Once a mailman knocked on the door of the home of C. Scott Grow. "I just have to tell you that your husband's name is really funny," he told Rhonda Grow when she answered the door.
Sister Grow didn't laugh.
But today, years later, she sees things a little differently.
After all, she said, it isn't often someone has a name that is also a sentence: "See Scott grow." Or that his parents' names follow a similar pattern: Elsie Mae Grow and Cecil Wood Grow (Cecil would grow).
Sometimes she even starts her Church talks that way. The family pedigree, she said, "lets people laugh without feeling embarrassed."
But all joking aside, Elder Grow said if his name helps Latter-day Saints — especially children — remember him and the important Church work he is trying to accomplish, then it is worth it.
Sustained to the First Quorum of the Seventy April 2, Elder Grow can look back on his life and see a chain of experiences and the influence of numerous spiritual leaders that, through their example, taught him the lessons he will draw on now.
His father, for example, never left on vacation without completing his Church assignments as a ward or stake clerk or bishopric member.
"We would always stop by the ward meetinghouse and Mom and I would sit in the car up to an hour at a time, waiting while Dad would do his Church work."
Raised in Boise, Idaho, Elder Grow was almost 8 years old before the first of his three younger brothers was born. Because of the age difference, he was an only child for much of his early youth.
"Mom spent a lot of time with me," he said, recalling hours at the Boise train depot and park. "I remember years of doing dishes with Mom. She would always wash. I would always dry and we would just talk."
Elder Grow first recalled, while attending Junior Sunday School, knowing Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. "It didn't seem strange at all to me that God would speak to a 14-year-old boy," he said. He also read the Book of Mormon for the first time as a child.
But his true childhood loves were track and cross country; he would later participate in both as a student at Brigham Young University.
However, Elder Grow contracted typhoid and hepatitis while serving in the Southeast Mexico Mission from 1967 to 1969 and did not pick up the sports after his return home.
It was on his mission that he learned to be "more outgoing" and to "relate to those with a background different than mine."
He also saw the hand of the Lord directing and building His earthly kingdom. On one occasion, while serving in Veracruz, Mexico, Elder Grow and his companion met a "family that said they had been praying for several days for God to send His representatives to them." The missionaries taught and baptized every member of the family, except a 7-year-old daughter named Leticia.
Elder Grow promised the little girl, who was not old enough to join her family in baptism, that if he ever had a daughter, he would name her Leticia.
Upon his return from Mexico, Elder Grow married his sweetheart, Rhonda Lee Patten, in the Salt Lake Temple. The two — although from different towns and attending different universities — had shared a "romance of writing" for more than three years. They did not postpone starting a family and named their first child, a girl, Leticia.
Elder Grow worked as a certified public accountant and served in numerous Church callings as the family grew to include eight children. The family settled in Meridian, Idaho, and spent free time hiking and skiing. "Our kids would say that we mostly worked," said Sister Grow.
Even though the Grows had grown up "in town," Elder and Sister Grow bought five acres and built a house. They raised horses, cows, chickens and sheep. The children had the responsibility to water animals and move irrigation pipes. "We weren't very good farmers," Sister Grow explained.
And when Elder Grow was called, at the age of 39, as president of the Uruguay Montevideo Mission, Elder and Sister Grow packed 26 pieces of luggage and moved their children — ages 2 to 17 — and the family's dog to Uruguay.
The experience was one of the family's best, as the children learned Spanish and participated in missionary work.
"I think we are very ordinary," said Sister Grow of her family. "I think we relate to people who are very common, because we are from Idaho. We are simple people, really."
"We are not highly educated, not sophisticated, not wealthy," added Elder Grow.
Considering that, they say, they are grateful for all of their life's rich experiences.
Elder Grow, who was called as an Area Authority in 1995, has "lived the history of that position." He would later become one of only two Area Authorities at the time to serve as an area president.
As a new General Authority, Elder Grow is now looking forward to the opportunity to perform the marriage of his youngest daughter, Rachel, to Boyd Law on May 7 in the Boise Idaho Temple.
Elder Grow also looks forward to numerous other opportunities, eager to serve the Lord.
"He has an unusual gift of enthusiasm and optimism," said Sister Grow. "It is nice to live with someone who is so positive."
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