Gail Rorabacher

Gail was born on July 13, 1946 to Everett and Marguerite Rowe in Detroit, Michigan. The second of 4 children. 

At about six years old, when a neighbor friend told her that God loves everybody, it struck Gail that God loved her! That pointed her heart toward God. At the age of twelve she was baptized and gave her life to Christ and walked with Him faithfully until He called her home. 

As a naturally responsible person, Gail was a great help with housework and caring for her younger siblings, while her mother was at work. Her diligence made her a good student in Wayne, Michigan where she graduated from high school in 1964 as a member of the National Honor Society. 

She met Steve Rorabacher their junior year in high school and started dating him in September of 1963. She led him to Christ through faithfully bringing him to church with her. They were married two years later on July 16, 1965 at the age of nineteen.

She was well-known for her quiet and gentle spirit. And everyone who knew her was blessed by her warm and brilliant smile and her wonderful sense of humor. If there was a group of women laughing together in some gathering, you would find Gail there in the middle of it! 

As the mother of four children, she sewed clothes for herself and her family, cooked nutritional meals, kept an orderly household, decorated the house, created her own ornamental garden, and grew her own vegetables. She home-schooled her children, read them countless stories, and taught them to love Jesus. She often took her grandchildren on outings to places like the Albuquerque Zoo, the Natural History Museum, and the Explora Science Museum. 

She set aside private time each day to spend with God in prayer and reading His word. And she wrote a great deal of poetry as God led her from time to time. In the warmer months, she often visited quiet places like the Albuquerque Botanical Garden to refresh and restore her own spirit. 

She was a great example of a submissive/supportive wife with a “gentle and quiet spirit, which in Gods sight, is very precious” (1 Peter 3:4) She faithfully and tirelessly supported Steve's, forty- five-year house-church ministry in Michigan, Ohio, and New Mexico. They started and led a Teen Community Bible Study group together in Albuquerque.” Gail and Steve loved to travel together, go for daily walks, play cards, and watch movies. 

Because of her efficient and orderly lifestyle, she found time to participate and lead in a number of organizations like Community Bible Study, Teen Community Bible Study, Bible Study Fellowship, National Right to Life, Kiwanis, Neighborhood Watch, Jazzercise, and TOPS. 

Once she got her own computer and color printer, she created, printed, and mailed hundreds of her own greeting cards to cheer and encourage friends and family.

In her later years, after finding powerful healing and encouragement at a “Captivating” retreat for women in Colorado, she began putting on her own local “Captivating” retreats twice each year until the Lord called her home. Even in her seventies she started and led a women's weekly Bible study at the Riverside Church of Christ. She often gave her time lavishly to friends who needed her encouragement and counsel, and to younger women who needed a mentor. 

Through all of this, because of her innate orderliness, her fruitful and active life never seemed stressed or hectic. 

In her late seventies, she grew increasingly homesick for heaven and welcomed the idea of seeing the Lord soon.

Gail is preceded in death by both parents. She is survived by her sister, Lorna Thomason, brother, Wendell Rowe, sister, Jackie Schussler, her Husband Steve Rorabacher, her Four children: Jennifer Bear, Emily Quane, Caleb Rorabacher ,and Benjamin Rorabacher, as well as eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. 

The influence and powerful Christlike example that she was throughout her life cannot adequately be described or measured! She will be fondly remembered and greatly missed!