It’s Like Getting Married to God

Ilya Tsypko is not your typical participant at this week’s basketball camp. For one thing, basketball is not his favorite sport. He loves playing the game, and he plays it a lot when he’s home in Minsk, Belarus. But his favorite sport to play is football. No, not that football, American football.

“I play basketball just for fun,” he said. “I play American football in Minsk. Minsk has three teams and there are five teams in all of Belarus.

“I play with a team named ‘Pagans,’” he added with a smile on his face. “It wasn’t my choice to name the team.”

He likes the strategy involved in football. For those not familiar with it, it’s a lot more than just seeing who can run over the other team better. Sometimes you try to run around them, and sometimes you do try to run over them. Of course, there’s also the forward pass.

Ilya plays running back, which means he stands near the quarterback as the play starts. Sometimes the quarterback will give him the ball and he’ll try to run it up field, avoiding the defense. Other times, the quarterback will give it to another player, or throw it to another one. He might even keep it and run with it himself.

“American football is like a chess match,” he said. “You should be smart to be able to play it. There’s a lot of strategy. You don’t always have to be physical.”

It’s a lot like his journey to make the commitment to be baptized Friday morning. You have to have different strategies to work through different circumstances. Sometimes you have to attack the problem, while other times avoiding the problem is the better choice. Occasionally you have to mix in the pass to catch the opposition off-guard.

He was raised in a Christian home, but he says his parents didn’t always live like Christians. They argued and yelled a lot and eventually started the process to get divorced. He also felt like the church was too strict, too rigid. It drove him away from the church altogether when he was 15.

“My family was a very bad example for me,” he said. “If this was what a Christian family was like, I didn’t want to be like that. My parents still live together, but I think it would be better to be divorced than to live like they do.”

He started getting into things like drinking and smoking marijuana. “Those things were my way to escape,” he said.

But through that time, he still felt he was a Christian.

He eventually started going to a different church, where he felt welcome. He met Vitaly Valui, who brings young people to this basketball camp every year. “I started going to his church and started playing the guitar and bass guitar for worship,” Ilya said. “I wasn’t baptized then, because I felt like I was a Christian.

“I don’t believe God lives ‘in a box.’ I believe He is in charge of our whole lives.”

He knew that it was time for him to take the next step with his faith. He’s thought about being baptized for the last couple of years, but he just hadn’t figured out when the time would be perfect.

Then he watched Martynas Airosius get baptized in the Polica River Wednesday morning and he decided that this was the perfect opportunity.

“Vitaly told me that I could come here and play basketball,” he said. “I knew I wanted to be baptized, and I thought this was the perfect time. I know that God has hold of me, and I like this spot very well. It’s very good for me.

“It’s like meeting a girl. She becomes your girlfriend and eventually you decide you want to marry her. That’s what it’s like with God. You can know Him. You can know that He’s around you.

“But when you get baptized, it’s a serious step in your life. It’s saying, ‘Yes, God, I want to live with You the rest of my life.’ It’s like getting married to God.”

He believes that God has a perfect plan for him, much like He does for everyone else at the camp. He recognizes that while his story may not be dramatic, it’s unique. There’s no one else in the world who has his exact story.

And he’s fine with being atypical.