Thoughts and stories, by Pal

Today I will print Wayne's own story of his birth and early life.  He wrote this to go in our book about his ancestors.  I plan to put more family history in my blogs, and not as many other subjects.  I believe that will be more important for my posterity!  (by Pal)  Personal Record of Wayne D. Eckman I was very fortunate in being born a twin on September 18, 1930, to Roy Waldamer and Gladys Treganna Dayton Eckman.  My twin brother, Blaine, was born 15 minutes before I made my entry into the world.  The custom in those days to a great extent was to call the doctor to the home to deliver babies.  It seems that we were ready to be born before my mother could be driven to the hospital, so we were born in a little green frame house at 6066 South State Street in Murray, Utah.  Dr. Olie Sundwall was the attending physician and the minute he saw us, he declared that there was no earthly chance that we would survive the night, so Dad called ...

More about our mission to Sweden.  The first picture is Wayne and me, with Toma Valid Daud, from Iran, who was a political refugee there.  He was only 27, and had defected from Saddam Hussein's army, and got political asylum there.  He was a Christian, and so lonely, in a city in Northern Sweden.  He didn't understand much Swedish, so we got him a "Gospel Principles" book in Arabic.  We were advised not to baptize anyone until they knew Swedish well enough to attend Church, etc.  Otherwise they would go inactive.  I often wonder where he is now.  He contacted us after we got back to the United States, and we tried to be able to sponsor him to come here.  But we couldn't get permission, as he wasn't a close relative.  I hope we will see him again in the Spirit World, as he really loved learning what he could about the Gospel!  Someday he will accept it. There is a lovely park called Bloomstergarden in Sweden, where there w...

I am so excited to go here in Salt Lake City, and take my grandchildren!  It just opened, and this weekend is the RootsTech 2017 ev ent starting today -- Feb. 8th through Feb. 11th!  You can go to: https://www.rootstech.org/rootstech-2017 There are live on-line speakers, etc.  Try it! Sign up for Meridian’s Free Newsletter, please  CLICK HERE It is a major decision to gut a floor of the LDS Family History Library in Salt Lake, that hasn’t seen a significant change in construction in decades, especially when the library’s collection only continues to grow. Yet, that counter-intuitive move is what the LDS Church just did to create the new Family Discovery Experience, a center that uses the most cutting-edge technology to bring family history to life with personalized, interactive exhibits. It’s about intriguing and enticing children and their parents to fall in love with their own legacy and those who went before. A s...

I just realized that I haven't posted pictures of our Senior Missions together for a long time!  We have been on 2 missions, the first of which was to Sweden, where Wayne had served his first mission in 1950 to 1953.  We later went to the Hartford, Connecticut, mission.  I'm going to tell more about them in these posts about Wayne -- up to February 21st, which is one year since he has been gone.   (Undoubtedly doing missionary work up there!) The picture above was taken in 1994, when we entered the Senior MTC on our way to Sweden. First posted on December 27, 2013 # 51 When I was about 18 years old, I received a lovely comforting blessing from the 88 year old Patriarch, for whom I typed blessings.  He said the day would come when I would serve a mission.  At that time (1953) a girl had to be 23 years old to serve a mission.  I didn't expect to be able to go then, and I did get married about 2 weeks before I turned 21.   We began ...