When refugees pour into your city or you’re stopped endlessly at police checkpoints en route to an evangelistic summer camp, you quickly learn to dispense with the “extras” and focus on what it really means to serve Jesus.

That’s a lesson young Next Generation students at the School Without Walls program in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia have learned from experience. In this region of the Northern Caucasus, students hold summer evangelistic camps in Grozny, Chechnya for Muslim children, present programs and events at an orphanage for children with disabilities and venture into the public schools to talk to students about drugs, AIDS, abortion and family issues.

Twice a month, School Without Walls teachers travel to Tskhinvali, South Ossetia (which was devastated in last summer’s Georgian-Russian conflict) to teach at the School Without Walls program there.

“For people to sacrificially and successfully serve the Lord, it wasn’t necessary to complicate our School Without Walls program with the deep theological disciplines,” explains Gennady Terkun, Russian Ministries’ national ministry director for the Northern Caucasus. “But it is essential to equip young people with the knowledge they need to have a practical Christian life and ministry.”

Terkun points out that each year, School Without Walls is expanding. “We are reaching new parts of our society, and getting young people involved in ministry—and that is expanding the kingdom of God.”

One region where School Without Walls has taken root is in Dagestan, a republic that borders Chechnya. Patimat (who asked not to be picture due to security reasons) is a School Without Walls student who lives in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan. She is a Kumyk, which is a Muslim people group.

Patimat’s life was orderly and smooth—until her husband died. Suddenly she had more questions than answers: What should I do? How can I live? Where is God?

“Eventually, God calmed my soul,” Patimat shares, but she still faced an uncertain future.

When she heard that a School Without Walls program was starting at her church, she decided to help out in the kitchen, cooking for the students.

Curious about what the students were learning, Patimat would stand outside the classroom door and listen in, sometimes entering the class for short periods of time. “I enjoyed it,” Patimat recalls, “and I received answers to many of my questions, and now I attend School Without Walls as a student, not a cook.”

As the students studied children’s ministry, Patimat felt God’s leading to begin a children’s Sunday school class at the church. “I shared this with my friend Sabina, and we both began to pray and talk with our pastor and other church members.”

Today, Patimat and Sabina teach God’s Word and His great love to children from both Christian and Muslim families. “School Without Walls inspired me to begin this ministry, and now I have found my calling,” says an enthusiastic Patimat.

Read more about the positive effect of School Without Walls.