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Vision Hope Partners · Ukraine & Beyond

God is doing
incredible things
in very hard places.

Steven W. Smeltzer serves with EFCA ReachGlobal Crisis Response —
bringing hope through presence, preaching, training and counseling.

19 trips to Ukraine · 4+ years · Thousands ministered

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19

Trips to Ukraine
since 2022

1000s

Ministered to
in Ukraine

7+

Years in crisis
response ministry

Our mission

“Bringing hope to people in crisis through the ministry of presence, training, preaching and counseling.”

Steven W. Smeltzer serves with EFCA ReachGlobal Crisis Response, working in partnership with local churches to make disciples in the mission field created during and after a crisis — in Ukraine, across the United States, and wherever God calls.

What we do

Ministry in the
hardest places

The reality of war in Ukraine

Field deployment

Crisis Response

Serving on the ground in Ukraine and at crisis sites across the US — bringing presence, hope and practical care to those in the hardest moments of their lives.

Training military chaplains in Ukraine

Training

Equipping Leaders

Leading trauma care and crisis response training for military chaplains, pastors and church leaders — equipping them to care for those devastated by war and loss.

Preaching at a Ukrainian church

Preaching & Counseling

Gospel & Healing

Preaching in churches and seminaries across Ukraine and providing individual counseling to soldiers and civilians processing trauma, grief and loss.

From the Field — Kyiv, October 2025

“
He had crawled two days through a minefield to survive — holding his dying friend the entire time. When I entered the room, he was curled up, facing the wall, silent. I sat down beside him and waited. Twenty minutes later, he turned toward me.

At the Chief Military Hospital in Kyiv, Steven met a soldier in his early twenties — an amputee, shrapnel still in his skull, recently evacuated from the front. The hospital psychiatrist asked Steven to try to reach him. He wasn’t speaking to anyone. Steven sat with him in silence, offering a sentence at a time, waiting. After twenty minutes, the young man turned over. They talked for nearly an hour — about who he was before the war, and who he hoped to be after it. He was sitting up when Steven left.

— Steven Smeltzer, ReachGlobal Crisis Response

24
Soldiers Visited
That Day
19
Trips Into
Ukraine
1
Person at a
Time
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Latest Field Update

A Beautiful Time and a Terrible Time

June 2026 — Ukraine

A pastor friend walked me to the center of his city — to a square lined with memorials to Ukraine’s fallen. Hundreds of photographs. Men and women, each one from this one city alone.

He stopped at one. “This is my father,” he said quietly. Killed in 2023, ten days after his training ended. Then he walked me a few steps further. “This is my best friend from school. We grew up together.”

Everyone I have met in Ukraine knows someone who has been killed. And yet — the spiritual hunger is real. Church attendance is rising. Hundreds of thousands have come to faith. God is working in the middle of the terrible cost of this war.

Read the Full Update →

From Steven’s Pen

“Yet there is a Father still
who sees the fatherless,
who counts every tear,
who forgets no name.”

— from Looking for Father

Written after seeing a Ukrainian girl’s painting of her father at the front

100s
of Thousands
Come to Faith
W, C & E
Churches Visited
Across Ukraine
June ’26
Most Recent
Field Report