When Zach Rasmussen was a sprout, he sang “I Hope They Call Me on a Mission.”

Now they have.

He’s headed to Ghana as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

If “gospel” means “good news,” Zach has a pocket full of good news and he can’t wait to share it.

That’s the thing about good news. People tend to gush it out. They feel an urgency to pass it along, to “blaze abroad the matter,” as the King James wordsmiths put it.

“Dad’s OK,” we say, tripping over our words. “He wasn’t in the mine!”

“Judy had her baby! It’s a girl,” we spout.

“Billy got accepted!”

And for young souls on their way to Ghana, the gushing good news is “The spirit of God like a fire is burning!”

Read the Gospel according to St. Mark. See how often the verses begin with the word “and.” The writer was so excited about sharing the word he doesn’t even stop to finish a thought. It's all “and, and, and.”

I think that push behind the words — that rush to share the story — is what makes most scripture compelling. In the Psalms, the Gospels, the Book of Mormon, it’s not only what is said that’s important, but how it is said. There is a breathless quality to many of the words that has kept them alive for hundreds of years. The language is under pressure, like a hundred pounds of water forced through a half-inch pipe.

Take our Latter-day Saint sacrament prayers, for instance. All those “O’s” and repetitions. If they were spoken in the same tone as they were written, they would have a pleading feel.

We don’t speak the words that way, of course. The prayers would have a theatrical quality if we did, a performance quality. No, we simply state them in our straight forward, understated English — especially folks like Zach and I who hail from the American West.

But here’s the thing.

Even when we Westerners read the Psalms and other scriptural wonders aloud in a voice like John Wayne on sleeping pills, the excitement, the urgency is still there behind the words.

And for Zach, a soft-spoken young man, the full fervor of the gospel “good news” will silently rush through his words, no matter what he has to say or how he says it.

All he needs is to find some souls in Africa who have ears to hear.