Many of you may be waiting to hear an update on our newest book project… and you will… soon. But first we want to tell you about an adventurous endeavor that we undertook with our brother Isaac, and are now ready to unveil.
Navigating History: Egypt — more information here
Several months ago, Isaac (with Dad’s blessing and encouragement) conceived and developed a vision for a six-episode series about Egypt that would take viewers from the top of the mountains surrounding the Valley of the Kings into the tombs under the pyramids. His goal was to take a team with cameras to explore the darkest and most secret parts of Egypt’s history and illuminate them with the light of Scripture.
But Isaac wasn’t about to have all the fun without us. He brought us on board at the beginning to help make his vision a reality. Though we didn’t get to be on the trip this time, this was our part of the adventure: We got to help man Mission Control and the snazzy project website while he and his team were on the ground in Egypt.
Anna Sofia and the not-yet-Nadia-Botkin editing B-roll images
No, we didn’t get to have the boots-on-the-ground experience of actually being there and seeing and touching Egypt. But we were enjoying plenty of action on the home-front with our family; doing things we had never done before and had no idea how to do. For example, we had to learn Photoshop and basic HTML, and had to write briefings for the team on subjects like Islamic architecture and ancient Egyptian medicine.
Elizabeth and Nawelle hashing out website details
All of us had to work around the clock, marketing, managing the live broadcasts, writing articles and designing headers. And then, when he got home, the real work began – writing content for the 220-page companion book, on everything from biblical chronology to French mysticism to Shariah law to pagan death rituals to evolutionary history-revision to pyramid-building-theories (in which we discovered that aliens didn’t do it).
Anna Sofia does hands-on research on Egyptian heiroglyphs
We didn’t do this because we believed we had a biblical duty to submit to Isaac, or to be his junior helpmeets. We also didn’t do it because we particularly (initially) cared about proving that aliens didn’t build the pyramids. We did this because we particularly cared about Isaac. Isaac was about to take a big step, a bold risk, a fearless stand, and we didn’t want to miss that for the world! If Isaac was going to stand inside a mosque and call Muhammed a false prophet, and denounce Statism in front of the giant pillars at Karnak, we, for one, wanted to be on his home team. It was our way of saying to him, “We think what you’re doing is important – we think it’s important enough to put our money where our mouths are.” And we did it because our time of being with Isaac, and available to help him, won’t last forever.
Sending the Navigating History team off to Egypt with prayer.
It was an experience we wouldn’t have traded for anything. We discovered a whole new world of ideas and broadened our intellectual horizons. We learned that sisterly duties don’t have to be limited to domestic things, far removed from what the boys are doing. We discovered how much fun it is to be part of a man’s world, even if it means taking the plunge into finding world politics as fascinating as they do.
Multi-tasking: Elizabeth compares notes with Isaac on Islam’s view of women over dinner prep.
Most importantly, though, we became much closer to Isaac; and we helped him accomplish his dream, making big strides as a dominion man and disciplemaker.
(And we ended up having enough time left over to still be able to write our upcoming book about relationships with boys. But more news on that soon. Stay tuned!)