West Yellowhead

I always found this interesting - the highest point on the Yellowhead Highway (Hwy 16) is not even yet in the mountains. It is at Obed, between Edson and Hinton. I lived in Edson for a number of years and found the town's history fascinating, especially the fact that back in the day, when there must have been a real case of railroad fever, two separate railways were racing to build west from Edmonton through the mountains, and neither one would give up. Eventually they both went bankrupt, so one became Canadian National and much of the other right-of-way became Highway 16. As you will read at the above link, the original railroad town was supposed to be Wolf Creek, and if you drive there today you can still see the blocks of streets laid out where the land speculators expected to plant a thriving town. All along that West Central railway line are former railroad towns, now mostly abandoned, but formerly with stations, stores, schools etc.
Alpha Stories:
There is an Alpha church named Carrot Creek Fellowship. They are located in Peers, Alberta but ran their Alpha in the Niton Junction community hall (got that straight?) As you can see at the link, the population of Niton Junction is 26. They had 27 at their Alpha. At their ending celebration evening, Pastor George Stone hoped that 1 or 2 people would stand up and give testimonies of how Alpha had impacted their lives. Eight came forward.
The following day I met with Alpha churches in Hinton. There, in a wonderful example of inter-church cooperation, one Alpha was run by the United, Lutheran and Catholic churches combined. Hinton Alliance runs a very successful Youth Film series (Frankly, I have heard of none that aren't), but this one had a bit of a spin. Most Youth Alphas I hear of involve church youth inviting their friends, and very successfully. In Hinton, I heard of a young girl from outside the church who loved the series so much she started inviting all her church friends who were not yet aware of it.
Driving back from Hinton, I stopped in at the Entwistle Community Church. They ran both adult and Youth Alphas and had a total of 5-8 baptisms last fall as a result; that's 1% or better of their population. Wouldn't it be nice if we could extend that percentage to, say, Metro Edmonton, with a population of a million. That would be 10,000 new believers!