Reading the Desiring God Blog today I stumbled upon a great testimony of a Chinese student. And what is even more amazing -- it is in the China Daily -- China's official English language newspaper!

Read the article here. The Desiring God post here.

I’ve been slowly reading a book by Michael Griffiths, Lamb’s dancing with wolves.1 Something he points out in a chapter entitled “Lambs bond with wolves” got me thinking. He says

To start with, all of us begin as cultural morons and linguistic idiots. We all all familiar with the pregnant phrase: ‘You must be born again!’. Entry into a new country or culture is indeed like starting all over again as a helpless baby.2

The point he is making is that in order to cross a culture we need to be learners. A learner feels inadequate and often as if they are acting like a fool. When you think about it kids are a good example. They regularly bump up against their inadequacies in language and skill set. But somehow when we grow up our inadequacy tends to be forgotten.

Yet Christians need to retain this sense of inadequacy for two reasons. Firstly in order to approach and know God through His son Jesus Christ; and secondly, in order to communicate clearly with our neighbours and across cultures. Not that we can not develop some sense of adequacy like a child does, yet the danger is that if we loose all sense of inadequacy that faith becomes mere intellectual assent and relationships become a telling rather than a doing. The question isn’t so much are you willing to cross cultures, because you already have! The question is how much are you willing to feel like a helpless baby?

I haven't posted in a very long while, so I thought that I would start the ball rolling again with some brief notes about mission in Japan. I have been trying to find our more about mission in Japan, so as I find more sources I'll keep the posts coming.

A basic history of mission in Japan

The Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier began Christian mission in Japan in 1549. Since that time, Christianity has grown, particularly during Japan's transitional periods. However, when the country gained stability the growth stopped “and traditional culture and religious powers began to counter the Christian influence.”1⁠

The century, 1549-1639, is often called the Christian Century of Japan. It saw great growth of Christians, about 300,000 by the end of the 16th century.2 A significant number of leaders showed interest in Christianity, however they soon began to see it as a foreign ideology and disruptive to society. The end of the Christian Century of Japan saw bloodshed, culminating in the Shimabara Uprising of 1637-38 with 40,000 massacred.

After the western powers broke Japan's seclusion policy Christianity again began to be introduced. In 1868 the Meiji Restoration restored power to the emperor and lifted official sanctions against Christianity in 1973. This opened opportunities for mission again in Japan; Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox were successful and in 1912 there were about 66,000 Catholics and 32,000 Orthodox. Protestants were also successful with about 90,000 Christians in 1913. Japanese Christianity, at that stage, had a number of leaders from the former warrior class, who were “intellectual, independent, non-denominational, and Bible-oriented.”3

Christian education had a notable influence upon society. However, nationalism and a revival of Confucianism and Shintoism led to government intervention. The Education Ministry, in 1899, prohibited religious education and worship in accredited schools, even as extracurricular activities.

After World War II, there was an influx of missionaries following General MacArthur's call for 1000 missionaries. This led to more than 200 Protestant denominations being established. Shinto ceased to be a state religion and a period of Christian resurgence occurred. The post-war Japanese church can be characterised by ecumenism and internationalism, but to all appearances this has not led to rapid growth. Christianity, with only 0.7% Christians of 127 million,4⁠ still remains on the periphery of society with much work to be done.

I started to organise some vocab. for Hebrew and there were a few technical issues to deal with. So, here are some tips for getting your mac setup for Hebrew.

The problem

If you want to use the TekniaHebrew font, then there will be one main issue: you will have to type in Hebrew words backwards -- that is, if you want to write from right to left (try it).

Macosx can change the directon of the line. But because the TekniaHebrew font simply changes the English characters into Hebrew characters, Macosx doesn't know any better than to treat the font the same as it does for English.

The answer: Unicode

You can think of unicode as an encoding that specifies unique codes for the world's characters. This is helpful for us now, but (gripe) character unification means that some nations are upset because they lost their version of particular characters (e.g. Japan). Anyway, follow these steps:

1. Enable the Hebrew-QWERTY Keyboard Layout

1. Enable the international menu -
1. Open System Preferences
2. Under Personal, go to the Internation settings
3. Select the Input Menu tab
4. At the very bottom select "Show input menu in menu bar"
5. Under the list of keyboard layouts, select Hebrew-QWERTY (this makes it show in the menu)
2. From the input menu in the menu bar, select the Hebrew-QWERTY and try typing in TextEdit or similar application
3. TIP: you can use Command-Space to switch between the two last language settings

2. Get a better unicode font

You are now ready to type in Hebrew, simple! But you will need to get a good font. I have tried many of the free fonts available, but with many of them the vowels are out of place. This was slightly annoying.

However, I found one good free font The Cardo Font, available at - http://scholarsfonts.net/cardofnt.html.

Install Cardo and give it a go!

For other fonts, you may like to see http://www.redlers.com/downloadfont.html

If you can read the following, your system can understand unicode: אָדָם

3. Another keyboard layout with the accent

One more thing. I can't find the accent on the Hebrew-QWERTY keyboard layout. If you can find it please let me know. For now, I have created a new keyboard layout, based on Hebrew-QWERTY, but with the accent on the "Option-/" key combination.

Download: Hebrew-QWERTY+.keylayout

Install: Place this in your "Users/username/Library/Keyboard Layouts" directory. You will need to logout and login to see it become available: the select it and it will act exactly like Hebrew-QWERTY, but with the accent available

Conclusion

I hope this helps. If there are any requests please contact me.

Dear Friends,

This year has passed quickly. It has been a difficult year, but a wonderful year. The highlight, of course, was the birth of Ian Joshua Clapham.

Baby Ian Joshua Clapham

Ian arrived at 8:45 PM on October 15. We thank God for his safe birth. He is now 2 months old. It has been difficult adjusting to life with two children. Ian wasn't sleeping well, which added further pressure. Nathan was away for two weeks for the National Training Event (NTE) and the following mission; we all found this time difficult, but Maki survived with prayer and the support of friends

Nathan's thesis

Finally, the doctoral thesis was submitted on August 31. We thank God for the support we have received over the years. There is a possibility that changes will be required after the examination; please pray that they would be minor.

Ministry Training Strategy

Nathan has found MTS challenging and helpful. This year is the last year of MTS. He has many questions and ideas, along with a desire to learn more and to keep training in various ministry roles. We thank God for this training opportunity, of which we feel undeserving. He has particularly enjoyed being challenged to shape all things by God's Word. It has also been encouraging, and humbling, to see friends grow in godliness and in passion for the gospel.

Next Year 2007

Next year Nathan will be studying at Moore Theological College. It is difficult to leave our loved friends in Albury. In many ways we would love to stay. Please pray for us as we make the move to Sydney. We need to find accommodation near a college community. Please pray that we will develop good relationships. Particularly that Maki can find a suitable bible study and be involved in college life; and that Samuel and Ian will find good mates. Pray also that Nathan will adapt to study again and that the Student Minister position at Newtown Baptists will work well.

We wish you a merry Christmas as we celebrate our Saviour. When we move to Sydney, we will be sure to pass on our new address. We would love to hear from you and pray for you. Please email us.

Grace be with you,
Nathan, Maki, Samuel and Ian Clapham.

I began a first attempt to build a Dashboard widget. Below are a few simple tips.

Use the Prototype JavaScript Library

While I was getting involved with JavaScript again I came across the Prototype JavaScript library. It turns out that Prototype is very useful for Dashboard programming.

See the following resources for information on Prototype:

• Prototype home page: http://prototype.conio.net/
• Documentation at script.aculo.us: http://wiki.script.aculo.us/scriptaculous/show/Prototype
• Further info at: http://www.sergiopereira.com/articles/prototype.js.html

Prototype has many useful functions for Dashboard programming. Some functions include interacting with forms and elements, extensions to the Array class and AJAX utilities. But I particularly like the easy access to elements: $("element_id") rather than document.getElementById("element_id").

Utility functions for Dashboard

This simple idea got me thinking. I hate the the long function name to access widget preferences (e.g. widget.preferenceForKey("pref_name")). So, taking the excellent idea of the "utility functions" from Prototype, I've created some for Dashboard widgets. It is so simple, it is hardly worth mentioning, but I have found them useful. I'll call it Dashscript.

Now, to access preferences you can use:

• $P("pref_name") rather than widget.preferenceForKey("pref_name")
• Prefs.set("pref_name", pref_value) rather than widget.setPreferenceForKey(pref_value,pref_name);
• Prefs.load("element_id", "pref_name") -- load a preference into a form input field for example.

I'm sure there are many other useful utility functions that could be included. Feel free to use Dashscript and add to it yourself. Email me ('nathan' at my domain 'claphams.info') to share your ideas and I will add them to Dashscript.

You can get the functions here: dashscript.js

Note that there is one line of code that requires the Prototype library to be included; so get a copy of Prototype also.

We're back from a one week holiday! Well, sort of.

Its time for me to finish my PhD thesis. I have been at it since the year 2000 and now the deadline is set: June 2006.

We all will be happy to see it finished, its been difficult to maintain motivation over the years. The thing we are all looking forward to is having a real holiday; not one where I have to still work and stress about my thesis.

Please pray that I'll be diligent and manage my time well over the coming month.

Market day was a success for Uni Bible Study @ CSU Albury.

We contacted many new students and became known around campus. Pray that this year gets off to a great start!