Brother Ostler and his wife, Sandy, have seven children. He served in the Colombia Bogotá Mission as a bishop and on two high councils. Before coming to BYU, he taught in the Church Educational System. He has directed many BYU Travel Study tours throughout the United States to American heritage and Church history sites, as well as to Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. He and his family lived in Jerusalem while he was a faculty member at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies.