Your Catholic Neighbor
Stewardship begins at early age
Mishicot youth raises $500 to have statue of Blessed Mother repaired
By Sam Lucero
Compass Staff
MISHICOT -- Michael Steeber may not know the definition of stewardship, but at age 12, he already embodies the life of a good steward.
Michael, the son of Kevin and Marie Steeber, is a seventh grader at All Saints School in Denmark. His family attends Holy Cross Parish, where Michael is a server and an aide in his
grandmother's second grade religious education class. Last April, with guidance from his grandmother, MaryAgnes Scheuer, Michael began lectoring. He's the youngest lector in his parish.
"I guess it's just important to me to kind of belong to my faith and serve my parish," said Michael.
With a family of faithful servants to guide him (in addition to Grandmother Scheuer, his mother Marie is parish coordinator of religious education and his late grandfather, Frank Scheuer, was long-time maintenance man for the parish), Michael continues to offer his time, talent and treasure.
Most recently, Michael took on a project near to his heart: the repair of a dilapidated statue of Mary that has long stood in the parish school hallway.
"I've been to school here since preschool and it's always sat at the end of the hall, so every time I went out for recess I saw it," explained Michael. "We would bring it over to the church for May crowning and sometimes they would drop it and it would kind of get chipped up. So I thought it would be a neat idea to fix it up, because it was just part of the school and it looked like it needed a lot of work."
Holy Cross School closed its doors last spring so Michael transferred to All Saints School, some 14 miles north of Mishicot. The former school now serves as the parish's Faith Formation Center.
To support his plan, Michael took a job as a paperboy, delivering the Lakeshore Chronicle every Sunday and Wednesday and the Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter every other day.
"I started a paper route last April and took the money I got from that and put it towards (fixing the statue)," he said. "I raised almost all of the money from the paper route."
When he approached his pastor, Fr. Paul Paider, with the idea, the priest was impressed.
"I was a bit surprised and pleased," he said. "For a young kid like that to ask something like that to be done and want to pay for it, it was a pleasant surprise."
Fr. Paider contacted Karen Tipps from the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help in New Franken. Tipps, whose husband is custodian of the chapel, repairs religious statues.
"It's a nice piece, but it was dilapidated," said Fr. Paider. "It had fingers missing and it needed to be repainted."
The statue was repaired last July at a cost of $500. "It looks like a brand new piece," said Fr. Paider. A pedestal was created for the newly refurbished statue, which was returned to its original location in the old school.
Michael said he had the statue refurbished in memory of his grandfather, Frank Scheuer, who died in 2002. "He was the maintenance man when my mom was in school," said Michael. "He retired just before I was born."
"Fr. Paul is getting a plaque made to put on the front of the pedestal that says it's in memory of Frank Scheuer," said Michael's mother.
Michael has advice for other young people who are hesitant to volunteer at church.
"I guess you might be nervous in the beginning," he said. "I wasn't sure about lectoring, but I guess once you start, you realize you like it."
No fanfare was made at the parish after the statue was refurbished, but Michael's mother is proud of her son.
"Over Christmas, we brought both my family and my husband's family up to school to see the statue, because some of them did donate money towards the statue," said Marie Steeber. "One of the things Michael said to me is, 'What's the big deal?' I suppose that's a seventh grader talking. But my husband and I both think it's a big deal. We are both very proud of him for taking the initiative like that."
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