The Venerable Carol E. Peterson serves as Archdeacon for The Diocese of West Missouri. Her primary responsibilities include working alongside the Council of Deacons, assisting the bishop with deployment of deacons, serving as convenor of the diocese’s Community of Deacons and representing the diocese on national boards and other church groups.
Deacon Carol was born in the U.K. and baptized in the Church of England. Her family immigrated to the U.S. (Michigan) when she was a young child and joined the Roman Catholic Church. Soon after, she began to attend Catholic school during her early elementary years, where weekday mass as a child helped her to develop a deep awareness of Christ’s love for us and our call to love one another.
Following graduation from high school, her family moved to central Missouri where she attended State Fair Community College in Sedalia and received her registered nurse license. She was then blessed with a rewarding nursing career for several years working in a variety of health care settings. In 1986, Carol and her husband discovered The Episcopal Church and joined Calvary Episcopal Church in Columbia, Missouri.
Following a move to Wyoming, where her husband had been offered a faculty position at the University of Wyoming (UW), Carol obtained a B.S. and M.S. in Human Nutrition from U.W. She went on to work for the State of Wyoming, first overseeing their K-12 health and nutrition programs and then the programs providing screening, diagnostic and treatment services for un- and underinsured individuals experiencing certain types of cancer.
Carol has always felt a deep calling to advocate for those suffering from a lack of health care and those experiencing hunger and/or homelessness. A desire to live more faithfully into this calling led to her ordination as a vocational deacon in The Diocese of Wyoming in 2008. She served at St. Mark’s in Cheyene, Wyoming where her diaconal focus on health ministry included training of over 100 parish nurses. After moving to Texas in 2015 she was called to serve at St Peter’s in Brenham, Texas in The Diocese of Texas. Her diaconal ministry there focused on food insecurity where she started two food pantries and a non-profit organization to coordinate county-wide hunger initiatives. Following her husband’s death Carol moved to the Joplin area in 2022 to be closer to her sisters, where she was later called to serve in this diocese at St Philip’s in Joplin. Her diaconal ministry there focused on re-vitalizing their outreach efforts post-COVID to serve homeless and refugee peoples.
Carol is proud of her two children (an Episcopal priest and a pre-school teacher) and four young-adult grandchildren. She enjoys painting, baking, gardening, traveling and hanging out with her cat Princess and dog Leo.
