Seminars and retreats provide women with tools for ongoing personal healing, recognizing and celebrating God’s grace in their lives, and responding confidently and effectively to the needs of others in their families, congregations and communities.
As women, we rarely have the opportunity to reflect on our own life journeys. Come, join others as we go deeper with Sister Care core teachings and grow in our ability to:
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See ourselves as God sees us and know we are truly beloved.
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Recognize some of the tools that help people heal from deep wounds.
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Clarify how we want to use the rest of our one precious life so that we spend our time and energy in ways that grow out of and fulfill our life calling and mission.
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Discern ways to set personal limits in order to embrace God’s purpose for our lives.
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Identify wounds from the past that still need God’s healing touch and learn ways to transform these wounds into life-giving energy.
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Learn ways to recognize the frozen grief of ambiguous loss.
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Recognize and celebrate God’s grace and love in our lives.
Sister Care North America
Sister Care seminars have been taught throughout the United States and Canada for over 3,500 women.
Interested in scheduling a Sister Care seminar in your area? Contact us for more information.
Sister Care International ministry transferred to worldwide women leaders
In the fall of 2025, Rhoda Keener, Sister Care Director, and Carolyn Heggen, psychotherapist specializing in trauma healing, retired from Sister Care International teaching. Their ministry has now been fully transferred to the worldwide women leaders who have been trained as Sister Care teachers. (See Mennonite Mission Network’s Missio Dei booklet below.)
What evolved into the "Sister Care: Equipping Women for Healing Ministry" seminar began in 2008 when Rhoda Keener, then executive director of Mennonite Women USA, led a workshop in Harrisonburg, Virginia entitled “Sister Care” for women. It became clear that there was great interest in resources for personal healing and for helping others heal. Later, Ruth Lapp Gingrich, then president of the MWUSA board, Carolyn Heggen, board member, and Rhoda spent several days together to imagine a seminar to address these needs. To learn more about the beginning years of the Sister Care ministry, see Circles of Sisterhood: A History of Mission, Service, and Fellowship in Mennonite Women’s Organizations by Anita Hooley Yoder, 2017.
In 2012 they taught Sister Care outside North America for the first time. Over a 14-year period, they shared Sister Care internationally with over 1,600 women leaders in 22 different countries, making the Sister Care manual available in 23 languages. A revised international English manual was translated into Spanish, Kek’chi’, Low German, Portuguese, Hindi, Nepali, Tamil, Bangla, Telegu, Marathi, French, Swahili, Kinyarwanda, Korean, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Thai, Hmong, Ukrainian, Russian, Mongolian, and Arabic. To purchase the English manual or receive a free pdf of a translation, contact us.
To read the Sister Care International story, contact Mennonite Mission Network and request the Missio Dei booklet “Sister Care International Ministry for Women,” 2025. mennonitemission.net/resources/publications/missio-dei.
Graphic by Leslie Hawthorne Klingler
