Kosova

Greetings from a third of the way around the world!

Well our young guys that we sent to camp had a great time and said that they really enjoyed the worship and fellowship. We were very excited for them to have an opportunity to experience these things with one hundred other young believers. One noticeable difference is that they have become much closer friends. On a funny note though, I have noticed they have become like Sunday school children and think the answer to all of my questions must be “The Bible” or “Jesus”! These are the answers to all of our questions but sometimes I am looking for a little different answer. There is nothing more exciting than seeing them growing and to see their attitudes changing from a naturally selfish one to a more Godly one.

We are hosting a Doctor team right now for two weeks and it is going well. I love to be able to physically give to people what they need. We can give them free: checkups, medicine, and advice. We can go into most of these villages again with missions teams and share the Gospel, then we get to take the spiritual help after the natural help. This is how we have started our Bible study in Kabash and hope to soon add other villages where young people have expressed interest in having us come and hold a Bible study.

We had lunch today with a family that has not allowed one of their boys to come to my Bible study when they found out he was coming. Also one of his distant cousins was not allowed to come by his family. This large family in our village are in charge of taking care of what’s called a turbah. This turbah has the bones of a dead “sacred” man inside and people stop all of the time and pray to it and kiss the “death house” and give money to it so that the spirit inside will protect them. Please pray for the Shehus (their last name) that God would be able to open their hearts and show them that they can pray to a living God instead of the god of the dead. This did not stop our littlest missionary from playing very hard with their children (see pic) and the light he shines into their lives is unbelievable.

We are having a great time walking on the path that God has laid out for us and are so blessed to have you all backing us up!



Prayer requests.

That our Bible study guys would keep growing and would reach out to their friends with the gospel.

That the Doctor would have a gentle Godly heart with the people, even though it does not seem that he allows his being a “Christian” to affect his life.

That the Shehus would have a Paul like encounter with Jesus Christ and would turn from their wicked ways.



God bless you all in your lives!

Dan and Amber and Judah Litzinger

For a little while, we thought that Spring had arrived to stay, but it has continued its little cat and mouse game with the clouds. We have had enough days to get us out into the yard, and start planting some things. The fields are slowly turning green, and the weather is slowly warming, so we expect the sun to pop out to visit for an extended time any day.

Dan’s group of boys has been doing very good, and we have been excited to see some ‘progress’ in their lives. Four boys have started coming regularily to meet with Dan on Wednesday afternoons. They study the Bible, learn, and talk about questions that they might have. Last week, Dan borrowed a copy of ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’, the new one, and showed it to the boys. He was surprised to see that even though they enjoyed the movie, they didn’t draw any of the parallels that we would think are so obvious. But, this is not a discouragement, but a challenge, to help these young men take their new faith to heart in such a way that it becomes almost second nature to them. Adil Hajdari was one of the young men who had originally started going to Krushë e Madhë with Dan for youth group. Then, he dropped out of school, and started working. Recently, Adil has started coming on Wednesday afternoons, and he joined us for church on Sunday for the first time. I was just looking at a picture of him two years ago (I couldn’t find it, or I would have shared it with you, too), and to see how much he has changed since then is amazing. It is a precious thing to have some small area to speak into his life, and we are praying that God will catch a hold of him and make his inner change more drastic than his outside. Also, please keep Bedri Hajdari in prayer. Bedri came faithfully for a few months, but recently has had no desire to join the boys on Wednesday, Saturdays, or Sundays. We know that God is faithful to complete His work, and we can only pray this in Bedri’s life.

Since November, we have been able to serve two churches of Kosova. I help with worship at the church that we normally attend, but for five months, we have also been leading worship for a church whose pastor has had to go to the states for an extended time. It has been so interesting to see this church grow up while its pastor has been away. They are such an amazing group of people, very loving and welcoming, and we have enjoyed the time that we have with them. Each week is a little busy since we go to the new church at 10, play worship, and then leave before the message so we can get to our church on time, but each week, we see God’s blessing on us for our little part, and on the church. Instead of withering because their pastor wasn’t there, the church has increased in unity, attendance has grown, they have purchased a vehicle (out of their own donated money) to be able to bring widows to church, and they have blessed us. It has been such an honor to watch this change in a Kosovar church. Soon, our regular church will change the time that they meet and it may be hard for us to do both, but this time with the ‘new’ church has been sweet.

We have a doctor team that arrived over the weekend, and after the normal problems of planes coming in later, waiting in Prishtina for hours on end, and going through the rigamarole to get the medicines, our doctors are off to a great start. This team is a huge blessing not only to Humedica and the villages that they will visit. They have been trying to help out around the house as much as they can, and have become dear friends already. It is such a nice ‘extra’ when God allows us to enjoy our work!

I apologize for any typos, or funny sentences in this, but, so as not to delay the ‘publishing’ of this installment of our newsletter (don’t we sound fancy?!), I have to send it out without my editor’s (Daniel) approval. We love all of you that we are blessed to have in our lives. Have a wonderful week.

Blessings, Dan, Amber, and Judah Litzinger

Many of you may have been wondering what may have happened to us, since we haven’t sent a newsletter in I don’t know how long. But, we are here, happy and healthy, and very blessed.


March 24, we closed the kindergarten for ten day Spring Break and the next day, we packed ourselves up in our van to drive to Germany. The van that we piled into is the reason that we needed to go. Every two years, German vehicles must pass a safety inspection and be registered, so we needed to get the van to Germany. We were trying

to get this accomplished in the time we had Spring Break in the kindergarten, but our plans were changed. We had someone staying in the kindergarten to take care of the building, and to help the workers open up kindergarten the following week. None of us knew that it would end up being three weeks. While we were in Germany, the van motor blew up (literally), and was in rehab for a week an a half. The van had been running rough for quite a while, and we knew that they would find some stuff that needed to be fixed, but the mechanic said that is was a complete miracle that we made it to Germany at all. Dan was also blessed that the motor blew while in Germany. The many little problems that caused the ultimate *boom* (I won’t go into the details since I’m not sure of them) were so small that Dan isn’t sure they would have found them and then, we might have broken down on the way home in a country where the people wear camouflage for fun, and speak a language with a different alphabet. We are just very grateful that we made it to Germany, our motor was replaced, and we made it home.

One of the other reasons that we went to Germany was to get to know the people who work at and run Humedica. Humedica is a fairly small organization as far as size goes, but they do huge amounts in catastrophic, medical, and immediate-disaster relief work. While we are in Kosova running the kindergarten, hosting doctor teams, working on different financial forms, and trying to get valuable medicines into the country, we are in constant contact with the people in Germany, and while we were there, we were very

happy to meet these people face to face. Some of them, we have met before, but many are new. It was so nice to be welcomed by them. We shared in their morning devotions (well, Dan did, I stayed at home with the rugrat, who alhough he does pray, does it in his own ‘tongues’, and then yells, “Amen”, when he’s ready), made them laugh (we are a little odd at times), and enjoyed their friendships and encouragement. It was a valuable time for us to build relationships with the people that we work so closely with, even if we are separated by thousands of kilometers.

While the van was being repaired, we were able to have some unexpected vacation time. We had taken care of the other things that we had intended on doing, so we contacted some of the different doctors and nurses that have come to Kosova on medical mission teams, and went to visit them. Even though, we were just meeting their families, or parts of them, for the first time, the time spent with them was wonderful. They are strong Christian families (we went to church each Sunday in a different German church), who desire to use their talents and lives to serve God. We are so glad that we had the chance to visit them and get to know them better. It is always so wonderful, but perfect, the way that God places people in our lives.

We were also able to do a little sightseeing, so we took Judah to the zoo, where he seemed a little overwhelmed that the animals that he knows from pictures were real, alive, and very big right in front of him. We visited a real castle, the Black Forest, Munich, and enjoyed some of the places on the way to and from, also.

One day while we were in Munich we decided to find a ‘Pizza Hut’ (an American restaurant I always crave) and have lunch. When we arrived, it was busy with other lunch-timers, but after a little wait, we got settled and ordered our food. By the way, it was very good! The waiters station was right next to our table, and as our waiter, and another were standing there working, I noticed their nametags. Our waiter was ‘Mestan’ (hmmm, that’s a different name, I thought), but the other man’s was ‘Afrim’, a name that is distinctly Albanian, or Kosovar. So I asked him where he was from. Can you imagine the answer? Kosova! We started talking in Shqip, and realized that Mestan, our waiter, was also from Kosova, and he claimed that he knew us. We told him that we were sorry, but we didn’t know him, and that maybe he had simply heard of us. A little while later, he returned and proclaimed that he did know us, and remembered where from. He remembered from a wedding we went to with some friends of ours, and he was right! Being the only Americans among sometimes four hundred Kosovars it’s not unusual that everyone know us, but we don’t know everyone. It is not such a huge thing to meet a Kosovar in Germany since many Kosovars go out of the country to work, but it was surprising, and a little humbling, to think that we randomly met a Kosovar, while at a Pizza Hut in Germany, who KNEW us.

It made us realize how important it is to live our lives for Christ because we never know who is watching!
Now we are back home enjoying the Spring weather that finally decided to visit our country, and enjoying the faces of our friends, the workers, and the children, in the kindergarten. We are so grateful for the time that we had in Germany, and ready for what is waiting to be accomplished in Krushë e Vogël. I am trying to continue the choir, but many of the kids have stopped coming and the ones that remain don’t want to be involved if there are just a few of them. I felt that this is an idea that God gave me, and have enjoyed having the contact with the older kids, but it doesn’t look like it will continue at this point. Your prayers would be appreciated. But, Dan has continued getting with some of the young men in the village on a weekly basis, and going out to visit some others in Kabash. Both of those meetings are going very good. Even in our village, there are more boys asking to come. The x-box is the draw, of course, but they hear about Jesus each time they come. We are praying for good things from this opportunity.


“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Heb. 11:1 This is a verse that has been weighing on my heart lately, and has begun to be a point of prayer for both of us. We pray this for all of you, also. Whatever God has called you to, wherever God has called you to, and whatever situation you are in, He has given you the faith that you need to do and go. But, we pray for an increase of faith in our lives and yours.


May God bless you this week,

The Litzingers

Dan, Amber, and Judah

“Apo”, “nona”, “bubay”, “ hffffss”, “gack”, “oos”, “wuntz”, “doos”….

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child…

1 Cor. 13:11

And, so it is with Judah. He has really started to take off with trying to talk to us, but since he is still so young, and he has two languages rattling around in his little noggin. Sometimes we just have to laugh at the mumble that makes its way out of his mouth, and sometimes it’s so hard to understand him. That’s how we feel in this culture, too – sometimes laughing, sometimes confused. So, just as with our daily dealings with Judah, we have to ask for God’s wisdom, guidance, and grace in our dealings with the people all around us.



The church that we attend and serve here in Kosova is awesome. It is full of life and vitality. The two pastors, young unmarried men, do a great job of trying to walk with the guidance of the Holy Spirit as they lead their church. But, most of the church is other young men. They have energy and vigor and heart’s to see God’s will accomplished, but there is a certain element of ‘grace’ missing. But, we have a hope that that is beginning to change. Last week, Armend, who was at one time our translator, got engaged to a young lady from England (I took their engagement photos for their gift). And, unlike some of the other engagements that have been happening recently, their hearts are to stay here and continue serving the Kosovar church. So, last Sunday, we had them over for dinner. We had a lot of fun with the other ‘young’ couple in the church, and are so blessed to see what God will do in their lives as they follow him. We are also excited to see how this will build the family of God. Not, that their marriage will change things drastically, but since Armend is a leader in the church, it may open up the door for the church to grow in a whole new way.

For the last two weeks, the boys that have been involved in Dave and Cindy’s I.D.P. (intensive discipleship program), joined Dan and his youth group (three boys who have been coming to church, and youth group in the neighboring village) and went to Kabash and Dedaj to meet with some of the young believers there. It was a great time for the boys, at whatever stage they are at in their walk with God, to see the others working out their faith, too. This last week, they were unable to make it to the farther village because it had rained really hard and there was a pond where the road was supposed to be, so they turned back and had coffee with those that were able to make it. It was very encouraging to Dan and Dave that Fitim was extremely captivated by what Dave was teaching about. Fitim is a fourteen year old boy from our Krushe, who has been coming to church with us for almost two months now, and tries to come whenever Dan has group on Wenesday. He is also in my choir. He has said that he has accepted and believes in Jesus, so we now pray that God would further the growth of the gospel in his life. We pray that he would become like a sponge and soak up every little bit of truth that he hears and sees.



Last week, I was invited to come and see the newest member of one of the families in our village. After, three little girls, a boy was born, and the entire family is very excited. But, the morning before I went to visit them, the workers told me that they had aborted a baby last year because it was a girl. And, a sister-in-law, did the same only about three months ago. Since we know how important it is to these people to have a boy to take care of the family and carry on the name, we are happy for this family. But, my heart cried even as I visited the them and gave them congratulations. But, this is where God’s guidance, wisdom, and grace comes in handy. It is hard not to get tired and frustrated of dealing with things that you don’t quite understand (your son’s new language skills, a culture of people that seem to have no concept of life), but, then we remember that they are just children. Lost in a world that is ruled by Satan’s lies, they don’t even know that they need help. So, we patiently direct them to the light that casts out darkness, the truth that dispels the lies, to Christ. Yep, with Judah, too!

Please also always pray for our Kindergarten staff, they see the truth, we have told them the truth and asked them to accept Jesus and still they have not received him. We are sending a picture of them. It is so hard for us to be with them everyday and not be brothers and sisters with them and see the pain they are in and see them not have any hope because they are without Jesus Christ. Top row left to right; Marita, Shkurte and Flutra. Bottom row; Maki and Violca.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone who supports us. If you support us financially, thank you. Without it we wouldn’t be able to have an X-box to help Dan spend extra time with these young men, we wouldn’t be able to bless people with engagement pictures, and we wouldn’t be here. If you support us in prayer, thank you. Without it we wouldn’t be able to get up morning after morning with joy and expectation for what God’s going to do, we would miss the guiding of the Holy Spirit to reach out to these people, and we wouldn’t be able to be here. If you don’t support us in one of these ways, please pray about doing so. Both ways are equally important and we need your encouragement and support in God’s work here!



Growing up,

The Kosova Litzingers



Translation to Judah’s words: apple, (ba-)nana, Bubby (his nickname from mommy and daddy), fish, snack, shoes, one, juice.