mountains, taking his 4-year-old daughter

skiing, even playing church basketball. \"The renewed energy has been

amazing.\"

He feels a tremendous debt

of gratitude to \"someone who was willing to sign up as an organ donor.\"

But there's also \"an overwhelming weight on my shoulders. Someone's

life was over to give me life. I have a part of that person, the symbol

of all life. And I feel a responsibility to honor that gesture.\"

One

way the Mormon musician will do that is by performing a benefit concert of some of his