How I Became a Baha’i by Janet King
How I Became a Baha’i (and so much more) account: Iowa Memories from Jan King, submitted August 2022
I first encountered the Baha’i Faith on a visit to the House of Worship in 1970 but it wasn’t until 1976 when I lived in the Cedar Rapids area that I began to seriously study it. I had met Bob & Diane Findlay and followed their journey to becoming Baha’is but I was very involved in Lovely Lane Methodist Church and was not searching for a new Faith. Once I recognized
all the positive changes for the Findlays after they declared as Baha’is, I began to pay more attention. I read a book about religions of the world and studied several books about the Faith. I was given a prayer book and started saying the short obligatory prayer on a regular basis (not fully realizing the power behind that prayer). My husband Pete and I began attending numerous firesides. It was at one of the firesides in Kathy and Jim Siegling’s home that we declared as Baha’is. That was in the spring of 1978.
Then began the years of our nomad life. Pete was restless and needing to find himself with work. He thought he would be happier working in a larger company so off we went! Still ‘baby Baha’is’ we moved in the fall of 1978 to Albuquerque, New Mexico where Pete had taken a new job. He decided at that point he did not want to remain a Baha’i, but I felt I would be going backwards if I left the Faith. We were concerned about going different directions with our spiritual lives while raising our boys, then 2 and 3 ½ so I told him whenever he went to church I would go with him. I continued to attend Baha’i activities as much as possible and took the kids with me. New Mexico didn’t meet Pete’s needs so it wasn’t long before we returned to Iowa.
This time we located in Dallas Center, Iowa and Pete commuted to Urbandale to work. We moved there in Jan 1980. Pete was not a declared Baha’i then but the boys and I went to Feasts and other activities in Des Moines and I worked on planning and teaching children’s classes with Chris & Carol Carpp. I learned so much from Carol about planning Writings based, quality classes and that knowledge was invaluable to me in the coming years! I also attended the Methodist Church with Pete, sang in the choir there and took boys to Sunday School. I of course never joined the church but they knew I was Baha’i. I did help with Sunday School classes and with Vacation Bible School. They asked me at one point to be Education Director of the Sunday School but I turned them down and told them as a Baha’i I might offend someone by how I would do things. My Dad’s cousin and his wife lived outside town and they were very active in that church. I remember giving a talk to the women’s group from church about the Faith. Myrna Minger was the only Baha’i I knew in the county and she was largely inactive by that time. While in Dallas Center, Pete rejoined the Faith after attending a summer school with me. (He’d spent a lot of time under a tree with Scott Matheny at that summer school!)
Another good memory from that time was when Bill Brown held firesides in their Des Moines home. A large number of Cambodians declared after attending those firesides and it brought lots of challenges to the community! I remember Bill stopped the firesides in order to consolidate and try to integrate the new believers into the community. When he resumed the firesides a couple of years later he said this time there would be no request to the Universal House of Justice for prayers for the success of their endeavors!! My attendance at the Des Moines Feasts also brought challenges for the community. My two young boys and Delores Martin’s son Louis made Feasts much more lively than their staid older attendees had been used to!!
Pete got the itch to move again and we left in fall of 1984, this time for Olathe, Kansas. Tom and Terri Bennett hosted a farewell party for us and I remember Cindy and Curtis wrote a special song for the event. I believe it was entitled ‘Never Say Goodbye’ and a line in the song said it should be ‘so long for now.’ Remembering that message helped me get through the next couple of moves!
Our Iowa Baha’i roots also helped us establish new contacts wherever we went. We both served on the Assembly in Olathe when it was newly formed after the special teaching campaign of William Sears. Based on what I had learned from the Carpps, I created curriculum and taught children’s classes in our home for the Baha’i children in the area. While we were there my brother Steve declared as a Baha’i in Cedar Rapids, also in Jim and Kathy Siegling’s home. Steve hadn’t told me yet when I got a call of congratulations from Bob Postlethwaite, our Auxiliary Board member at the time. I had no idea what he was congratulating me for! It was close to Ayyam-i-Ha so I sent some flowers and later learned they arrived right after my sister-in-law Linda had decided to declare. When I next talked with Linda she was very surprised about how I’d heard and I responded, “just telephone, telegraph, or tell a Baha’i!”
1986 found us moving again, this time to Denver, Colorado area. I was so looking forward to being in a larger community where there would be classes the boys could attend without me planning them but guess what!! There were no children’s classes there at that time so I again applied what I’d learned in Iowa and with the help of a group of other young Baha’i mothers we created more curriculum. One of the couples involved was Kathy and Dick Staller, who I had first known in Des Moines. It really is a small world!
1989 finally brought us back to Iowa and the Cedar Rapids area. We had come full circle. This time I was determined not to teach children’s classes because by that time our boys were in junior high and high school. Silly me! Baha’u’llah had other plans. I’d sent all the curriculum we’d developed in Colorado to National for them to use in any way they saw fit. I didn’t want our efforts to just sit on a shelf and I felt they were good lessons someone else might be able to use. Those plans reached National about the time they were starting to develop the Core Curriculum and the plans were right along the lines of what they envisioned was needed. I was asked to join their efforts and help with Core Curriculum development. I reaped the bounty of attending lots of meetings at Louhelen and doing just that. About the same time I got the request from National, Auxiliary Board Member Marcia Gitchell, who I had known in Kansas, called asking me to be an assistant for her, with my focus being on children and youth. Yes, Baha’ullah’s message got through and I said yes. By this time I was teaching full time again, attending grad school nights and summers and trying to keep up with two high schoolers. Need I add it was the busiest time of my life?
Another bounty I had came a few years later. When letters came out from the Universal House of Justice asking us to incorporate the arts in our Feasts and other activities, I worked with Becky Jensen and Mark McDowell on a series of Arts Firesides. Our presentations incorporated music and art and we tried to appeal to all the senses. It was such an honor to be a part of those firesides. The themes I remember were: The Equality of Women and Men; A Healing Medicine; Oneness; Peace and Unity; On the Wings of Prayer. We shared them at Feasts, firesides, summer schools, and wherever we could.
It has been and continues to be such a bounty to be a member of the Baha’i Faith. Thanks for letting me share some of my memories.
Allah’u’Abha,
Jan