Deidox

This past weekend we started shooting out next Deidox film – Alyssa. It was so cool following her around with a camera and observing the unique perspective God has given her on life.

Here are a few stills from the first day of shooting. We’ll be shooting this story off and on over the next few weeks.

Also, you’ll notice a new team member with a camera. That’s Jacob Lewis. He and Jefferson Henson are working with us on this Deidox story. They also do media for Cornerstone Simi Valley (the church Francis Chan speaks at). We had a blast shooting with them.

Hey friends. Tomorrow (Saturday, February 27) we will begin shooting our next Deidox film.

If you think about it, we’d love your prayers:

- Pray that the shoot goes well, health and protection (both physical and spiritual) for all involved.
- Pray for creativity and energy to do the best we can, and that we’re able to capture and tell the story that God wants us to tell.
- Pray for Alyssa, the girl we’re following. That God would speak and work through her.

We’ll be posting pictures and updates during the shoot through our twitter account - twitter.com/deidox.

Also, on this shoot we’ll be working with Jeff Henson and Jacob Lewis, two very talented film guys that do media with Cornerstone Simi Valley (Francis Chan’s Church). It’s our first shoot with them and we’re pretty excited about it. The team of Deidox filmmakers is expanding… we’ll have more news to share about that in the coming weeks.

If you’re curious, here’s the equipment were taking with us. Actually, here’s less than half of the equipment. We will have five cameras for this shoot because of some of the unique complexities in capturing this story live.

This week’s True Story Tuesday comes from Heather Mercer in an interview with Voice of the Martyrs. Heather was one of the eight missionaries held in prison and placed on trial in Afghanistan in 2001.

In the following video Heather shares about preaching the gospel in Muslim countries, and the miraculous story of a man she calls “Gideon.”

What is True Story Tuesday? Since the goal of Deidox is to tell true stories of how God is at work, very often we hear of amazing stories that for one reason or another haven’t been made into a Deidox film. (Or, perhaps we should say they haven’t been made into films “yet.” You never know what the future might bring.) So every tuesday is True Story Tuesday where we post a new story about how God is at work.

Greetings friends!

This week’s story is an old favorite that the Chronicle Project team worked on before they were doing the Deidox films. The above video about a man named Dave was produced for Saddleback Church and their HIV/AIDS ministry. Enjoy!

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What is True Story Tuesday? Since the goal of Deidox is to tell true stories of how God is at work, very often we hear of amazing stories that for one reason or another haven’t been made into a Deidox film. (Or, perhaps we should say they haven’t been made into films “yet.” You never know what the future might bring.) So every tuesday is True Story Tuesday where we post a new story about how God is at work.

Bonus for pastors: We hope some of these true story tuesday blog posts can help provide illustrations for your sermons. Both Dave and Brent are PK’s, so they hope is that at least one of these stories replaces an embarrassing story about your child that you were going to tell.

Greetings friends. Welcome to the first blog post from the new Deidox True Story Tuesdays, where every tuesday we’ll share a story of how God is at work in the world today.

This week’s story comes from an email from a filmmaker that has lived in Haiti for quite some time as a missionary…

“I’ve been meaning to write each of you. Some of you I have, some I haven’t yet. It’s been the most bizarre and awful 10 days of my life. The earthquake has hit me and my friends and family really hard. Our house may no longer be livable. It has a few cracks here and there, but the strong aftershocks keep happening and I’m sure they weaken the house in some degree every time. Some of my friends have died. One student of mine died. Her house collapsed on her and her mother. Dead bodies lined the streets, so many people had broken bones and smashed skulls. But the worst thing might have been the smell. You can literally smell the death in the streets and among the hurting. There seems to be little hope in the eyes of the Haitians.

But God is providing, protecting, and helping though. He has performed so many miracles. Well, miracles to us, but miracles are very natural for Him. I’ll tell you one quickly. A friend’s mission was giving out water from their cistern to whomever needed it. They gave all they could and in a few days it was gone. We all have cisterns to hold our only water in Haiti, it’s not like the US. So they went to sleep that night with an empty cistern. The next morning they woke up and checked their cistern and it was full to the brim! Awesome =) Check out Isaiah 33:15-16 to see God’s promise on that.”

True Story Tuesday is something new from the Deidox team. The goal of Deidox is to tell true stories of how God is at work, and very often we hear of amazing stories that for one reason or another haven’t been made into a Deidox film. (Or, perhaps we should say they haven’t been made into films “yet.” You never know what the future might bring.) So starting this week we’ll be posting True Story Tuesday updates every tuesday morning.

We’ve got some fun ideas cooking for True Story Tuesdays, so stay tuned. We hope you find them both challenging and inspiring.

Bonus for pastors: We hope some of these true story tuesday blog posts can help provide illustrations for your sermons. Both Dave and Brent are PK’s, so they hope is that at least one of these stories replaces an embarrassing story about your child that you were going to tell.

We have a video to share with you today, and we think you’ll find it quite inspiring.

For those who haven’t been following our tweets (Deidox), a former boss of Brent’s was in Haiti filming for Compassion International when the earthquake hit. For 65 hours after the earthquake hit nobody heard anything from Dan Woolley. His last known whereabouts was the Hotel Montana, which if you look at the picture below was completely wiped out during the quake. Yet miraculously Dan survived, pulled out of the rubble after 65 hours. In the above video you will hear of the ordeal firsthand, with Dan boldly proclaiming how God brought him through.

Extra bonus: If you’d like to hear more, Dan’s story was also featured on NPR.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122623093#

The Hotel Montana, before and after the earthquake

Early this week the largest church in China was raided and shut down by Chinese authorities. The news a sobering reminder of the persecution in China. (We’re posting about this news story because our most recent Deidox film, Li Yang, takes place within the Church in China.)

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

The Golden Lamp Church was built to serve nearly 50,000 worshippers in the gritty heart of China’s coal country. But that was before hundreds of police and hired thugs descended on the mega-church, smashing doors and windows, seizing Bibles and sending dozens of worshippers to hospitals with serious injuries, members and activists say. Today, the church’s co-pastors are in jail. The gates to the church complex in the northern province of Shanxiare locked and a police armored personnel vehicle sits outside. The closure of what may be China’s first mega-church is the most visible sign that the communist government is determined to rein in the rapid spread of Christianity, with a crackdown in recent months that church leaders call the harshest in years.

Read the entire article here.

Sobering news about the reality of the Church in China, and a good reminder that we need to be continually praying for the persecuted church. There was another big new item from China that slipped under the radar this week. A pastor in China was sentenced to 15 years in prison for telling his story publicly. You can read that article here.

Whenever we hear this type of news it greatly humbles us because of Li Yang’s courage to have his story told in a Deidox film. Greatly humbles us.

Fantastic news! Deidox has been nominated for two awards in Collide Magazine’s 2009 “best of” Awards! Winners are based on online voting, so if you’re a fan of Deidox we need you to vote away on the website to help us win:

How to vote:

1) Go to the Collide awards voting page

2) VOTE for Deidox under “favorite church media producer” and Li Yang (Deidox) under “favorite church media short film.”

Thanks so much! Deidox is definitely a newcomer and underdog in these awards, but we figure it’s worth a shot. It would be pretty cool to win as it would definitely help more churches find out about Deidox. So, if you’ve got 5 minutes help us out and vote away.

Also, there’s actually one other thing on the list from the team behind Deidox… “Stories for Skid Row” under the “favorite non-sermon podcast.” This is a series the guys do for Union Rescue Mission on skid row in Los Angeles. If you’re bored at work you might enjoy checking the series out.

Have 5 minutes to spare to help Deidox out? This week the Collide Awards are taking nominations for their yearly “best of” and then voting will happen next week. We’re a little late to the nominating (a friend told us today), so if you’re a fan of Deidox here’s what we need you to do:

1) Go to the Collide Magazine blog HERE – http://ow.ly/ICFo

2) Nominate Deidox for “favorite church media producer” and Li Yang for “favorite church media short film.”

3) Submit it. (or fill the rest out if you want to vote more). That’s it!

Thanks so much! Deidox is definitely a newcomer and underdog in these awards, but we figure it’s worth a shot. It would be pretty cool to be nominated, and it would definitely help more churches find out about Deidox.

As a director, filming “Deidox | Li Yang” in China was one of the most stressful film experiences I’ve had in a long time, but also one of the most rewarding.

I’d been to China several times before, although this trip was different because of the nature of the project. Since we were filming with Christians in communist China, security was a huge concern. I’d been warned on this trip to watch for police following us around as China was undergoing heightened security in preparation for their 60th anniversary. My DP/Cinematographer and I had to be very careful and constantly looking over our shoulders, like secret agents almost. This worry was further heightened because on my last trip to China I almost got nabbed by the police. “Almost” means that I had jumped in a taxi mere seconds before the police stormed the location I was filming at. The taxi drove away while I watched the event unfold through the back window of the taxi. I was not looking for a repeat experience.

On this trip, finding our story was almost like a Deidox film unto itself. Three days into the journey we found out that our original subject/story had fallen through for security reasons. They backed out because it was too much of a risk to their ministry. So, three days in we were stranded in China without a story to tell. All we could do was pray and trust God’s unfolding plan (which is really what all these Deidox stories are about). And in the midst of this uncertainty we felt God’s hand guiding us along, so we pressed on.

We went on to pursue three other potential stories, all of which for various reasons didn’t work out either. It wasn’t until six days into our trip, after much prayer and searching, that we came to find a story and willing participant in Li Yang. The fifth story try was the charm. We spent three days with Li documenting how God is using him to minister to a community in the midst of government persecution. This danger is very real. But, Li strongly believes he is doing what God wants, and that this is what He is compelled to do as a follower of Christ, so he continues in sharing the Gospel despite the danger.

As we were filming Li’s story we felt the Lord’s presence guiding us along. And thank God because without His guidance this would never have been completed. Time and again everything seemed to be going wrong. Way more than normally goes wrong. Either sound wasn’t working or schedules got mixed up and our 4 hour shoot got cut to 1 hour. Nothing was ideal. There was even a language barrier we were dealing with because our subject didn’t speak English (we used a translator). We would often leave our shoot in frustration because the footage we were getting was not as ideal as we would have liked. But through it all we felt a peace that the footage we were getting on film was what we were supposed to get. Only by the grace of God were we able to get this story (and any Deidox story for that matter). It may sound kind of cheesy, but I’m not really sure how else to describe it.

Spending time with a believer who is willing to share their journey despite the risk was an incredibly humbling experience, and in the end I think we were able to do a Deidox film that honestly depicts Li’s journey. For that I am so grateful.

I want to real quick thank everyone who was praying for us during this trip. Your prayers meant so much. We really felt God’s hand throughout the entire trip. It was a new journey every day over there for us as we tried to figure out why we were there and what we were supposed to be filming, and through this process we really felt God guiding us. It even felt like He had a plan, and a part of that plan was making sure we knew this story was not going to be anything like we wanted, but rather how He wanted. And that’s what we had prayed for. Praise God. And praise Him that we got all the footage home without any incident. Getting stopped at the airport and having footage confiscated would have been a disaster for Li Yang. God got us through!

You can view Li Yang’s film here at deidox.com.