BUCKHANNON – A new blessing box was installed in front of the Tennerton United Methodist Church with help from the Buckhannon-Upshur High School Leo Club.

Nancy Shobe, a city Consolidated Public Works Board member, said she brought up the idea of installing blessing boxes after seeing the little libraries around the county.

“I presented it to the Consolidated Public Works Board at the city, because they’re the ones who take care of the parks, the streets and everything, so I went to them and I asked if I could put the blessing boxes up around in the city, and they thought that was a good idea,” Shobe said. “I said, ‘If I can raise the money to build them, will your city employees build them for us?’ and naturally, they said yes, absolutely – they thought it was a terrific idea.”

The Leo Club at B-UHS raised the funds to construct the box and the City of Buckhannon built the structure.

“I think it’s a great blessing,” Shobe said. “I want to thank the Leo Club for doing this and the sign says it all – ‘take what you need, leave what you can, above all be blessed’ – and that’s what we want to do in this community is to be a blessing to somebody else.”

Leo Club advisor Michael Meadows said this was a project the club had been working on for several years.

“This was really like a four-year project for us, especially with the seniors,” Meadows said. “We had two more seniors who helped raise funds with community events for the last four years, so it’s nice to put that money toward another community service-based event.”

Ryanna Hines, Leo club president, said the group was looking for a community project and thought a new blessing box would help everyone that needed it.

“Originally, we needed a service project because we had a lot of money and nothing to do with it, so we wanted to be able to do something that would give back to the community as a whole,” Hines said. “We originally were going to do a [little free] library, but there were just so many of them and we didn’t really find a place that needed one, so then I and a couple of the other girls started talking about the blessing boxes, because we’ve seen them around, and then we just decided to do that.”