President Geoff and Sister Rosie Fowler arrived in July of 2023 to serve as Mission Leaders for Romania.
How It Began
It all started with a dance class.
Geoff Fowler had returned from serving his mission in Romania in 1996 and went to the ballroom dance class being hosted by his YSA Ward in Bothell (a suburb of Seattle) Washington USA.
When he got there, he recognized a girl who had been in his home Stake before he left. He had noticed her before, but they were in different wards and had gone to different high schools, so their first dance was also their first official meeting.
The general practice for the dance class was to change partners frequently, but the wise class teacher noticed a spark between Geoff and Rosie and so for the rest of the evening, per the teacher’s direction, partners did not change.
Geoff and Rosie fell in love at “first dance” and were engaged just a few months later.
They were married in the Seattle Washington Temple in December of 1996, and returned there on a weekly basis for the next several years. As college students at both the University of Washington (President Fowler studying International Relations) and Bastyr University (Sister Fowler studying pre-med) and working part-time (he worked in IT and she was a figure skating coach) the exact time for weekly temple trips had to be flexible—but it always remained a mandatory priority in their schedule.
In 1998, their oldest son Braedan was born and two and a half years later, their only daughter, Amalia, joined the family.
Over the next few decades, as they followed the promptings from the Lord, they were led to several different places that they called home.
In 2002, they moved to Utah, where Geoff worked at Weber State University as a network server engineer. While there, they were blessed with a second son named Ethan. In addition to working at the University, President Fowler took some classes there that prompted him to change his career to Church Education, and he became a full-time seminary teacher. “I just felt like there was a different direction that I was supposed to go,” he said.
In 2008, they began again to feel that the Lord would need them elsewhere and soon the Fowler family, by then a family of six as their son Danny had been born a year earlier, moved to California where Geoff had accepted a position as the Institute Director at a Community College near San Francisco.
Their youngest son Clayton was born in 2011 and in 2013, Rosie started a small business as a portrait and wedding photographer. She says, 'I find such great joy in capturing special moments in people’s lives. Pictures help us remember events in a way that nothing else can and I love helping people keep their treasured memories.”
During the fifteen years the family lived in California, their sons all became very involved in competitive swimming. Their oldest son ranked in the top 100 swimmers in the United States during his senior year in High School, setting several freestyle records.
Not to be outdone by an older brother, their second son Ethan broke several of Braedan’s records and then Danny carried on the tradition by breaking the new records set by Ethan.
(Now that Danny is in Romania, his pool time is a little scarce, but he recently competed in an international swim meet in Dubia, winning every event. Clayton is also swimming while they are in Romania and recently raced in Belgium.)
Their daughter is an award-winning artist and vocalist and speaks Spanish fluently. She served a mission Spanish-speaking in Chicago. Her husband is originally from Peru, and they speak Spanish together, so her language ability has continued to grow. She speaks so well when the Fowlers visited Mexico, the taxi driver was surprised that, “this young girl who looks so American could speak better Spanish than I can.”
As a family of seven, adventures, music and time together were always priorities.
The entire family sings and plays several instruments. “Music brings joy to our home and peace to the soul,” says Sora Fowler.
Hiking, bike riding and swimming are also favorite family activities. “As a family,” explained Sora Fowler, “we would rather be moving than sitting.” Innertube floats down the rivers through the Redwoods, Disneyland, the beach, snorkeling and boogie boarding, early sunrise walks and long hikes in the afternoons gave them a lot of time for family conversations as well as valuable one-on-one talks with their children.
Missionary Work as a Family Affair
Missionary work has also always been part of their family culture. Sora Fowler was known as “Mama Fowler” to the all the missionaries who were serving in Antioch California Stake.
In California, missionaries at their family dinner table were a regular occurrence, but more importantly, their door was always open when the missionaries had friends to teach. Over the last decade, the Fowler home hosted hundreds of missionary lessons, most were friends of the missionaries, but some lessons were taught to their own family friends.
A year before they arrived here in Romania, their son Danny, with the help of the missionaries, taught and prepared one of his High School friends for baptism.
All this missionary work in their home, prepared them (and their sons) in many ways for their future service as mission leaders. President Fowler recounts, “As we taught with them, we learned from them. We saw many wonderful and effective missionary skills in action. It was an invaluable experience for our family.”
Three of their five children have completed mission service. Braedan in Norway, Amalia in Chicago Illinois speaking Spanish and Ethan in Belgium/Netherlands speaking Dutch. (Ethan was released a few months ago and returned “home” to his parents here in Romania for several weeks before returning to the United States to attend Brigham Young University.)
The family thought they were settled in California, but then as a “complete surprise,” they got a call from Elder Bednar’s secretary asking to meet with them. “We had a preliminary interview with him at the beginning of November 2022. Then about a week later received a call from President Nelson to serve at mission leaders,” explained President Fowler.
Sister Fowler added, 'The words President Nelson used made us smile. He said, ‘We’d love to call you to serve as mission leaders, do you think you can swing it?’ Of course, when the prophet asks if we could swing it, we did our best to figure how to swing it! It was such a surprise to us. We had to figure out what to do with our home, our two puppies, my small business, and our children, all at different places in their lives.”
President Fowler continued, “We love missionaries and missionary work, so we were very excited to serve, the logistical side of how to leave our lives at home was a bit of a challenge. When President Nelson called us to serve, he did not tell us where we would be serving, that came about 1 1/2 months later. He did mention my serving in Romania as a young missionary and expressed his love for the country and people and shared that he had grandchildren serve in Romania. You could feel Romania was very special to President Nelson. Knowing that just made us feel even more excited when the actual assignment came a few weeks later.”
Danny and Clayton left their California lives behind to live here with their parents. They attend the American International School of Bucharest and travel with their parents visiting different Branches in Romania every weekend. They both love doing work with the missionaries and see this experience as one that will enrich their personal growth exponentially.
Clayton is not only planning on serving a mission in a few years, he is also planning on serving as a senior missionary in about 40 years.
“They are really thriving and enjoying this international experience, and they are both working hard to learn Romanian,” said President Fowler about his sons.
Just like at home in California, the mission experience here is a family experience from morning to night.
President Fowler explained, “As part of our mission leader training, about six months before we arrived in Romania, we met with a couple who had served as mission leaders in Ukraine. One of the things they shared with us was that the first six months of their mission service was particularly difficult and hard for their children, because their dad was doing most of the missionary work and traveling a lot. They decided that they wanted to do missionary work as a family and so they began to travel together on the weekends. We decided that when we arrived in Romania that we wanted to serve together as a family. Our boys travel, teach with, experience as much of mission life here in Romania as is possible with their school schedule. It has been so fun working as a family. We each love the missionaries and feel joy working together with them.”
Sister Fowler sees incredible blessings to her family both here and at home. 'The blessings that the gospel has brought our family are hard to measure. Those blessings are woven into every detail of our lives. We have seen the Lord's hand in the details, both small and large and felt the peace only He can provide. Early this year our first grandson passed away as a newborn. We felt the strengthening power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ in such eloquent ways. His love brought us joy that was as great as our sorrow and that peace which passeth all understanding. We are so grateful for covenants and the sealing power which allows our family to have hope that we will all be together again eternally.”
Service and missionary work have always been part of the Fowler Family culture. “My wife is really good at looking for opportunities to include those who may be lonely or in need of support. She loves to invite people to spend holidays with us or to come to Family Night,” says President Fowler. “Over the years we have made many wonderful friends that became a part of our family, just because we included them in what we were already doing as a family.”
Sister Fowler brought a lot of things with her from her home in California to re-make their home here in Romania. The family tradition of inclusion is one of the familiar things she brought. Just as in California, there are always guests, missionaries, and friends at the dinner table as the Fowlers continue to love, serve, and invite.
Sister Fowler is grateful for this new opportunity for their family. “Going back to the same mission President Fowler knew and loved allowed each of us to experience the beauty, the culture and the people of Romania. Most of all we love the people.”
And yes! They are still dancing together, only now they are learning traditional Romanian dances with the missionaries and dancing at activities with the Romanian Young Single Adults.
