With Mitt away, Ann told George she was interested in attending LDS services. The governor headed straight for the Davies home. He asked Ann's parents for permission to send some U.S.-based missionaries to meet with Ann. Her mother was an easy sell. But getting clearance from Ann's father, whose rejection of organized religion ran deep, would be a much tougher challenge.

Ultimately, Edward Davies and George Romney shook hands on an agreement: George could send the missionaries, provided Ann's mother sat in on the discussions. Ann's younger brother, Jim Davies, says their father relented based on the trust he had in his daughter and the admiration he had for George Romney. Besides, the governor outranked him. In addition to being a self-made businessman, Edward Davies was the part-time mayor of Bloomfield Hills.

The missionaries came for six straight sessions, sitting with Ann in the family room on the lower level of the Davies' split-level home, taking her through the LDS conversion process. Besides her mother, Ann's friend Cindy Burton sat in on the lessons. Cindy also was the girlfriend of Ann's older brother, Rod, who was doing a study-abroad year in England. Little brother Jim wanted to sit in as well, but his parents decided he was too young. So Jim stood outside the family room window, listening in.

Before long, George Romney was picking Ann up and driving her to services at the LDS chapel, and Ann began bringing Jim along. When she decided to be baptized, she asked Mitt's father to do the honors. Dressed in white, she followed George into the baptismal font, where she was immersed while he said the prayers. By February 1967, Jim had also persuaded his parents to let him join the church, and again George performed the baptism.

Even Rod's girlfriend Cindy decided to become a Mormon, though her father forbade it, warning her that she would become "a social outcast." When Cindy wrote to Rod to tell him of her plans, he agreed with her father, vehemently objecting.

When Mitt lamented in letters home from France that he was failing to gain converts to Mormonism in one of the world's most secular, wine-loving nations, his father tried to cheer him up.

"I was thrilled to stand in for you in connection with Jim's baptism," George wrote back. "This makes two converts here that are certainly yours so don't worry about your difficulty in converting those Frenchmen! I am sure you can appreciate that Ann and Jim each are worth a dozen of them, at least to us."

A few months later, even Rod, the family rebel who had been enjoying the pub-crawling life during his year abroad, returned home a baptized Mormon. Mitt had arranged for missionaries to contact him in England. Thanks largely to Mitt Romney, in less than one year the entire progeny of anti-religious Edward Davies had joined the LDS faith.