Real-life issues inspire Lutheran principal's pen

One has plenty of opportunity to observe and think in a pastoral setting such as East Perry County, Missouri, which makes it more felicitous for Cheryl Honoree as principal of United in Christ Lutheran School and a writer for national church publications.

The 55-year-old New Orleans native had a lot of seasoning as a teacher and administrator when she came to Frohna, a town of 250 people, four years ago, and she says there are more challenges than one might expect at the preschool-through eighth-grade school with one hallway, six full-time teachers, three part-timers and 127 students.

"The opportunity to share my faith is really important to me," Honoree said.

"I just love to see the growth of the children or to know that growth is happening. I get a little concerned sometimes that kids today are not learning resilience and how to deal with problems, so I enjoy helping them figure out how to deal with problems and be the best people they can be," she said.

Asked if parents may have the tendency to question the authority of teachers even in parochial schools, Honoree chuckled and said, "Yes, that's pretty common, but I have met very few parents who didn't have their child's interest at heart."

She added, "Sometimes, we disagree on what the best thing is for that child, but that gives us a common goal."

Having earned a bachelor's degree at Concordia University in Seward, Nebraska, and masters' degrees at Concordia and Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Honoree taught and worked as an administrator at Lutheran schools in Pennsylvania, Florida and Arkansas before arriving in Frohna.

Her late father, Herbert, was a Greyhound Bus dispatcher. Her mother Joretta lives with her in Altenburg, Missouri, and she has a brother, Matthew, in Gretna, Louisiana, and a sister, Susan Cherry, in Jefferson, Texas. Her older sister, Sandra McLeod, also a Lutheran educator, died of cancer in Chillicothe, Ohio, in 2005.

"She was five years older and a mentor," Honoree said of her sister.

"There was not a teachers' store anywhere that we missed. I would have done it anyway, but I don't think I would have been as good. Sandra helped me stretch to be a better teacher," she said, adding, "She was teaching preschool, and there were so many small children and parents who absolutely loved her. I'm so glad I got to see how well-respected and admired she was."

Real-life issues such as that have occupied Honoree since she attended a "Writing for the Church Workshop" in 1987 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and began writing devotions and Bible studies for Concordia Publishing House of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in St. Louis.

She writes seven, 300-word tracts a year for the annual "My Devotions" collection for children and adults and submits them a year in advance.

Inspired by Acts 9:36 and titled "God at Work," a devotion in the recently issued 120-page book is about Christiane Loeber, who was in her 20s in the late 1830s when she immigrated with the 700 Saxon Germans who established the East Perry County towns of Altenburg, Dresden, Johannisberg, Paitzdorf (now Uniontown), Seelitz, Wittenberg and Frohna.

'All about giving'

"I love the person that she was," Honoree said. "She was all about giving. When people were sick, she visited them and brought food."

Of Loeber, Honoree said, "She only lived [here] nine months, but the land she gave to the church is still being used at Trinity Lutheran Church Cemetery in Altenburg."

A recent devotion deals with flooding at the Mississippi River town of Wittenberg.

"There are impassable areas where they park their car on one side, ride a boat across and go off to work in another car," she said. "I write about how scary it can be to see the waters rising and how God keeps us safe in difficult times."

Sixty-percent of United in Christ Lutheran School graduates attend Saxony Lutheran High School in Jackson and the other 40 percent attend Perryville High School. The elementary school is supported by Concordia Lutheran Church in Frohna, Salem Lutheran at Farrar and Trinity and the pastors of which -- the Revs. Rod Benkendorf, Roger Abernathy and Steven Dressler -- attend school board meetings and conduct the school's daily chapel services.

Honoree "is very compassionate and really on top of things," Benkendorf said.

"Cheryl is both friendly and knows when to be strict with kids as needed," the minister said. "It's pretty tough to faze her."

United in Christ has been in existence since 2011, when Salem Lutheran School and the Concordia-Trinity School were combined, and this year it gained the sanction of the Missouri Nonpublic School Accrediting Association and the National Lutheran School Accreditation group.

Honoree said the school's accelerated reading program ranked 13th among 94 Lutheran schools nationally in January and February, and its students finished the year with an impressive 11,274 total accelerated reading points, compiled on the bases of reading level and difficulty.

She said enrollment has grown each year from 105 to 115 and 127, but with 12 eighth graders graduating, only 116 students are expected this fall, although that may increase.

An integral program is the school's chapel families, in which students chosen by the teachers at all levels form groups of 11 for various activities. Honoree teaches an art class a week in each room, where two levels are combined.

Her hobbies are reading mysteries, adventures and histories and doing artwork such as flower arranging or home decorating.

She likes traveling to Missouri destinations such as Hermann and Lake of the Ozarks, and she relished a train tour of southern Canada in 2006 and an Alaskan cruise the next year.

More information about the "My Devotions" series is available from Concordia Publishing House, cph.org.