The cherished summertime activities of childhood, from family vacations to poolside picnics, help create lifelong memories for so many of us. Those memories help make us who we are as adults, good or bad. No doubt we each can think back to those magical summertime experiences of sleeping late and afternoon bike rides with friends to find something that helped shape us into the people we are today. But leave it to the good folks in Montevallo to find a way to make a good thing even better by working together.

Several churches in Montevallo partnered earlier this month to make certain some of the summertime memories made by more than 60 children in their community were of the life-changing variety.

First United Methodist Church, along with University Baptist, Montevallo Presbyterian and St. Andrews Episcopal Church, worked together to create a vacation Bible school experience for children in their community that was bigger and by all accounts better than anything the churches could have created had they chosen to work independently of one another. The local children who participated in the free week of crafts, games, tasty snacks and biblical lessons have more than 50 volunteers to thank for the opportunity.

No doubt the many unappreciated volunteers at churches throughout Shelby County know the hard work, planning and worry that many times goes with helping a church pull off a vacation Bible school. Those volunteers, perhaps more so than anyone else, know the value of teamwork in pulling off a vacation Bible school. They also know first-hand the difference such an experience can make in the lives of young people.

By working together, Montevallo volunteers were able to create a vacation Bible school experience for children in their community that would have otherwise been impossible. These forward-thinking churches and the volunteers who gave of their time and talents to make vacation Bible school special in Montevallo this summer demonstrated to all of us what working together can accomplish. And they may have changed a few lives in the process.