Twenty years ago, as Germans pounded the Berlin Wall with sledgehammers, 11-year-old Oksana Boiko couldn’t imagine how her life was about to change.

Like most Russian children, she continued to wear her Pioneer scarf to school — the symbol of the youth program that taught the values of communism. That changed in August 1991, as the Soviet Union dissolved.

For Boiko, an even more dramatic transformation followed in 1994, when she became a Christian. She moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, for college and served as secretary for the Neva Church of Christ. In 2003 she traveled to Ypsilanti, Mich., and with the help of Ken and Karen Martin of Saline, Mich., she earned a master’s in educational leadership from Eastern Michigan University.