The Ukranian Rapper
This is Timur (on the right if you can’t tell). Timur is 23 years old, and a student at Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC). He was born in the Ukraine, but was given to an orphanage right away. While there, he amazingly became a Christian. At the age of 16, (yes, he grew up in the orphanage for 16 years), he was adopted by a Christian missionary family.
Timur and I met at an InterVarsity (IV) conference the week after school ended. He will be helping plant an IV chapter at DMACC in the fall. What’s crazy is that his adopted aunt and uncle helped start a church in Ames, and has friends in common with a couple of IV staff members in our region. The more people I meet, the more I’m convinced that the whole thing about 6 Degrees of Separation is true.
There were about 140 people at that IV conference, and by the end of the week, everybody knew who Timur was. That’s because he’s passionate. He is in love with rap music. Back home in the Ukraine he works with Christian rappers and on creating a mainstream genre of “positive music”. He is in America for two years getting a marketing degree so that when he goes back he will know how to spread the word to the lost people of his country.
He has immersed himself into the world of rap music without all the negatives that come with it. He’s familiar with more American rappers and Christian rappers than I could possibly hope to be. When we walked to dinner, or back to the dorms, he was constantly free-style rapping about Jesus. It was an incredible week getting to know him.
What can we learn from Timur?
- Everything and everyone is connected more closely than we think. Timur and I have some mutual friends because of people he know at DMACC and the church he attends.
- Passion fuels influence. Had Timur not been so passionate about rap music and Jesus, he would not have made the impact he did during that week-long conference.
- The Holy Spirit gives us the ability to immerse ourselves into a given culture without being tainted by it. Timur loves Jesus more than rap music, and that’s why he’s not rolling in bling and out with ladies every night. Rap music gets a bad rap (pun intended, haha), but he finds ways to make it about Jesus and change the world with his passion.
- Find what you love, and use it for Jesus.
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