The cold temperatures that swept through the area last week didn’t keep the good news inside.

Before we prepare for the week ahead, let’s take a look at the highlights from last week:

• The dream Tracee Albert had since the second grade came to fruition when she was crowned as 2015 Miss Vidalia. The Vidalia High School senior hopes to use the opportunity to be a role model to young people in the community. Albert plans to attend the University of Louisiana Monroe to major in speech language pathology to honor her parents, who are both deaf. We congratulate Albert and hope to see her inspire others in our community to do great things.

• Members of Jefferson Street United Methodist Church gathered together to organize their first sewing bee to sew clothes for children in Africa. A church member who often visits Liberia and saw children in need of many things, including clothing, conjured up the mission. The church member hopes to take the clothes to Liberia sometime this year. We’re glad to see community members gathering to help others across the world.

• Crosspoint Church hosted a free youth summit in an attempt to bring the youth of the community together. Church leaders said they felt the summit would be a time to bring young people together to find out what could be done to keep them active and involved in the community. We hope to see more of these type events continue being organized in our community.

Those are just a few of the great things that happened in our community last week, and we look forward to sharing more good news with you next week.