i am home in columbus. i didn't tell anyone about me coming home unless they asked as to surprise a certain sweet heart of mine (the surprise was awesome!). i'll be going back to israel sometime in february but i'll tell more about that as it happens. not much to tell right now, just spending good time with everyone i love. love to you all. peace.

this past week has been the most insane and enlightening week yet here in israel, and for good reason. we flew doctor bryant wood over from california and interviewed him at several key archaeological sites relating to the validity of scripture when it comes to joshua's conquest in 1400 BC. there are two main archaeological sites that the mainstream scholars and archaeologists say contradict the biblical accounts, the city of ai, and jericho. the scholars and archaeologists say that the exodus and joshua's conquest didn't happen because one archaeologist dated the destruction of jericho to 150 years prior to when the bible says it happened. and at the site they believe is ai, they find it to not fit the biblical description of the ancient city, and they date it's destruction to the 13th century where as the bible would have it in the 15th century [1400 BC]. so basically the archaeologists take one site that does not fit the biblical description geographically, physically, or archaeologically, and they say, "well, this we are going to say is ai, and because it is ai and it doesn't have any similarities to the biblical ai, the bible is wrong." as doctor wood would say, it's very poor scholarship.

so taking this all into consideration, doctor bryant wood, an expert in dating pottery, took a scientific reexamination of jericho, and with all the evidence concluded that the previous archaeologist who dated the destruction to 150 years prior the biblical destruction by joshua was wrong, and that the biblical account is right. there are many many details as to why doctor wood's case for the dating of jericho's destruction is so strong, but i'll let you see it all for yourself after we release the documentary, though it will be a while before that comes about.

with the site of ai, doctor wood spent 1995 through 2000 excavating a site different than the one the mainstream archaeologists think is ai, and he believes that his ai has more accurate physical features, geography, and archaeological remains. upon his excavation there at the site that today is called khirbet el-maqatir, he found exactly what you would expect to find for the site of ai according the biblical account. and after standing on the site myself and listening to his case for why he believes that khirbet el-maqatir is the ancient city of ai, it's impossible for me to deny.

so basically, archaeological students learn at their universities that ai and jericho do not support the biblical account and that the conquest of joshua and the exodus never happened. but doctor wood has gone back behind the secular archaeologists and scholars and, using the scientific method, has two amazingly strong cases for why jericho and the ai that he excavated support the biblical account to the very detail. unfortunately the biblical archaeological world is run by seculars [?] and doctor wood being a bible believer and a proclaiming christian man is blackballed from having any credibility in the biblical archaeological world because he has a bias toward the bible being true. but so far, everything they dig out of the ground supports the bible, so i don't see any problem with his bias.

during our interviews with doctor wood i seriously dropped my jaw a few times, abandoned the camera on my shoulder and turned to scott to silently mouth, "oh. my. gosh." this has been the most educational week yet, not to mention the most exciting.

on friday we also went up on mt. gerizim and found one of the last remaining samaritan towns if not THE last. samaritans are still a people today but there are only a few hundred left. many of the people in the town are born with deformities because they've bread within their own community for so long to keep the blood line purely samaritan. this small group of samaritans also hold passover in the traditional manner in the center of their city by the slaughtering of a lamb [one lamb for each family], sacrificing it as either a burnt offering or a peace offering. next year we plan to be there for passover and to film it, so be ready for that, i am so stoked!

all that being said, i conclude: the bible is real history.

also, i've recently put up more photographs, so feel free. love to you all, peace.

www.flickr.com/photos/nathanwilliam

recently we've been in a lot of post production. soon we get our repaired camera back and we should be doing some very constant interviewing of dr. wood, an archaeologist whom excavated at jericho and several other places. but due to our lack of out and about filming, we have become pent up people with little social lives, that is until the bible study from hell. it's actually a really sweet bible study with an array of people from all over the world, and the reason i say it's the bible study from hell is because the apartment is on the edge of the hinnom valley. the hinnom valley is the lowest part of jerusalem just south of mount zion and the old city and Jesus refers to the hinnom valley many times as hell, or uses it as a reference for hell. so there you have it, a very cool bible study, in hell.

recently i've been working on editing together a video about our trip to galilee. and for some reason it's been so hard to just sit down and do it, so finally today i told myself that i wasn't allowed to play guitar until it was done, and what do you know, it's now done. so check it out. the video ended up being a two part galilee overview, the first half is our trip out on the lake with fishermen who fish the same way the ancients fished 2000 years ago. and the second half is our attempt to kayak across the lake. very interesting to note, in scripture it talks about how Jesus and his boys are out on the lake and a storm just whips up out of nowhere and they are all scared, except Jesus of course. and i've heard people say how they think it's odd that a storm would just whip up out of nowhere like that, but while we were out on the lake, it was fairly calm at the start, and within no time we had some solid swells come up over our kayaks. so watch the video and you will hear dave screaming like a little girl when the waves hit. enjoy. and i miss you all like crazy. love to you.

yesterday we set out on a journey west to find an olive grove advertised in the jerusalem post as a traditional olive harvesting. we wanted to film the way that the ancients used to beat the olive trees to make the olives fall off the limbs because there are several metaphors in scripture that use the harvesting for different things. for example, the assyrian conquest in 701 BC in which there is only a remnant left within the walls of jerusalem after the assyrians destroy all of the northern kingdom and all of judah, the remaining olives that cling to the top branches of the tree after the harvest are paralleled with the remnant left within the walls of jerusalem in the time of the assyrian destruction.

so here goes: we rent a car, drive all over the place, ask about ten people, get lost ten times following the incorrect directions from the ten people, a few hours later come to the "right place" where we then hike to the olive grove. at this point we start to get suspicious as to whether this is what we thought it was, primarily because of the enormous population of children and the way our tour guide talks and acts as if she is a character walking around at disney world taking pictures with crying babies.

a few steps onto the path and she begins to show us pictures about how israel is planning on building houses all over the mountain that we are on, she also explains that this hike is actually a way of "protesting with our legs" as she described it, against the building of the houses. later joel asks her about the olive harvest and she explains that they don't beat the trees here because it apparently shakes the roots and, in a nut shell, is a mean thing to do to a tree. we walk and walk, never see a single olive being harvested, get to the end of the hike, watch two old men fight about who gets into the shuttle first to be taken back to the parking lot, take some video of joel saying, "this was stupid," and then hike back. and although an insane frenzy of everything we weren't looking for, it was still nice to get outside and away from the city for a bit. plus it's a hilarious memory, and fear not, we documented the entire stinking thing.

but anyway, the video i have posted is a quick tour of our apartment, i'll have some more quickies about normal jerusalem life posted within the coming weeks due to popular demand...by my mommy and daddy. and as far as other videos, we have plenty in the works, and we just released three, so check out www.sourceflix.com to see what is a-brewin'. love to you all. peace.

i am currently quite tired and don't really feel like writing, however i do want to keep you updated, it's the least i can do.

we haven't been able to get the interviews we have been after for this reason or that, but all sorts of other adventures have come across us in the mean time. yesterday scott, joel, dave, and myself all took the journey to a rock quarry recently discovered and reported about in the jerusalem post. archaeologists say that because of the size and type of rocks cut out of the quarry, they are lead to believe that it's where king herod got his resources to build part of the temple mount and perhaps the western wall. i could go on more about it but i didn't spend all day today editing it so you could not watch it. i have it posted below, enjoy! and much love from me to you.

it's not the end of the world. but it wouldn't take much convincing for me to start considering it.

it all started in a small apartment in jerusalem one sunday night when our internet goes down. the next night one of our cameras breaks. and the next day during the first interview we find that one of the mic inputs on the one "good" camera is broken. our monitor falls off its stand while we were praying for God to protect the equipment. one of our people forgets to show up for the interview. one of our other people is sick during his interview. joel is up the entire night before with his sick daughter rachel who later passes the stomach flue to joel's entire family in consecutive order. our interview for friday is canceled because he gets sick. our interview for saturday is canceled because joel gets sick. and we had planned for an interview tomorrow, but joel called a little bit ago with a relapse of the flue and is sick again.

now, it sounds like a lot of bad, and of course, there is nothing good about the stomach flue, but this week hasn't been all bad. though, because of the jewish holidays the internet people weren't able to come until today (a week later from when we lost internet initially). oh well, not having internet isn't necessarily bad.

on the good side, today joel, scott and i went up on the temple mount with our small camera and got some disturbing footage. during our interview with gabriel barkay several days prior he told us that there was a desecration on the temple mount in which the muslims were digging a trench for some power lines to their new mosque. the issue at hand is that the temple mount soil is so rich in antiquities yet, no archaeologist has every touched a spade to it because it's controlled by the muslims. but never the less, the muslims are digging a trench with back hoes and other equipment without doing real archaeological excavation. the temple mount is made up of a series of destruction layers of human settlements throughout time and they are being horribly disturbed by the destruction currently taking place. barkay painfully recalled in his interview seeing ancient pottery and antiquities being ripped from the ground and destroyed by heavy digging equipment. so us with our little inconspicuous camera made our way to the dig sites on the temple mount to document this atrocity as best we could. after gathering severel minutes of footage we made our way back home and edited together a short mini documentary about the current affair. gabriel barkay and many other archaeologists have recently appealed to the israeli government to stop the digging on the temple mount. and based on what we saw today, it would appear that so far, they have been unsuccessful.

i don't know if that last paragraph made clear sense but i embedded the short documentary below this journal entry here on filmsandfaces so you can see it for yourself.

so that's all. pray for us if you think about it. thanks, love to you.

we will start with the bad, and rip this band aid off quick. we went to jordan on thursday only to stay a day and return to israel the next. we did this so that upon our reentry into israel, we would get another three month visa. we had already been in israel for three months so we needed to renew. so we went to jordan, stayed a day, and came back. here is the run down:

thursday morning we leave jerusalem, take a two hour bus ride north to bet shean, get a taxi from there to the boarder crossing, show our passports at the entrance to the first building, show our passports again to change our shekels for jordainian currency, show our passports again to some girl behind a desk [i don't know what she did], show our passports again to a guy in a duty free store we had to walk through on our way to get a bus, wait at the bus station for an hour in the blistering valley heat, show our passports again to get on the bus, ride the bus across a bridge and over the jordan river into jordan, show our passports again to get visas, show our passports again, get our picture taken and our finger prints scanned, show our passports again to a jordanian officer who gives us a small interrogation, check our luggage through customs [the customs officer thought my harmonica was a weapon], show our passports again to the customs officers, catch a cab to amman, half way there the cab driver motiones that something is wrong with his car so we switch cabs [the second cab had no license plate on that back], on the way south to amman we hit about five or so military check points in which we show or passports each time, and finally to the hotel in which the front desk takes our passports until check out two days later. the entire one way trip from jerusalem to amman took eight hours.

something to note, amman is about fifty miles east of jerusalem, but the boarder crossing is two hours north of each city, so while, theoretically, a straight shot from one town to another might take an hour drive or so, we had to go north two hours to the boarder crossing, cross into jordan, and then south two hours to amman. a solid eight hours.

the most frightening thing was the cab ride to amman, two hours of our driver speeding up hills and around sharp turns to pass the cars in front of us while smoking, talking on his cell phone, manning the stick shift and listening to jordain-arab-techno-trash. and to top it all off, out of the four taxis i rode in while in jordan, four of them had broken seat belts. forget an intifada, i am scared of the cab rides.

a word from me on the music in jordan. i feel a little stupider for having heard so much of it. every song is the same hoppy pace of techno drums, a quick wavering arab conversation between the vocalist and horrendous violins, and some instrument that sounds like a synth mix between a sitar and someone just learning how to play a voilin. and the real amazing thing is that every song sounds exactly the same. i am convinced that there is no arab in the middle eastern world that knows how to play the drums. now i know this sounds really harsh, but it still plagues my mind. i've said before that i feel like a creek bed whose shorelines only flourish when music is flowing through it, well, whatever was flowing through me while in jordan nearly burned down whatever forest had grown along my shores before. i was musically suffocating, we all were.

so take everything i've just written, throw a sweet day at a holiday-inn pool in the middle, give food poisoning to joel's entire family, and then repeat the entire process in reverse to get back to jerusalem; and that about sums up our trip. only now we have fresh three month visas, and it's never felt so good, and we've never felt so at home to be in jerusalem.

alright, out with the bad, in with the good.

we recently got word that the people we needed for this documentary have agreed to interview. a very excellent thing. and that pioneers our next endeavor, which i can't really tell you about right now. but there will come a time in which our goal will be to tell everyone and anyone. and i'll let you know when that is. i also finished editing and burning dvd's of the cohen conference, which to you may not sound like anything, but it's a great thing to be done with.

sorry that the "bad" was so extensive and the good was so brief and vague. that's just how it goes i guess. i posted a picture on my flickr page that sums up my entire jordan trip in a thousand words, it's kind of a double-entendre i suppose. love to you - feel free to correct all my grammatic and spelling mistakes. peace.

i really really love yogurt. i try my best to ration little cups of it each day. but it's hard. yesterday morning i cut up some peaches and sauted them in a pan with some butter. then i put them in a wheat pita and toasted the pita in the pan with the butter the peaches didn't absorb, and from there i mashed up the peaches and the pita into a bowl and poured black berry yogurt all over it. it tasted horrible. actually that's not true.

so now i am at the point of telling you what i eat. in most cases that would mean i was out of interesting things to tell you so i resort to the details. however, that is not that case, i just really wanted to tell you about my peach, pita, yogurt breakfast. it was super good.

recently we've been hoping for some important people to agree to interview with us. and so far we have already had a couple of the guys agree to do it. i tell you this so vaguely because i am not sure if it's going to pan out, though it is quite probable that it will. so really it's just a waiting game to see what we are doing next, and in the mean time i have been editing a ton of footage of the kohen-levi international conference. which if i haven't told you before, it's the gathering of the DNA tested descendants of aaron of kohen, the tribe of levi, the appointed priests of the temple. and this conference was getting them all together and training them on how to carry out their priestly duties when the third temple is built. it's very interesting to say the least.

other than that i just recently bought a mic for recording and have been laying down a few songs i've had written for a while now. i've also been experimenting using synth drums because i am at a loss of a real drum set. oh how i miss playing a drum set. and for that matter playing an electric guitar, i miss musical power basically, very loud sounds are fun for me. but keep a look out, i'll be posting some new music online shortly.

today we also helped joel and his family move into their new apartment. it's an awesome place and i can't wait until our lease is up so we can move in with them. the room that dave and i are going to share has a solid metal door and it echoes in there like a mother. it's basically built as a bomb shelter in case war breaks out. mommy, i get the bomb shelter room, don't worry.

so we sat and put together chairs and tables and bed frames for a good long time. and then went over to their old apartment and ate dominos pizza and oreo ice cream and then went back to finish making chairs and lamp stands. it was good mindless, away from the computer work.

so, that's all i've got. this blog entry sucked. sorry about that. shalom for now. i'll have sweet stuff in the future, especially if we start on this new project i am hoping for. love to you.

alright everybody, sorry that i haven't updated in a while, i have good reason i assure you. i am going to do a shotgun update because that is about the manner in which each of these things has taken place.

several days ago my computer was was running exceptionally slow. so i decided to reformat it as to clear any problems if there were any. however, after the process, due to some corrupt system files i found myself with a laptop that was better off as a tray table for bringing someone breakfast in bed than a computer.

it's interesting the time and priority you set aside for the internet, it's only when you don't have it that you really realize how much you rely on it. but anyway, to start the shotgunning like i had promised:

my computer broke, our cell phones ran out of minutes, the internet went down, our pet rabbit that lived on our roof died, the two movies we rented didn't work, one had the wrong region code and the other was too scratched to play, the building next to us caught on fire, the only bread we had was moldy, and the door to our refrigerator fell off.

keep in mind, other than my computer which broke only a few days before all of this, everything i just mentioned took place within a single day. actually, more like a few hours. it was a monday naturally, and with every passing inconvenience/tragedy we only laughed more. an outlandish day for sure.

so a few days later i took my laptop to a bush-league little shop no bigger than a walk in closet and sat down with a geek who fixed my computer over a period of four to five hours. overall he only charged me twenty five american dollars [unbelievable]. to God give the praise.

recently there has been much discussion about how we feel things are playing out in the ministry here. we realize that the magnitude of what we are doing is much greater than we had initially thought and would take more time to accomplish than we initially planned. just a few days ago joel signed a year long lease on a five bed room apartment that will fit all of us. joel asked me if i wanted to stay here for the next year, and so far i have no reason not to. i've been praying for God to throw down an obvious road block if he doesn't want me here past the end of november, because as of now i see it fit for me to stay.

i've also been asked if i want to go home in december as my current plane ticket would suggest. and honestly i am torn, i want to see all of you, friends and family, but given the decision, i think i will choose to stay. i love you all, but i want to see what christmas is like here in bethlehem, i want to see how christians celebrate Jesus right where he was born. it's not certain that i will be able to stay for christmas, but time will tell.

as far as what we think we are going to do here for a years time, we are feeling more lead to make actual episodes with seasons rather than the online sourceflix.com mini videos that we've been working on as of late. currently joel is diligently trying to make contact with the guy who found the supposed "lost tomb of Jesus." we have a good case to refute the claim that those are actually Jesus' bones and that his tomb. we all would love to see this door open...though if it does, the israeli government, jewish as it is, might not like us much afterward.

not long ago i said good bye to jamie and whitney for at least the next four and a half months time. the two of them along with all the friends we have made throughout the past six weeks are all leaving within a few days time to go back to their home lands. it sucks.

i wish i was capable of being grateful enough to suffice in the capacity that is deserved for how amazing this past month and a half has been. i once lived in columbus ohio and was within walking distance of jamie and whitney's houses. and one day i said, "jamie, i am going to israel!" and he excitedly replied, "dude! whitney and i might go this summer also!" and from there it was my greatest pipe dream i have yet to have that we might all spend our summer together in jerusalem...

i'm always scared to love girls. i am excited for marriage so i'll be committed and can love as much as i am capable without the hesitance in wondering whether or not it will be a long term investment. that is why i am so obsessed with my friends, because i've already decided to invest in them long term, so no amount of love i can give them is too much. these past few weeks with jamie and whitney have been so good in that regard. and to all of you whom i miss...i miss you. much love in your direction from me!

i know some of you are reading this thinking, this guy is either a complete hippie or a total girl. and i'll have you know, i consider myself healthy. are you? geeze...

in the other workings of life, we recently interviewed some top dogs of the archaeological world. i know that every time i talk about an interview with an archaeologist i say that he is the top dog in all israel, but i assure you, this time, it's for real. this one guy really is! i don't have a good, on hand reason why you should believe me this time, but just do it anyway.

we interviewed doctor bentor at tel hotzar in the northern galilee area. he excavates at the largest tel in all israel [i know i also say that every tel is bigger than the next, but this one really is, believe me :] this interview wasn't feeding us the, "bible is super awesome in all regards" type information we've got from most of our previous interviews. but keep in mind, if we are going to be credible as we investigate the scripture, we can't just publish half the story, hence be totally bias. not every aspect of archaeology is in the bibles favor, but the fact that they can't possibly do archaeology in israel without the scripture makes you wonder. and as somewhat of a side note: for all those who are freaked out because they supposedly found the tomb of Jesus with his bones and crap. reliable sources testify that it's crap. we might do a video segment on it sometime later.

if you aren't familiar with the biblical story of samson, than here is a quick summery of the end of his life i want to tell you to help you understand some further information: samson is held captive by the philistines and he is chained between two pillars that support the roof of the temple. so he uses his immaculate strength and pulls the pillars down, collapsing the roof and killing himself and all the philistines inside. so with that knowledge, we talked to doctor mazar, a tenth century expert and a current archaeologist at tel rehov. he told us about a temple he excavated that was clearly designed with two primary pillars that supported the entire roof. coincidence? yeah, i think it's just a coincidence...

i am sure there are some of you waiting with baited breath [the term baited breath is one that scott used today that i thought made him sound eloquent, so i took it.] anyway, those of you waiting for our sourceflix page to do something instead of sit there like a glob of sea-jelly on the shoreline as you poke it with a stick wondering if it's alive. soon we should show some signs of life with posted video. we have been in debate about the best method of posting video, whether it be in well refined, short-film like segments or just start pasting the stinking information as it comes. naturally us boys decided to post the stinking information as it comes. so sit back, get some popcorn and prepare yourself for mind blowing online video of old guys talking about older dirt - it will rock your world!

seriously though, i never thought that a huge pile of dirt would strengthen my confidence in scripture so much...or at all for that matter.

well, that's it. i've filled my half hour time slot. there is more to tell but i'll save it so i can make this a two parter and keep you wanting. as we said when i was playing music on tour, "make em wait!" so keep in touch lovelies. there are pictures on my flickr page. the link is just below this. it says, "israel photographs." get it? israel?...photographs?...oh baby. heh heh.