Born of a Tajik father and an Uzbek mother, Ilyos Temirov is 23 years old.  His family lives in Chkalovsk, a town with a population of 50,000, in northern Tajikistan.
 
Over the August Bank Holiday weekend, he was one of a trio of breakdancers, sponsored by CMS, who performed at Greenbelt, the Christian arts festival, and, before that, at Soul Survivor.

A youth leader, he had, until recently, his own youth club, ‘Success’, in Khujand, where he worked with 45 teenagers, 15 of whom were breakdancers.

‘Success’ is just one of a network of youth clubs, located in four cities in Tajikistan, linked to Youth Life, an organisation intent on youth development and helping young people gain employment. 

Despite a leg injury he sustained recently while breakdancing, he hopes to leave soon for Bulgaria, where, for four years, he will live with, testify and witness to the gypsy community in Stolipinovo, near Plovdiv city, as part of the outreach of a charismatic church there.

He also hopes to be allowed to continue his studies there.  He was expelled from his college in Tajikistan recently for attending a five-day Christian conference in Turkey.

His first year will be spent studying Bulgarian, of which he’s not a native speaker but he’s unfazed by the prospect of the hard work in store.

Each year of study in Bulgaria will cost 3,000 Euros and he has no idea how God is going to provide the funding for that but he looks forward to finding out.

He remembers very clearly the day in 1997 when, at his school’s recommendation, a couple came to his home and asked him, then 13, and his brother to attend a youth club, where they not only played games and made friends but were taught a series of ‘life lessons’.

Three years later, on the third day of a summer camp in 2000, “the Day of Salvation”, he and the other teenagers present were invited, during an act of worship, to make a list of their ‘bad habits’, screw up the piece of paper into a taper, light it at one of the candles, let it burn to ash in a metal bowl, and offer them to God.

Ilyos was bluntly honest about his bad habits -- the usual gamut of adolescent experimentation: drinking, smoking, swearing and petty theft.

That evening, he couldn’t sleep.  He had the unwavering conviction that something integral had changed inside him.

Once home, he approached a youth leader who, recognising the work of the Holy Spirit in his encounter, prayed with him, "taught me about Jesus" and encouraged him to attend Christian home groups.  He started to grow spiritually.

Ilyos being offered cake for his birthday during Greenbelt
(Photo: Sarah Truby/CMS)

He spent four years as a volunteer at clubs, helping youngsters from problem families, before becoming a ‘captain’, with more responsibility, and then a youth leader in his own right.

Ironically, for a breakdancer, as a baby, he was diagnosed by doctors as likely to be paralysed for life.

He had a distended stomach and spindly legs and weak feet that wouldn't lie or work right.

His grandmother ignored the medical predictions and rubbed chicken fat into his legs and taught him his first steps.  He was three years old before he began to walk.

An avid footballer as a child, he quickly made up for lost time.

He is absolutely sure about the call of God upon his future.

Please remember Ilyos in your prayers, his breakdancing, his ministry and his ongoing life in Jesus Christ.

CMS supports the work of Youth Life financially.