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Sister Mary Ann Tregoning Sister Mary Ann Tregoning is one of 650 Medical Mission Sisters in 19 nations trying to be present to others in the spirit of Jesus the Healer. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Sister Mary Ann, Valedictorian of her class at Immaculata High School, earned her R.N. at Providence Hospital School of Nursing in Detroit. She worked for several years as a staff nurse before joining Medical Mission Sisters. Sister Mary Ann contracted rheumatic fever when she was in the novitiate. "It seemed I did not have the health for the missions, and I was asked to leave," she recalls. "The Lord of surprises intervened." A year later, she became a volunteer with the Catholic Medical Mission Board in New York, and was sent to serve at our Holy Family Hospital in Berekum, Ghana, where she was a head nurse and nursing tutor for 3 ½ years. "I was the first member of my original group to go abroad, and the last to be professed." Upon re-entering Medical Mission Sisters in 1973, Sister Mary Ann was assigned to Holy Family Hospital in Techiman, Ghana, where she was hospital matron in charge of primary health care, and also supervisor of the outpatient department. In 1983, Sister Mary Ann moved to Sunyani, Ghana, and began 21 years of work with the Diocesan Health Service. She served for 5 years as Diocesan Primary Heath Care Coordinator, and for 16 years as Executive Secretary/Director of Diocesan Health Services, with "overall responsibility that things kept going the way they should" in the 4 diocesan hospitals, clinic, pharmacy, nurses' training college, and midwifery school. Sister Mary Ann participated on 2 national boards, the Christian Health Association of Ghana, and the Ghana Health Service Council, and also served as our District Coordinator in West Africa. She was elected to a 6-year term as Sector Coordinator for Africa, and moved to Accra, Ghana, in 2004. She also works part-time as technical advisor for human resource development at the National Catholic Secretariat's Department of Health. "For someone who was afraid to travel from one town to another alone, I can only be amazed at the gift of going to so many places and being with our Sisters in so many countries, here in Africa as well as in Europe, Indonesia and India," Sister Mary Ann says. "I thank God and can truly say that I would not want any other life."
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