International Christian community

Dan Koski was born and raised in east central Minnesota. A graduate of the University of Minnesota-Duluth, he developed an interest in learning about new cultures, peoples and nations during a trip to Yugoslavia in December of 1999, a few months after the cessation of the last regional conflict. He worked as a patrol officer for the city of Morris, Minnesota from 2006 to 2009 until leaving to the Holy Land, where he lived and worked with the Christian community of Bethlehem from 2009 until 2019. During this time he retrained as a nonprofits, tourism and English-language content producer, working in a variety of positions in and around Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Among his former employers is Sami Awad, an internationally-recognized Palestinian Christian who has worked for over a quarter century to promote an ethos of grassroots community nonviolence and non-linear leadership training. During his decade in the Holy Land, Dan became extensively involved in both the Palestinian and international Christian community, becoming particularly involved with the Palestinian Arab, Greek and Russian Orthodox presence. Following a years-long struggle to obtain permanent residency, he left the Holy Land, where he lived in Cyprus, Serbia and Romania through the spring of 2021. He has recently returned to his home state of Minnesota, where he is presently reconnecting with family and discerning new vocational and career possibilties. His work, volunteer and life experiences have brought him to over a dozen nations in Europe and the Middle East. He has written numerous articles and blogs and lectured on the historic and contemporary Christian presence in the Holy Land in both virtual and videoconference settings, and has been featured in one film documentary as well as a recently published travelogue. He remains active in Holy Land work through volunteer fundraising for the Bethany Orthodox School for Girls, a private Christian boarding school based in the town of Al-Azaria, Bethany, immediately east of Jerusalem. Dan enjoys speaking and communicating on a variety of different topics, including the Holy Land, the east Balkans, Romania, international, intercultural and inter-community conflict and understanding, the value of education for young women in impoverished communities, the value of pilgrimage and localized international living, of processing change, challenges, loss and possibilties. His favorite quote is “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down,” attributed to the late novelist, Kurt Vonnegut.