By now you must be totally confused! I have been taking singing lessons from a person I consider the best teacher in Australia, and in his view, telling someone to lift their soft palate is worse than useless, because it sets up stress in the person ("am I doing it right, "where's my palate", "is my jaw in the right position" etc etc). In his opinion, the way you learn is to just do it, and when you get the right spot/note/sound, remember how you achieved it and do it again (with a teacher of course, as an impartial listener). He just gives me suggestions and word pictures.

Given you don't have much time, I suggest just sing what you can and give those other notes a miss. It's taken me nearly 4 years to reach the range I now have (around 4 octaves), and that's been achieved through much practise, exercises and encouragement. IMHO choirs are in existence to fill in the gaps - we all sing what we can, and leave out the bits we can't! At the end of the day, you should just have fun and not stress out about it all.

Can I suggest to yourself and the other mudcatters to have a look at the Yahoo group "The Vocalist"? It has great discussions on the physiology of singing, music, and exercises etc for singing.