Wayne and Kelly Petersen were at home eating dinner when Wayne looked up and said, “Kel, something happened at work today.” His tone was much more serious than it normally was. But Kelly wasn’t alarmed—she already knew what he was going to say.
“A mission?” she asked. “Yes,” he replied. “Right now?”
“Right now.”
At work that day Wayne had felt prompted that it was time to serve a mission, and Kelly had felt it too. Serving a full-time mission together was something the Petersens had always wanted to do, but the impression to go “right now” was surprising. Wayne hadn’t even set a retirement date yet.
But he called their bishop, and they began their missionary application within days. Wayne retired a few months later on March 6, 2020, and he and Kelly were overjoyed when they received their call to the Scotland Ireland Mission on St. Patrick’s Day.
But as their call came in, thousands of missionaries were being sent home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Why did they feel such an urgency to go on a mission before the onset of a worldwide pandemic?
Over the next few years, the reason became very clear. Kelly believes now they had just a short window of time to receive their call or else they might never have been able to serve. Why? Because just a few months after receiving their call, Wayne was in a serious accident that resulted in major surgery.
After he died twice on the operating table, Wayne’s brain was damaged from lack of oxygen. He recovered enough to eventually go on their mission, but his challenges weren’t over.
“The day we got home from our mission, he started hallucinating,” Kelly remembers. “We got in to see a neurologist, and Wayne was diagnosed with severe dementia one month to the day after we got back. He plummeted so quickly after our mission that we knew we had lived a miracle in Scotland.”
Today Wayne is 65 and lives in a memory care unit in Kaysville, Utah.
“You long for that person who loved you; you long for the relationship that you had and watched dissipate. But I know that I will get Wayne back one day. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t live for that, and I know that it’s true,” Kelly says. “I know where my source of strength is—Heavenly Father—and He is constant.”
Kelly will be the first to tell you that caring for a loved one with dementia is heartbreaking. But she will also be the first to tell you that Heavenly Father’s strength has supported her through every step of their remarkable journey.
A Fairy Tale Couple
Kelly and Wayne met as teenagers at an A&W restaurant in Montpelier, Idaho. Wayne lived about 30 minutes away in Cokeville, Wyoming, but his ward came to Montpelier to play baseball. After the games, Wayne would come by the restaurant where Kelly worked as a carhop.
“You always knew the Cokeville boys because they had Wyoming license plates,” Kelly remembers. Wayne served a mission in Japan, and on the night he was released Kelly remembers him telling her “as hard as a mission was, I want to go back with you.”
The couple was soon married and eventually settled in Kaysville, where they raised four children while Wayne worked as a general manager at Ken Garff Honda. Their daughter Lindsie Hazen gives a glimpse of what it was like to have Wayne as a dad growing up.
“He would blend our orange juice in the blender in the mornings just because it made it frothy, and we thought that was so fun. He’d be singing and dancing in the kitchen,” Lindsie remembers. Wayne would also leave notes in his kids’ lunch boxes, such as, “You’re a superstar. Love, Dad.”
Wayne and Kelly have enjoyed a loving, happy marriage. Wayne’s sister Cindy even calls them a “fairy tale” couple.
“Wayne treasured me; he thought I hung the moon,” Kelly says. “Every dumb little thing I did, he thought was just amazing. He was always complimenting me. He would look over at me in the car and say, ‘It’s so amazing to go through life with you.’ And I am not amazing, but I felt amazing because my companion treated me like I was the greatest thing.”
But perhaps what people admire most about Wayne is his determination.
“One of his greatest qualities, anybody that knows him over the years will tell you, is his persistence; he just has this drive. ‘Can’t’ isn’t in his vocabulary,” Kelly says, adding that her husband’s life motto has always been “sprint to the finish.”
“He meant to just dig in,” Kelly explains. “To believe you’ve got more to give and never give up.” She and other family members now have the motto, written in Wayne’s handwriting, framed and hanging on their walls.
Kelly believes Wayne’s persistence and work ethic helped him recover from the accident that nearly took his life.
Series of Miracles
While the Petersens waited to leave on their mission, Wayne took their 14-year-old grandson, Cruz, on a grandpa trip to Wyoming. Cruz was driving them in a side-by-side all-terrain vehicle (ATV) when a large dog began chasing them. To avoid the dog, Cruz sped up, but then he lost control of the vehicle, and it flipped on its side. Wayne was thrown from the passenger seat through the driver’s side window and became pinned under the ATV. Fortunately, Cruz was unharmed.
Wayne was taken to the University of Utah Hospital by helicopter. He hadn’t suffered any head trauma in the accident, but he was severely bleeding internally from a lacerated liver. (The family found out later that the pressure from where the ATV pinned Wayne down stopped the bleeding for a time, likely saving his life.)
Kelly was waiting outside the hospital when the helicopter arrived.
“I was sitting on a bench and heard the sound of the helicopter echoing off the mountains and the buildings as it came in,” Kelly remembers.
Wayne immediately went into surgery, during which he died twice and sustained brain damage. He was in the hospital for a month afterward and then in rehabilitation for three more weeks. Because of the pandemic, Kelly couldn’t always be by Wayne’s side in the hospital, but she did get to see his persistence during physical therapy sessions.
She watched her husband, who was in excellent physical shape before, become exhausted trying to rise from a chair.
“I would chant his name, ‘Wayne! Wayne! Wayne!,’ as he tried to stand,” she says. The therapist wanted him to stand up three times and remain upright for 10 seconds each time. After the second stand, Wayne’s breath was very labored. Kelly remembers the therapist asking Wayne if he could stand up one more time.
“He looked at me, nodded, and stood up,” Kelly remembers. While Wayne recovered, Kelly received a call from the Church’s missionary department. She told them about Wayne’s accident, and the department began praying for him and calling Kelly for updates.
By March 2021, 10 months after the accident, Wayne had recovered enough that they were ready to start pursuing their mission again. They assumed their assignment would change to somewhere in the US, due to both Wayne’s health and the pandemic. But to the surprise of even those in the missionary department, the Petersens’ call remained the same.
“When we got to Scotland, members would ask us, ‘How did you get here?’ And I said, ‘No one knows but God. Nobody knows,’” Kelly says.
Off to Scotland
Wayne and Kelly served as member leadership support in a branch in Perth, Scotland, for 18 months. There were about 10 members attending consistently when they arrived. One of these faithful Latter-day Saints was Evelyn Ferrans, who’s been in the branch since 1992 and was serving as Relief Society president.
“Kelly was such a strength. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to help. And Wayne was such a sweetheart. They brought a lot of joy into people’s lives,” Evelyn says. “They have not been forgotten around here.”
The branch grew to about 30 consistent members during the Petersens’ time there, and Kelly deeply loved the people she and Wayne served with.
“I loved how beautiful the country was, but I would write home and say that it’s the people who are the stars of the story,” she says. “They are faithful, and they work hard because there’s not a lot of people to share the load with. They serve each other and love each other, and it was such a privilege to be in the middle of watching who they are.”
The Petersens also made an impact on the young proselyting missionaries. One in particular was Kyle Powell, whose first area included the Perth Branch.
“I don’t know if I really had the strongest testimony when I arrived in the mission field. I had a lot of doubts,” Kyle says. “The Petersens helped me figure out really what I wanted to do and why I wanted to serve. They helped me become the person that God needed me to be. They were both for sure preserved for their mission; it was more than just my life that they touched out there.”
While the Petersens were in Scotland, Wayne’s sister Cindy and her husband were serving in England.
“We got permission to go up to Scotland for a few days to visit with them and to see them in action. And the people loved Wayne,” Cindy says. It was hard for her to watch her brother not be as strong, mentally or physically, as he’d hoped to be while on a mission. “I always expected them to be mission leaders; they were just that caliber of people. But I am so grateful they had their mission. ... It was the last thing that they got to do as a couple where he could contribute, and Kelly had lots of spiritual experiences that I think were preparing her for the future.”
About halfway through their mission, Wayne began to show signs of mental decline, especially after contracting COVID-19, and they considered that it might be time to go home.
“We fasted and prayed about it, and the answer was very clear: ‘I got you here. I’ll see you through to the end.’ And we stayed. I could see a decline in him, but we stayed,” Kelly says.
They came home as scheduled on December 12, 2022, and the next day, Wayne began hallucinating. “I thought back to that answer that was so clear: ‘I got you here. I’ll see you through to the end.’ We barely made it. That was our window. Had we not gotten our call when we did, we might’ve never served and would’ve never gotten to Scotland.”
Covenants at Work—Right Now
For the past two years, Wayne’s four sisters have each taken a day of the week to visit him in the memory care unit. They drive long distances to see their brother and take him out for a root beer freeze from Chick-fil-A or for a walk around the park if he’s up for it. Their love and the service of dedicated nurses and friends bring beauty and light to Kelly’s life.
Her daughter Lindsie is inspired by how her mom is going through this experience with so much grace.
“My mom’s example, the blessings of the temple, and [the] enabling power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ give our family perspective and help us see that this will all be worth it,” she says. “My parents are both full of dignity and faith and strength because of the gospel of Jesus Christ and because they’ve chosen to cling to Him and to their covenants.”
As Wayne’s dementia has progressed, visits have become more taxing. After one particularly hard day, Kelly left the care center sobbing. She began to pray to Heavenly Father, asking what purpose this disease could possibly play in Wayne’s life.
“Wayne Petersen came to earth to learn, love, to gain knowledge, to help people, to build relationships. But now he has no idea what a grandpa is; he is indifferent to all these relationships that were everything to him. If he proved himself in life and his test is over, what is the purpose of this disease? It’s ravaging his dignity; he’s living out his worst fear,” Kelly says, noting that Wayne feared dementia after watching Kelly’s mother experience Alzheimer’s disease.
“I’m pouring my heart out to Heavenly Father, asking what the purpose of what he’s lost is, when I felt this very calm assurance. And then the thought came: ‘Of all the things he’s lost, he’s still in possession of the most important thing, and that is his covenants.’ His covenants aren’t something he’ll get back one day—he has those right now,” Kelly says.
As the matriarch of the family, she feels the power of their covenant marriage helping her arrive at solutions to family problems.
“That’s the beautiful thing—Wayne is a covenant keeper right now,” Kelly says. “And those covenants are at work right now. I feel the strength of that.
“Wayne and I have had a great life together, filled with laughter, love, family, friends, adventure, and lots of blessings, and they all stem from one source: our Savior, Jesus Christ. We are filled with hope for our future, trusting in His plan, and looking forward to more joy.”
Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the July/August 2025 issue of LDS Living magazine.
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