DALLAS – As Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its fifth year, the need for emotional and spiritual support for war-weary people is growing.
The Trauma Healing Hope Center, which opened a few months ago in Kharkiv, Ukraine, is a “platform for Jesus encountering people and for people encountering Jesus,” said Leonid Regheta, pastor of River of Life Church in Dallas and Eastern Europe missions director at Hope International Ministries.
Hope International Ministries is a ministry “dedicated to creating generational impact” through refugee trauma healing, children and youth ministry, and equipping emerging ministry leaders.
The trauma center, which opened Oct. 7, 2025, partners with local organizations, mental health professionals and chaplains to provide counseling and community events for war veterans and their families.
Katie Frugé , director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas’ Christian Life Commission, said she is “profoundly grateful for the many Texas Baptist churches that have answered the call to love their neighbors, and specifically for the vital ministry of Pastor Leonid Regheta.
“Through the Trauma Healing Center, the Gospel serves as a beacon of hope and restoration amidst unimaginable darkness.”
Frugé said the support efforts of the CLC thus far have “ranged from providing prayer guides for peace to establishing a dedicated fund through the Texas Baptist Hunger Offering to meet urgent humanitarian needs.”
“Since the onset of the war in Ukraine, the Christian Life Commission has called upon Texas Baptists to stand in solidarity with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters,” Frugé said.
Partners in ministry
Regheta said in the beginning stages of the war in 2022, he and the Hope International Ministries team were made aware of the “huge need” for a “more hands-on [and]full-time engagement” to provide support for Ukrainian families.
“We were approached initially with the requests to help and work with children who escaped the war in Poland, and as our organization conducted a couple camps for children, their moms were watching from the sidelines. And as we gained their [moms’] trust as those camps progressed, they came to us and said, ‘Thank you so much for helping our children, but we adults need help, too,’” Regheta recalled.
The team began to pray for a direction forward, and “God sent wonderful people our way who are trauma therapists [and] psychologists” to partner with them in trauma healing ministry. Regheta said making these connections “was a miracle.”
After returning to Texas when the camps concluded, Regheta received a phone call from a Ukrainian family from California who were considering moving to Dallas. The family traveled to meet Regheta and tour the city.
“In the process of getting to know one another, I asked them what they were doing [for a living], and the husband was a professional musician, and the wife says, ‘I am a therapist and I just puta book out, and with the war happening, I’m looking for a way to help Ukrainian refugees in Europe,’” Regheta said.
He told the woman that he and his team had received requests to help Ukrainian refugees, but they were lacking resources.
“I said, ‘Let’s do it together.’ So she put together a team of her colleagues and friends and people she knew from Ukraine, Poland and other places [in Europe],” Regheta said.
“It’s totally God orchestrating everything and putting us together. God raised awareness of the issue to us, but He also provided resources … and we decided to just start one step at a time.”
Over the next three and a half years, Hope International Ministries hosted 10 conferences at churches or local organizations across Europe that shared “the same vision,” in hopes that their communities would “know where they can come back to for continual prayer and ministry and support.”
The two-day conferences were composed of general sessions and breakout seminars
“[The conferences were] powerful because [of] the time and effort that we put in to encounter God’s power and God’s presence because He is the resurrection of life,” Regheta said.
“God has taken us to so many places, and so many things have happened as a result of prayer, asking God to put this together, and He did.”
An overwhelming demand for prayer
While hosting the conferences, Regheta was approached by the Ukrainian Baptist Union, which told him, “Our pastors and their families need huge help.”
This inspired Hope International Ministries to host trauma healing retreats in Odesa, Ukraine, for pastors from the frontlines and their families in summer 2024 and 2025. Lodging, food, materials and transportation were provided for pastors to enjoy a week of worship and elective activities, such as art therapy, prayer time and workshops dealing with fears and anxiety.
“[In an effort] to [not] overwhelm the pastors and their spouses with programming, we asked them to come early for devotional service after breakfast and in the evening for the evening service, and they would be free throughout the day to do whatever they want,” Regheta explained.
But the team “witnessed something that we didn’t expect” when calling for an afternoon prayer meeting.
“The first [year] we scheduled our prayer meeting right after lunch, and we thought, ‘Nobody’s going to show up. People will either go and take a nap after a good lunch or go for a walk on the beach,’” Regheta said. “You wouldn’t believe how many … pastors who wanted to come and wanted to share their story … [it was] overwhelming, the demand for prayer time in the afternoons.”
So the team implemented afternoon prayer meetings at the next retreat.
“Who’s better for pastors to open up to, if not other pastors?” said Regheta. After the second retreat, the team reflected on the “amazing results” they’d seen from pastors and their families, but were still burdened by the idea of the pastors living and ministering among the trauma of war.
“[We considered], ‘What can we do to make sure that there are resources on the ground to continue providing help to people who need it so much?’” Regheta said. “And that was how the idea of a stationary, permanent trauma healing center was birthed.”
Dallas, Kharkiv city mayors work together
Regheta received a phone call from a representative with the Dallas City Mayor’s Office in April 2025, who shared that the mayor of Dallas had signed a sister city agreement with the mayor of Kharkiv.
“[The mayor’s office] reached out to me and they said, ‘You’re from Ukraine. We signed this sister city agreement, and by the way, the mayor of Kharkiv is coming over. Please help us welcome him,’” Regheta said.
Upon his arrival in Dallas, Regheta organized a Dallas City Hall meeting to welcome Kharkiv’s mayor and took him on a tour of the Texans on Mission (TXM) offices.
“The mayor of Kharkiv was so impressed” when meeting TXM Chief Executive Officer Mickey Lenamon and TXM Associate Executive Director John-Travis Smith, Regheta said. They Ukrainian mayor expressed a desire to help “find a way to get all of this equipment to Kharkiv to help with recovery and rebuilding.”
“During one of those meetings, I sat down with the mayor of Kharkiv and I said, ‘Mr. Mayor, we have done a couple of the trauma healing conferences and some other events in your city, and we are looking to start a center in your city,’” Regheta recalled. “And he said, ‘What do you need to see that happen?’ I said, ‘Well, we need space,’ and he smiled back and said, ‘We’ll help you with that.’
“In a few months’ time, we had the space. Now we have a center.”
The developments are a direct result of “God orchestrating and working through the mayor of Dallas and through the mayor of Kharkiv,” Regheta said.
Since the Trauma Healing Center’s launch, Regheta has received feedback from pastors and their partners in Ukraine that the center is “an amazing place evangelism tool” because it offers “biblically based, Christ-centered counseling and assistance.”
Pastors have also requested Hope International Ministries bring the trauma healing ministry to other regions in Ukraine “because they’re also much in need.”
“We’re looking into opening the next center in Kyiv,” Regheta said. “So we are looking for ministry partners, for fundraising opportunities, for Christian psychologists … [because] we understand that true healing comes from Jesus. He is the resurrection and the life, so we would like to communicate and [help] bring that resurrection.”
Center is a ‘beacon of hope’
Regheta expressed “huge appreciation” on behalf of Ukraine to “everyone who is praying and supporting Ukraine.” He noted Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas and Lakepointe Church in Rockwall as significant financial partners for the trauma-healing center and ministry.
“Every time I go to Ukraine, it doesn’t matter if it’s the mayor’s office or pastor or ordinary people; everyone is always asking me to send and communicate their appreciation to everyone who is praying and supporting Ukraine,” Regheta said.
“Everyone in Ukraine understands that if it weren’t for prayers and support, they wouldn’t have a chance standing up to Russia.”
Regheta said he has received word that the need for the Trauma Healing Hope Center and ministry “is essential” and “will only escalate after the war is over.”
“We need to continue providing healing for families,” he said. “[The war is] very much ongoing, and we need to continue praying and continue begging God for mercy to stop this absurd and terrible war.”
Being a Ukraine native, Regheta said he has a “deep conviction and an understanding in my heart that God has equipped me … so that I could be this bridge between American churches and Ukrainian churches.”
“[When the war began], I started working with Hope international, thinking that it is for a short season… [and] for some reason, God is asking me [to continue] to be that bridge,” said Regheta. “The only ask I have of Jesus [for this ministry] is ‘I’ll do what I can, but it is you who will give life. It is you who will resurrect people. Please work, and I will bring forth the platform on which you can show up and work supernaturally.’”
This article was originally published by Texas Baptists.
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