Using the information provided here, I was able to successfully create an email template and send a message using this template.
However, using this template is quite cumbersome - one must go to New Items->More Items->Choose Form...->
Change "Look In" path to User Templates In File System->Open
.
It's almost faster to just "Forward" a sent email and delete the extraneous forwarding metadata. Can anyone please tell me how to speed this up?