Short note today; BCP will be on the air on WayFM on Tuesday 12/2. We expect to be on at 8:30am EST and we should be on the air for 10 minutes in 22 States! If you get a chance give us a listen. If you’re in South Florida you can listen on 88.1FM. If not, you can always catch us on your local station or you can listen online at: http://wayf.wayfm.com

By the way, we finally have the link to the praise 940am interview. We still need to do a little work before posting it so please bear with us.

Our DVD is now Available
We’re thrilled to announce the public release of our film! As you know, we have had many setbacks (from losing all the footage due to equipment failure after having our hard drive examined by Israeli security to waiting on stock footage to be released to us for public broadcast.) After many months, we’re happy to have the film complete so we can share our experience in Bethlehem with you.

The video is available now on YouTube. You can see it here. We pray you will forward it on to your friends and family to help us tell our story.

Our hope is to show the film in as many churches and bible study classes as possible. Please contact us if you’d like to help us show the film in your church. Our goal is for people to catch the vision and join us in Bethlehem, or to help us make gift delivery possible by contributing to the project. Again, if you think you can help show the film in your church or bible study, please contact us.

Finally, those of you who supported us last year have received copies of the DVD. If you donated last year, please give USPS some time to deliver the DVD to you. If you do not receive it by next week, please let us know so we can send you a copy.

BCP Family Picnic
Mark your calendars, because we’ll be having a picnic on November 22nd at TY park in Hollywood, FL! Some very nice folks have donated burgers and chicken to us, and we also have someone who has volunteered their time to run organized games for the kids.

We’ll be having a bounce house and some prizes, so be sure to come and have a good time with us and meet some of the other folks who have made the project possible

We’re asking folks to donate $10 per adult (ages 10&up) and $5 per child (2-9). You can sign-up online here. Please sign-up ahead of time so we can estimate the amount of food we’ll need.

All the funds raised will go to purchasing Christmas gifts.

More information and other events can be found on our events page.

BCP 2008 Team
Last but not least, we are getting ready to go back to Bethlehem in December. We’ll be in Bethlehem from December 6th through the 13th.

We have a team of 13 people from 3 States. We’re very excited to see what God will be doing this year. We pray you will support us again with your prayers and giving. We can’t do this project without you.

Please pray for our safety and for God’s will to be done during the project. We’ll be blogging daily and uploading pictures, so be sure to check your email and our website. Ali will also be updating his facebook profile with updates along the way (when possible). We’ll also be updating Twitter. Here’s the link to our twitter page.

The best is yet to come!

Hopefully you got a chance to listen to ‘Steve Brown Etc’ and hear us on the broadcast. If not, you don’t want to miss it. At one point, you’ll hear Abdullah Awwad (Director of the Al-Basma Center for children with special needs in Bethlehem) speak about peace and coexistence.

Also, Ali briefly answered the question: ‘’Isn’t this project naive? Can BCP really make any sort of a difference?” You can find the audio of the show here.

Coming up: on Tuesday, January 22nd (i.e. today), an interview we had with K-Love (one of the nation’s largest Christian radio station networks) will air. The interview is scheduled to air several times throughout the day during K-Love’s news broadcasts. At some point, audio of the interview will be available as a podcast. We’ll let you know when it’s up. You can listen live at KLove.com or you can check K-Love’s station list to find a station in your area.

Finally, in the housekeeping department, we added an archive for all the blog entries. You can now read all our blog entries by month or category. In addition, we fixed a small problem with apostrophes appearing as strange characters in the blog emails under certain occasions. If you haven’t noticed it, no worries. If you have, it should be fixed, if not, drop us a line and we’ll take care of it (we hope).

Also, we added a ‘’get involved” section that includes easy ways you can help the project by getting involved in your area.

So, what’s the big news? We promised to tell you soon in the last entry, but decided to keep the suspense going until the day-of. Well, the big is the project is going to be on two national mainstream Christian-radio shows between now and next Friday.

The first show, Steve Brown, Etc is today. Who’s Steve Brown? He’s a conservative talk show host who describes himself as “an-old white-guy and seminary professor who’s sick of religion”. Just think NPR’s “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” meets Christian radio. Steve jokingly gives each of his guests “three free sins” and his shows have covered everything from the Middle East to Tony Campollo (whom he calls his Favorite Liberal).

You might know Steve from his other broadcast Key-Life.

In any case, Ali will be on the show from 12-1pm EST today. You can listen live over the internet here. You will need RealPlayer to listen. If you miss it, fear not, you can always get the podcast on iTunes or you’ll be able to listen to via Steve’s archive.

The show also airs on the Radio America Network on Saturday, so depending on where you are, you’ll be able to listen to it on one of their stations.

If you have the chance, check out last week’s show. If you wait (or just fast-forward) all the way to the end of the show (last few minutes) you’ll hear Steve and the crew talk about the project as they discuss next week’s guest (Cathy, one of his co-hosts, was even able to say Ali’s last name correctly!)

We told you there where two shows. The second is on one of the largest Christian radio networks in the country: K-Love. We’re not going to give you all the details now, but we will…soon!

It’s a new year! The Christmas and New Year’s celebrations were great and the down-time was wonderful! Now it’s time for next year. We have some exciting news coming up in the next couple of days. I’m not going to spoil it, but know that something is coming up…This is what we call “hype”.

Also, Jenni has been working hard on her blog entries. We’ll be posting them up soon (if you remember, she’s writing an entry about her experience with Dana at the Bethlehem checkpoint). She started with one entry, then decided she really needs to write multiple ones. She’s almost done…almost…

Another thing in the works is the project’s short film Basil has been working on. We’re shooting for the final version by the end of January. While this is happening we’re continuing our efforts to contact media. In my next entry, I’ll be posting audio from a short interview on Moody Broadcasting Network’s “Prime Time Florida”.

In the meantime, I thought you might enjoy an audio clip from the project. The short mp3 is a collage of different moments from the project. Below is a description of what you’ll be hearing. Enjoy!

-(0-30 seconds) Israeli talking about making it into the West Bank.
-(45sec-1:45) The man speaking about peace and Israelis and Palestinian children playing together is the director of Al-Basma center (a school for mentally challenged children).
-(1:46-2:00min) Israeli talking about his thoughts on the project
-(2:00-2:30min ) Jennifer talking about how she wishes more Christians could see the joy on the people and children’s faces.
-(2:30-end) Children at a school for special needs singing Arabic Christmas carols.

The trailer for the project is done and it’s up on YouTube! We’re very excited about it and are looking forward to getting the word out. We want others to catch the vision as we get closer to Christmas. Now is the time! Help us make it a reality.

Our favorite line of the trailer is the closing sentence. It sums up the entire project. You’ll just have to watch it to see what we mean.

Help us by telling us what you think and getting the word out there by forwarding the trailer on. Also, comment on this entry and tell us what you think of the final cut.

**Note** This entry has been edited. The video has been held back and will be release soon…

The video trailer for the Bethlehem Christmas Project has been months in the making. I haven’t talked too much about it in the blog, but I have been discussing it offline with many of you for some time.

The trailer was filmed in the West Bank and Israel, and was edited in London. It includes footage of some of the Israeli and Palestinian team members, as well as, footage of Dr. Salim Munayer of Musalaha

I must admit, I get cynical from time-to-time about the non-productive role some of my fellow Christians play in the Middle East especially when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sometimes, like Elijah, I ask God if “I’m the only one”. Well, God reminded Elijah that he wasn’t the only in his time, and while I know I’m not the only one in mine, I sometimes need to be reminded. If this all seems self-centered, well, it is (hence the self-admonishion). In any case, I received this video a day or so ago I thought I’d share.

There is nothing more encouraging than seeing the “Capital-C” Church move in the world. I’ve Perhaps CNN will pick us up one day. Either way, it’s nice to know, we’re not the only ones.

I think you will all enjoy this short film by Basil Khalil. The video is a comedy summarizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was filmed for less than $20.

If you enjoyed West Bank Story (if you haven’t seen it be sure to click here to see the first four minutes because it’s quite funny) then you’ll definitely enjoy Ping Pong Revenge.

Both films may have a comedic component but both have a message we can all learn from. Drop me a line and let me know what think.

I plan on posting an update by this weekend about recent project happenings. There’s a lot to tell! Expect updates to come regularly and more often from now on as the plan is to post at least once a week. I don’t want to spoil my weekend update so I’ll save all of the exciting information until then. But for now, note that we now have online donations working!

In the meantime, I ran across a song I think everyone will enjoy. I’ve been asked how I see the world on several occasions. Martin Luther King expresses all my thoughts in this song by Rx. Take a look at the link and be sure to download the song or stream it. The song is a compilation of audio clips from various speeches by MLK.

Enjoy and stay tuned for this weekend.