Introduction

Biography

I be­came a Chris­tian in Feb­ru­ary 1973 at Nott­ing­ham Uni­ver­si­ty where I stu­died Russ­ian and Ger­man.

Through my Russ­ian stu­dies and in­volve­ment with the Chris­tian Un­ion I be­came in­ter­est­ed in East­ern Eur­ope (the for­mer Com­mu­nist block) and sub­se­quent­ly re­ceived a call­ing to be in­volved in Christ­ian min­is­try.

My first post­ing was in 1976–77 in It­aly, where I helped a pas­tor for three months in his min­is­try of care and ev­an­gel­ism among Russ­ian Jews wait­ing to em­i­grate to Am­er­ica.

In the sum­mers of 1977 and 1978 I was giv­en a min­is­try of ev­an­gelis­ing East­ern Eu­ro­pe­an truck­ers pass­ing through Aus­tria. A few of these truck­ers were from Al­ba­nia, and it was a chal­lenge to learn how to com­mu­ni­cate with them to share the Gos­pel with them.

It was at that time that I real­ised just how lit­tle Chris­tian li­te­ra­ture there was av­ail­able in their lang­uage and what we had, they couldn’t un­der­stand be­cause it was in old Al­ba­ni­an.

So when in Sep­tem­ber 1978 I got mar­ried to my wife Rose­ma­ry and start­ed work­ing as a Russ­ian-Eng­lish trans­lat­or near Mu­nich in south­ern Ger­ma­ny, we start­ed learn­ing Al­ba­ni­an to­ge­ther in my lunch breaks.

We started work­ing to­geth­er with Sa­li Rah­ma­ni, the Al­ba­ni­an ra­dio ev­an­gel­ist, who just hap­pened to be liv­ing in Mu­nich at the time, and we ve­ry soon real­ised that there were hard­ly any Chris­tian songs in Al­ba­ni­an.

So with his en­cour­age­ment and help I start­ed in the summ­er of 1979 trans­lat­ing my first short cho­rus­es in­to Al­ba­ni­an, and in No­vem­ber 1979 we made our first re­cord­ings.

In 1980 I started wri­ting a Christ­mas can­ta­ta in Al­ba­ni­an based on the then ex­ist­ent trans­la­tion of the Christ­mas sto­ry, which we ev­en­tu­al­ly per­formed in Ti­ra­na over Christ­mas 1991.

At the end of 1979 we moved to Linz in Aus­tria so that we could ev­an­gel­ise the un­reached Ko­so­van guest work­ers there.

Although we didn’t see much fruit among the Ko­so­vans, by 1991 we had our own small in­ter­na­tion­al Chris­tian fel­low­ship.

Our time in Aus­tria end­ed in 1984 when due to pres­sure from the au­thor­i­ties we were forced to leave.

In the sum­mer/au­tumn of 1984 we moved back to Ger­ma­ny, this time to Frei­lass­ing near Salz­burg, where I start­ed part-time work as an Eng­lish teach­er to adults.

It was here in Frei­lass­ing, a few years lat­er, that I trans­lat­ed the ca­rol, Si­lent Night, on­ly 10 ki­lo­me­ters away from Ober­dorf where the orig­in­al of that song had been writ­ten.

Some of our Ko­so­van friends in Linz in­vit­ed us to vi­sit them in Ko­so­vo, so in the ear­ly 1980s we made our first trips to Ko­so­vo.

In De­cem­ber 1985 I was picked up by the po­lice. When they real­ised that in a Ser­bi­an Mos­lem area I had Chris­tian li­te­ra­ture in Al­ba­ni­an with me, I was de­tained and in­ter­ro­gat­ed in Al­ba­ni­an be­cause they thought I was a spy from Al­ba­nia.

This result­ed in my be­ing barred from Yu­go­sla­via for three years. How­ev­er, our min­is­try to the Al­ba­ni­ans con­tinued.

In 1986 we made our first Al­ba­ni­an song cas­sette, fol­lowed by a short hymn book, a ca­rols book and a book of cho­rus­es.

Towards the end of the 1980s, with the tre­men­dous po­li­ti­cal chang­es in East­ern Eur­ope, my field of min­is­try ex­pand­ed, and I spent much time vi­sit­ing and min­is­ter­ing in the for­mer So­vi­et Un­ion and in oth­er East Eu­ro­pe­an coun­tries.

Then in 1991, when the chang­es af­fect­ed Al­ba­nia, we were in­vit­ed to take part in the first ev­an­gel­is­tic cru­sade in Ti­ra­na. With war brew­ing in Yu­go­sla­via, we then tend­ed to con­cen­trate our Al­ba­ni­an min­is­try more on Al­ba­nia than Ko­so­vo.

During that time I con­cen­trat­ed more in­ten­sive­ly on hymn trans­la­tion, and in 1995 we pro­duced a hymn book with 50 hymns, that we were on­ly able to pho­to­copy and dis­trib­ute in a lim­it­ed way among friends.

In 1992 we thought about mov­ing from Ger­ma­ny to Eastern Eur­ope and pur­chased a house in Bul­ga­ria. This was the start of an in­tens­ive pas­tor­al min­is­try from 1993 to 1997 among the gyp­sy po­pu­la­tion of Bul­gar­ia.

As a result of the un­rest in Yu­go­sla­via dur­ing the 1990’s we had a grow­ing con­tact to Ko­so­van re­fu­gees in Ger­ma­ny.

In 1995 we were asked by the pas­tor of an in­ter­na­tion­al church in Lem­go, Ger­ma­ny, to trans­late for Al­ban­i­ans com­ing to his an­nu­al ev­an­gel­is­tic re­treats, and then sub­se­quent­ly he com­miss­ioned me to trans­late cho­rus­es and songs for his in­ter­na­tion­al church in­to Russ­ian and Al­ba­ni­an.

In 1997 my wife fell ser­i­ous­ly ill with bo­re­al­i­o­sa [Lyme Dis­ease]. This se­ver­ely curt­ailed my min­is­try in Bul­ga­ria and meant that we could not move there as we had orig­in­al­ly want­ed to. But trans­la­tion of songs and child­ren’s ma­ter­i­al in­to Al­ba­ni­an con­tin­ued and in a small way is still con­tin­u­ing to this ve­ry day.

My wife’s sick­ness was not able to ex­ting­uish her love for the Al­ba­ni­ans. In 2000 and 2001, when she was still ve­ry un­well, she gave the last of her strength to or­gan­ise and run sp­ora­dic child­ren’s meet­ings for Ko­so­van re­fu­gees.

In 2002 my wife Rose­ma­ry became so ill that she went back to Eng­land so that she could get 24-hour care. In July 2001 she was dis­missed from the hos­pi­tal be­cause the doc­tors didn’t know how to help her.

Then the Great Phy­si­cian, Je­sus Christ, stepped in and start­ed a gra­du­al heal­ing pro­cess in her that went against all me­di­cal ex­pec­ta­tion.

The re­al­ity of this im­prove­ment in her health was crowned in Ju­ly 2002, when, af­ter ma­ny years ab­sence, she went on her own back to Ko­so­vo to at­tend the wed­ding of an Al­ba­ni­an re­fu­gee that had helped her in her time of need.

Jan Foss, 2003