Joni L. Koch

When Joni L. Koch was a child in Joinville, Brazil, his Primary teacher, Sister Eick, took her class to a small airport where a plane had just landed. As the children walked around the aircraft, she taught them that the pilot had arrived safely because he stayed on the right path. That lesson stayed with young Joni, and he decided then that he would choose the right in his own life— a decision that was strengthened over the years by the influence of “a dedicated Primary teacher, a fatherly bishop, and a valiant stake president.”¹

Elder Koch is a second-generation member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Before they married, his parents, Luiz and Etelca Gascho Koch, visited the churches in their town looking for spiritual truth, and his mother promised God that if there was a true church, she and her family would follow it. Within a few hours, missionaries came to their door, and less than six months later the Kochs were baptized. Their son would later describe his own conversion as a quieter process, explaining, “I can’t point to an exact moment in my life where I knew the gospel was true.”²

Joni Luiz Koch was born on March 19, 1962, in Joinville, Santa Catarina, Brazil. After serving a full-time mission in the Brazil São Paulo North Mission, he attended Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where he earned a BS in statistics in 1991, and he went on to earn an executive MBA in logistics from FGV in São Paulo in 1994. For about 25 years he worked in international logistics, serving as an operations manager at EMC, an international logistics manager at Cargill, CEO of Brazil Inland Services for A.P. Møller-Maersk, and CEO of Conexão Marítima Ltda.

Throughout his adult life, Elder Koch has served in many Church callings, including institute teacher, bishop, stake mission president, counselor in a stake presidency, stake president, and Area Seventy. He was serving as president of the Mozambique Maputo Mission when he was sustained as a General Authority Seventy on April 1, 2017. Since then, he has served as Second Counselor in the Africa Southeast Area Presidency and as President of the Brazil Area, and he now serves in the United States Northeast Area Presidency.

On a trip back to Brazil after his mission, Elder Koch visited a friend’s ward, where he met Liliane Michele Ludwig when she walked up to him and asked if he was married. After an eight-month long-distance courtship in which they spent only 15 days together, they were married on April 26, 1988, in the São Paulo Brazil Temple. Shortly after the wedding, while the newlyweds were staying in the dormitories near the temple, Elder Gordon B. Hinckley and his wife, Marjorie, knocked on their door to congratulate them and talk with them about eternal marriage. The Kochs are the parents of two daughters. Reflecting on how his faith has grown, Elder Koch says, “My testimony was built gradually over time through spiritual experiences received through gospel living.”³

Notes:
1. “Elder Joni L. Koch,” Ensign, May 2017.
2. Ryan Morgenegg, “Elder Joni L. Koch Gained Testimony by Gospel Living,” Church News,
April 27, 2017.
3. “Elder Joni L. Koch.”