The Kaufusi family is extraordinarily normal
Michelle Kaufusi (left) and her husband Steve Kaufusi go shopping Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016 in Provo. Because the family leads such busy lives, they mostly only find time to shop after 9pm on weeknights. DOMINIC VALENTE, Daily Herald
Michelle Kaufusi shops Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016 in Provo. With such a large family, and a family with lots of athletes, the Kaufusis find themselves shopping multiple times a week. DOMINIC VALENTE, Daily Herald
Michelle Kaufusi shops Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016 in Provo. The Kaufusi family will often go through hundreds of dollars of groceries a week to feed their large family, some of which are athletes and lead very active lifestyles. DOMINIC VALENTE, Daily Herald
Steve Kaufusi pictured on his LDS mission in Tonga.
Steve Kaufusi, defensive line coach for the Brigham Young University football team, says his family is very normal.
Those who know them may tend to disagree.
When it comes to life and helping their children plan for LDS missions, sports careers and beyond, Steve and Michelle Kaufusi are extraordinary in their normalness.
Michelle runs a tight ship at home and her follow through with her children is consistent and solid. They know their place on the Kaufusi team.
At home, Michelle’s lineup of helpers is a veritable ABC and Ds of hard workers — that’s Alexis, Bronson, Corbin, and the twins Daryl and Devin – the five Kaufusi children.
Courtesy
A Kaufusi family photo pictures Steve and Michelle sitting in front, left to right: Devin, Daryl, Bronson, Hilary Smith Kaufusi, Corbin and Alexis.
Bronson’s wife Hilary Smith Kaufusi has been added to the family lineup.
The work ethic, though at times a struggle, has paid off in many areas of their life, according to Bronson and Corbin. They both admit they have been dubbed by former fellow missionaries the “bathroom cleaners” and “dish washers” of their missions.
All five Kaufusi children have not only earned full-ride athletic scholarships, but academic scholarships as well. Oldest child Alexis, 26, is currently getting her MBA degree while coaching women’s basketball at Timpview High School in Provo.
Her brothers and sister have or are currently serving full-time missions.
Called to serve family and God
Bronson, 25, served a mission in New Zealand, and played both football and basketball at BYU — something that has only been done three times before at the university prior to Bronson and his brother Corbin.
Tyrone Brown and John Moala played basketball and football, and you have to go back to the 1973-74 seasons when Gifford Nielsen first played on both teams. Elder Nielsen currently serves as a member of the LDS Church’s Quorum of the Seventy.
Bronson was drafted this spring by the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League.
He said his mission and his parents have taught him a lot.
“At a young age and as a football player I learned you reap what you sow,” Bronson said. “I took a lot of things from my mission. You set goals, planning, time management, planning is really big. You learn how to handle it.”
Bronson said he also learned you can be a good member of the church, go on a mission, go to college — and play in the NFL.
Corbin, 23, served a mission in South Korea, and for the past two years has been playing on the BYU men’s basketball team and will join them again in January for the 2016-17 season. He is currently on the BYU football team, following his brother’s lead and playing two collegiate sports.
Courtesy
Corbin Kaufusi pictured while serving his LDS mission in South Korea.
Daryl, 20, is serving a mission in South Korea. Before her mission she played women’s soccer at BYU-Hawaii and anticipates playing when she returns.
Devin, 20, is serving a mission in Switzerland, and plans on playing football, like his brothers, when he returns.
When Michelle isn’t serving on the Provo City School District Board of Education or any number of civic committees, she says she is an at-home mom.
While Steve works hard with the BYU football team, and serves in various church callings — including recently as a bishop in a young adult ward — Michelle has kept the kids on task with everything from chores to piano lessons, and continues to keep the home a place where they and their friends want to come.
In order to do that, it takes discipline, organization and a family that knows how to work together and play together.
“My parents are really good examples of hard workers. They were often tired, but we still had fun,” Bronson said. “From a young age I recognized their work ethic. It was always a family effort.
“We’d get up on Saturday mornings and go to the board to see what our chores were. Before you could go out you had to have your chores done.”
Bronson said he learned the hard way how important those chores were.
It was his senior year, and Timpview High had just won the state football championship. A big party was planned in Provo following the game. But Bronson had not cleaned the bathroom. His mom got him home and on his knees scrubbing.
“We raced to get it done,” Bronson remembers, with a laugh.
Michelle said Bronson didn’t complain too much, but did recognize that he was probably the only state champion football player who was cleaning a toilet rather than partying with friends.
“My mom has some great one-line reminders like, ‘You know the rules,’ ‘Do it right the first time,’ and ‘Those things happen,'” Bronson said.
He said she doesn’t hesitate to use them as a vocal reminder of commitment to duty.
When the kids asked Steve for an allowance, like the one their friends got, he told them, “We don’t have allowance, you work.”
Corbin knows about getting chores done and the wrath of his mom if he didn’t. The night before he entered the Missionary Training Center he was out in the front yard with car lights shining on the bushes he was supposed to have trimmed and pulled, trying to get it done.
On the night before her farewell talk in church, Daryl was using her cellphone flashlight to weed the front garden.
And about those cellphones, Steve and Michelle have the charging bar in their bedroom. The rule is: have the phones on the power strip by 10 p.m. or lose the use of it the next day.
Michelle says this helps her and her husband know the kids are home by curfew, they are off the technology and they have obeyed.
“We were raised good,” Alexis said with a smirk. “Hey, we’re not in jail!”
Lest you think the Kaufusi kids aren’t cared for and loved, think again. Just the food shopping is enough to bring a normal person to his or her knees, but not Michelle.
Genelle Pugmire
Bronson, Michelle and Corbin Kaufusi at home in Provo.
She must feed some of these kids a training table of 6,000 to 7,000 calories a day. It takes planning and endurance.
For 15 years Michelle has spent, on average, about $2,000 a month on food to keep her kids supplied with energy and proper nutrition.
Think carts of food — one just loaded with meat, others with whole grain breads, milk, eggs, then vegetables and fruit. At home three refrigerators are waiting. One refrigerator is in the kitchen and two in the garage, where mom’s car is purposely parked right up to the doors so they can’t be opened.
“We go through two loaves of bread and a gallon of milk a day,” Michelle said. “My food bill has never dropped.”
Mission prep
When it came to mission preparation Michelle was on task. First of all, the kids got refresher courses in piano and learned how to play many of the songs in the LDS hymnbook. She had a chorister come to the house and had the boys learn how to conduct music.
The follow up to that was directing music in a Sacrament meeting. Family Home Evenings were set aside to learn how to shake hands, look people in the eyes and start conversations.
Those skills were mostly learned by all the kids working at the Days Market in their neighborhood. Michelle and Steve believed, that as baggers, the kids would have to talk with customers and learn customer service, and stay humble.
Serving missions has kept the Kaufusi kids grounded and focused, and their eyes singled — and not on sports.
“There comes a point on your mission that you don’t care about anything else but a mission,” Corbin said. “To keep in shape my goal was to run everywhere. Every day I was drenched in sweat.
“There wasn’t much of an adjustment going on my mission. It was easy to work hard.”
Corbin said he was lucky he had accommodating companions. Coming home for him was a much harder adjustment than leaving.
“Corbin was a different guy coming off his mission,” Steve said.
But that was a good thing because both Steve and Corbin said he lost himself in serving the Lord, and put aside sports for two years. During that time he also grew 2.5 inches.
When it comes to success in life the Kaufusi chuldren aren’t perfect, but they aren’t unlike a modern-day trio of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from the Old Testament. They ate properly, worked hard and served the Lord.
It’s obvious the Kaufusis are public figures of sorts. People recognize them, but when it came to their missions Steve told his kids to not get caught up in the fame.
“I told the kids to be a regular person, focus on the Lord’s work, and kids will look up to you,” he said.