Elder Ned B. Roueché

Of the Seventy

Growing up on a farm in Kaysville, Utah, taught young Ned Roueché (pronounced Roo-SHAY), born on 5 August 1934, how to work. His parents were less active during his childhood years, but one night Ned, who enjoyed ballroom dancing, was asked to help with a floor show at an MIA dance. “I went on a Tuesday night and decided to go to church on Sunday. I began attending and never quit,” he recalls. A year later his bishop called him on a mission at the age of 21. “I knew it was the right thing to do,” he says.

After serving a mission in Mexico, Ned married JoAnn Sheffield in the Salt Lake Temple in 1958 and studied engineering at the University of Utah. After the birth of the third of their five children, he interviewed with IBM and knew he wanted to join the company. Following one more year of schooling at Weber State College in electronics engineering, he began his 31-year career in field engineering with IBM.

During those years he dedicated his hours out of the office to his wife—whom he describes as being a support and inspiration—and to his family, to the community, and to the Church. He served as bishop of the Kaysville First Ward and then the Sixth Ward and later served nearly 10 years as a counselor in a stake presidency. He likes people and recalls a conversation he had while fishing with a less-active friend, who said to him, “Whatever you have, I want.” It proved a turning point in his friend’s life. “I’ve enjoyed feeling directed as I’ve worked with people,” he says. “And I’m happy that I’ve always been ready and willing to serve the Lord.”

Upon his release from the stake presidency, he worked with Varsity Scouts for a four-year period, during which time he retired from IBM. “It was good preparation,” he admits, for his calling to serve as president of the Venezuela Barcelona Mission, where he served from 1994 to 1997.

Of his call to the Seventy, Elder Roueché says, “My wife and I enjoy serving the Lord. I have gained a deep testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, the Lord’s living prophets, and the Savior, our Redeemer, and His restored Church, which continually blesses our lives.”