I AM WILSHIRE - MARGARET KIWIET

Caregiver

When Margaret Kiwiet’s husband, John, proposed, he asked her to be his partner.

“My mother said that if I married a minister, his calling is your calling,” she said. “I always had a call for missions, so his calling fulfilled my calling.”

Kiwiet was born in The Netherlands. The Germans invaded in 1940, and when her father, a Baptist minister, died in 1942, she cared for a farmer’s toddler in order to support her mother and younger sisters. In addition to her tiny salary, she gleaned from the fields and fruit trees. The next year, she became a nanny for another family.

“I rode to work on a bicycle with wooden tires,” she recalled. “The second family gave me enough food to keep my family alive. I’m still in contact with both families.”

After World War II, Kiwiet studied early childhood development in Rotterdam, earning her diploma in 1947. She was a nanny in Rotterdam and The Hague, took literature classes and participated in poetry recitations.

She met her husband in 1946. “We were both active in developing Baptist camps and conferences for young people,” she said. They were married in 1951, after he graduated from the University of Utrecht.

They then began additional study at the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Ruschlikon, Switzerland, and he worked on a Ph.D. in Anabaptist history in Zurich.

“He already had the equivalent of a master of divinity degree in comparative religion and church history but needed Baptist training,” Kiwiet said. “We got to know Baptists from all over Europe. I audited classes to help me learn English.”

In the summers, they organized Baptist camps and conferences in The Netherlands. After his graduation in 1955, they advised Baptist churches on promoting young people’s activities.

“Since Dutch Baptists represent less than 1 percent of the population, it was extremely important to get together,” she said. “All my sisters found husbands there.”

In 1956, he began a year’s study at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and the Kiwiets visited both American Baptist and Southern Baptist encampments. From 1957 to 1962, he headed the Baptist conference center in The Netherlands, which was a seminary in the winter and a conference center and camp in the summer. She organized menus and cooked for up to 150 people.

From 1962 to 1967, he taught church history at the American Baptist seminary in Chicago. “It was sad to leave the Baptist work that my father had started, but John had always felt called to teach,” she said.

They both learned to drive, and for many summers they camped with their five children in a fold-up trailer, eventually visiting all 48 contiguous states.

From 1967 until his retirement in 1990, John Kiwiet taught at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth “because there were more students there, and he’d always wanted to go to Southwestern, ‘the heart of Jerusalem,’” she said. One of his students there was George Mason.

For 10 years, Kiwiet cared for teachers’ children in her home. “There were always five children besides mine—from babies through age 12,” she said. “It was like a big family.”

When her children were in college, she taught 2-year-olds in a Montessori school and then cooked chili at a friend’s chili parlor on Fort Worth’s north side.

Kiwiet also is a witty and compelling speaker. She has spoken in Baptist churches and in middle schools when students study Anne Frank. Besides speaking about her faith and her World War II experiences, she emphasizes how blessed Americans are.

On two sabbaticals, the Kiwiets worked with Baptist churches in The Netherlands. In 1984-85, he studied at England’s Cambridge University. After his retirement, they continued their work among Baptists. He helped launch a seminary in Odessa, Ukraine, taught ministers in Yalta and taught for a year in the Baptist seminary in Prague. As his partner there, she worked in the library.

He died in 2006, and last summer she moved to Dallas to be nearer her daughter, Talitha Kiwiet, and her two grandsons, who are Wilshire members.

There was no question that Wilshire would be Kiwiet’s church home. “I like the church’s programs and involvement with things other than heaven. God’s kingdom is here,” she said.