Phoenix

I just got back from Phoenix yesterday. I was there for 4 days for the New Official Workers' Forum, which is for all the new licensed workers (mostly pastors) in the Christian and Missionary Alliance.

The conference was good. There was a lot of leadership preparation and techniques that I was already familiar with, and since I grew up in the Alliance and went to an Alliance college, some of the stuff they talked about wasn't new to me, but at the same time, I learned some really cool things about the direction the Alliance is headed, as it becomes more and more of a movement and less of a denomination (getting back to our roots).

One of the coolest things for me was learning the XXXChurch is planting a church in the Alliance. I'd heard those guys were. I think I saw it in an ad in Relevant magazine. It turns out, the church (which will be planted on the Las Vegas Strip) is called Stripchurch, and is being planted as an Alliance church. Vegas is in our district, so my Father-in-law will be overseeing it eventually, I guess. Pretty cool. I need to ask him how connected this church is going to be to the Alliance.

The conference was good, but I mostly want to write about the flights. On the way there, we took off from San Francisco heading Northeast, and we had to fly Southeast, so they made a 270 degree turn (to avoid the traffic from the Oakland and San Jose airports). It was a completely clear day--neither clouds or fog as far as the eye could see. As a result, I could see the entire bay. When we were over San Jose, I could see all the way up to Vallejo. Beautiful. Too bad I had my camera stashed in the overhead bin in my carry-on.

Then, as we were landing in Phoenix, I saw a bunch of lines on the ground with round areas. At first I thought they were rivers, because they didn't have any houses on them like a road would. But then I realized they were black, so they must be roads. I eventually figured out that they were subdivisions, and the lines were roads after all.

Phoenix is like the king of suburbia. It's just miles upon miles of flat land with suburban tract homes. It makes Sacramento look like a sprawl-free zone. So, there were multiple subdivisions I saw on the flight there and on the flight back that were just streets. They had graded the land in preparation to build homes, but ran out of money before they could start construction on any houses or even put up street lights. There weren't any sidewalks--just asphalt in curving, subdivision-like patterns.

I talked to a real estate agent, who said that was pretty common in the Phoenix area.

Downtown Phoenix was pretty cool looking. I didn't go there, just drove past it. The whole region is flat subdivisions, besides the big buildings downtown and the baseball and football stadiums and the arena.

The conference was right near the football stadium, which was great, because a bunch of the guys there were from the Pittsburgh area, and Pittsburgh is playing Arizona in the Super Bowl this Sunday. So, a bunch of the Pittsburgh guys wore their Steelers jerseys all week.

On the way back, the sun had just gone down as we were landing. Well, actually when we were up high, the sun was still up. We were flying north over the coast, and I could see the line on the ocean that separated day from night. As we descended somewhere over San Jose, the sun went down. But it went down much more slowly than usual. As a result, I got to see the green flash last for almost two seconds. That was cool. Once again, it was totally clear as we landed, and to look at places like Monterey, the Santa Cruz mountains, San Jose, and the southern part of the San Francisco Peninsula at dusk was absolutely beautiful.

And the best part is that I think I have enough miles for a free domestic flight on United! I've blogged before about my obsession with frequent flyer miles. This is really significant for me.