"We neither seek calls or have expectations that calls will come to us," he said at a press conference on Saturday. "I pledge to do everything I can to be worthy."

Reaching the highest pinnacle of LDS leadership was, no doubt, unimaginable to young Quentin growing up in Logan, where he met and married his high school sweetheart, Mary Gaddie, and earned a degree in political science from Utah State University. He could not have conceived it during his two year LDS missionary service in England, either.

Nor would it have entered his mind during the 33 years he worked and raised a family in northern California. He was busily building an impressive career, first as a managing partner of Carr, McClellan, Ingersoll, Thompson and Horn, a San Francisco Bay area law firm, then president and chief executive officer of California Healthcare System and finally vice chairman of Sutter Health System.

During that time, though, Cook was also putting in plenty of hours in the LDS Church's all-volunteer clergy as a bishop, stake president's counselor, stake president, regional representative, and Area Seventy. On his watch, several Bay Area LDS congregations grew to include greater numbers of Tongans, Samoans, and members who spoke Mandarin Chinese, among others.

Cook became an LDS general authority in April 1996, when he was named to the Second Quorum of Seventy. In that quorum and later the First Quorum of Seventy, he supervised Latter-day Saints in the North American Southeast, Northwest and Pacific Island areas. He was a counselor in the Philippines/Micronesia Area Presidency and executive director of the church's missionary department.

Those assignments have taken Cook around the world, meeting with Mormons in nearly every region. It has provided on-the-ground training for leadership in a global faith.

In February, Cook was the public face for the church after four Mormon missionaries, all Nigerian, were abducted from their apartment in the west African country. The motives of the captors were unknown, but when the missionaries were released unharmed, Cook fought back tears as he spoke about the "wonderful young people" who serve the church and the sacrifices they make.

For those who wanted a non-American apostle or at least a non-Utahn, Henry B. Eyring, newly called to the LDS First Presidency had an answer.

At Saturday's press conference, Eyring said he didn't want to offend the people of Cache County, but "I don't even think of him as a Utahn." - Tribune reporter Jessica Ravitz contributed to this report.