Nigerian sister shares her joy with patients in hospital

Published: January 22, 2011

By Maryanne Meyerriecks
Fort Smith Correspondent

Sisters Mary Joy Anyaso and Mary Chetachi Chikezie, DMMM, stand together during their assignments in Rome in 2000. Sister Joy joined Sister Chetachi to live and work in Fort Smith Jan. 14.

Sisters Mary Joy Anyaso and Mary Chetachi Chikezie, DMMM, stand together during their assignments in Rome in 2000. Sister Joy joined Sister Chetachi to live and work in Fort Smith Jan. 14.

FORT SMITH -- Sister Mary Chetachi Chikezie wears her joy as regularly as her cornflower blue habit, but on Jan. 14, the new pastoral associate at St. Edward Mercy Medical Center in Fort Smith had a special reason to be joyful. A fellow Daughter of Mary Mother of Mercy, Sister Mary Joy Anyaso moved from Florida to live and work with Sister Chetachi.

"Sister Joy has several interviews to work as a CNA (certified nursing assistant)," Sister Chetachi said. "She was a registered nurse in Nigeria and is studying to take her boards here."

Sister Chetachi had always lived with at least one other sister in her three previous assignments in Italy and the United States. In the four months she has been in Fort Smith, she has been praying the Liturgy of the Hours with her cousin, a priest in Florida, via laptop computer.

"We pray together at 6 a.m., noon and at Compline (night prayer)," she said.

Growing up in Nigeria in a family of nine children, Sister Chetachi always lived in community. As a teenager living in her sister Beatrice's house and attending secretarial school, she frequently served dinner to visiting Daughters of Mary Mother of Mercy and decided to join the order in 1984.

"My order has over 1,000 sisters," she said. "It was founded by Rev. Father Anthony Gogo Nwedo, a Holy Ghost Father who was the first bishop of the Umuahia diocese, in 1961. There are 104 sisters working in the United States; Sister Joy and I are the only two in Arkansas."

In 1992 Sister Chetachi, who had always wanted to be a nurse, was asked by her superior general to study philosophy in Rome because only one sister in their order was a philosophy professor.

"From 1994-96 I worked in a pro-life home in Milan, helping and counseling young mothers, watching their babies while they looked for work and learning Italian," she said. "When I started working towards getting my bachelor's and master's degrees in philosophy at St. Thomas Aquinas University. I thought the Italian I had learned would help me, but there aren't many conversational words in philosophy and theology books. It was very hard."

During that time, while she also earned a bachelor's degree in education at Salesian University, she served as the superior of her community in Rome.

"There were 18 sisters, and 17 of us were students. Only one was working," she said. "It was very hard to pay the bills. We got some donations, and I was able to get scholarships for four of the sisters from the Vatican. We had a gardener once a month, but we had to let him go. I did most of the cooking, cleaning and grocery shopping myself."

Remembering the hard times -- studying philosophy instead of nursing, trying to stretch her community's meager income to cover their expenses -- Sister Chetachi's joy is undimmed. With God anything is possible.

She was sent to teach philosophy at St. Joseph and St. Peter Seminary in the Diocese of Brownsville, Texas, in 2006. Last year, she took a residency in pastoral care at Valley Baptist Hospital in Harlingen, Texas.

"I would say that God had a purpose in bringing me here to Arkansas," Sister Chetachi said. "At the end of my chaplaincy residency, I sent out 10 job applications, and St. Edward's was the only one who interviewed me and offered me an immediate job."

Despite being on call as many as three nights a week, Sister Chetachi is overjoyed to be working in hospital ministry.

"The patients and families are so welcoming and happy to see me, so I'm happy no matter how late the call is. They appreciate my presence and it makes me feel good. I worked with a Pentecostal family today, and they told me, 'You are just a gift that God has given to us here. I'm glad you are the one who came around.'"