April Towery: We chatted with Ronnie Mosley over Zoom while he was planning his next humanitarian venture and trying to keep his Fort Worth real estate license up to date. He’s one of the nicest guys around, with a true passion for helping others in honor of his late daughter Christina.
Spend a few minutes with Fort Worth native Ronnie Mosley, and you might get a little choked up with emotion. You’re definitely going to smile. And you could end up with the keys to a new home.
Mosley has been a Fort Worth Realtor for more than four decades, but his real passion is helping others in impoverished countries across the world to honor his late daughter, Christina.
When Christina died of cancer in 2013 at age 27, Mosley and his wife Carol took over the sponsorship of a child in India with whom Christina had been exchanging letters through Compassion International for almost a decade. The Mosleys heard back from the child, who said Christina had been more like a mother to him than a sponsor.
“Compassion International asked if I would consider going to India and telling my story,” Mosley recalled. “Of course, I said yes. At that point, I would have gone anywhere just to talk about Christina.”
The service work evolved into a nonprofit ministry, Capturing Grace, through which Mosley photographs children available for sponsorship and also assists with promotional materials for charities and service organizations.
“I saw the difference my daughter had made by listening to her heart, taking action, and changing the life of this little boy halfway around the world. It changed my own life, and I started this nonprofit ministry called Capturing Grace,” he said. “Immediately God started arranging trips for me with amazing ministries around the world. Since then I have been to 48 countries, [worked with] over 50 ministries. I’ve always loved photography and I’ve been able to use that to show people’s hearts and souls, to show their dignity, to make people connect with those who live in incredible poverty. Love has always been the heartbeat of my photography.”
Mosley has blogged about his adventures across the world and the people he has met in his travels. He loves telling the story of a Ukrainian girl named Dasha, who recently came to live with the Mosleys in Fort Worth and works for Capturing Grace.
“You just couldn’t get a visa for someone from Ukraine, but we did,” Mosley said of Dasha’s ability to relocate to the U.S. “We went to the U.S. Embassy in Latvia, and God did a miracle. I love Dasha like a father loves his own child.”
Christina was the eldest of Ronnie and Carol Mosley’s four children. They have two boys — Matthew and Marshall — and a daughter named Carissa. The youngest, Carissa, is an adventurer like her dad and has joined him in travels to 11 countries.
So, what does this have to do with real estate?
There’s actually a pretty strong parallel between showing homes, taking pictures, and loving people, Mosley said.
“Selling real estate is all about people’s stories,” he said. “I started telling my clients about my story. When they buy a house through me, I sponsor a child in poverty for one year in their name. It gives me an opportunity to tell them about why child sponsorship is special to me and about my daughter Christina. I was surprised to find that my clients appreciate my story. They recognize that their Realtor is more than just a Realtor, someone who is compassionate for people. And I no longer see my clients with a dollar sign over their heads. I see them as people with stories. They’re much more multi-dimensional. It’s a good business model, but that’s not why I do it.”
Mosley, 61, takes several trips each year that last up to a month at a time. Many of the larger organizations fund his travel expenses, but he says real estate is his “paying job.” He also has several rental properties.
“When I’m not traveling, I do my real estate,” Mosley said. “I’m a buyer’s agent, so I get my leads through Zillow. I get people who inquire about a property and then I meet them and show them the property.”
The Ukraine Connection
In June 2021, Mosley was called to Ukraine to take pictures for Serving Orphans Worldwide when he met now-22-year-old Dasha Shastun, a highly intelligent Ukrainian woman who served as his interpreter.
“Nobody had heard about Mariupol, Ukraine, back then, but now the whole world knows about Mariupol as they have seen this place turned into an absolute hell on earth,” Mosley said. “When I met Dasha, I knew God had a special plan for her life. She was special.”
With a master’s degree from Lviv University and fluent in four languages, Shastun immediately was able to serve as a jack of all trades with Capturing Grace, helping with travel arrangements, social media, and interviews for various charitable nonprofits.
“She represents the courageous people of her country,” said Mosley, who has not been in war-torn Ukraine since the conflict began in February. “They are hardworking, tenacious people.”
Seeing what’s happening in Mariupol now has been devastating to Mosley and Shastun, whose parents are still there.
“It’s very personal when you know the people there,” Mosley said. “That was Dasha’s city. Dasha’s one of those girls who takes care of her people. When I was there and met her, I’m kind of an older man, and she just reached out her hand and said, ‘Let me help you.’ When she did that, I felt the presence of my daughter Christina. I don’t know how this sweet girl supernaturally connected me with my daughter, but she did.”
The pair of Mosley and Shastun traveled together to Romania and Croatia early this year. As a planned trip to Africa approached, Mosley cautioned his young friend to make plans to get out of Ukraine.
“This could be bad,” he told her.
Shastun went ahead with the trip, joining Mosley in Zambia and Botswana.
“When we landed in Uganda, her phone was just blowing up with messages,” Mosley recalled. “They were asking if she was safe, if she was free. They said the war has broken out. Our lives changed dramatically there, but Dasha continued doing the work that we went there to do. She interviewed people in their little huts.”
Now in Fort Worth with the Mosleys, Shastun has had limited contact with her parents.
“They finally escaped from their basement after three weeks with no electricity, no water, no gas, terrible conditions, terrible temperatures. There were four days that they were out of touch and she thought they had died.”
Shastun sends written prayers to her family each day.
“It’s been really sweet to see God work on their hearts through her, through this process,” he said. “They’re still in Ukraine. They’re in a little safer place now, so the fighting is not as bad as it is in Mariupol. Their future is still not clear. Until their future is clear, it’s hard for her to figure out the rest of her life.”
As someone who has recently visited Ukraine, Mosley said he can’t predict what will happen, but he believes in the resiliency of the Ukrainian people.
“They have fought all their lives for their freedom,” he said. “They’re fierce fighters, as the world has now seen. It’s hard to know how that is going to play out.”
A Journey of Faith
Mosley’s father was a minister in a Southern Baptist church, but he says it was the loss of his daughter that sharpened his faith.
“I grew up exposed to Christianity and the gospel,” he said, explaining that he made a profession of faith at 6 years old. “It became a very personal relationship [with God] about eight years ago after we were going through the loss of my daughter Christina. When we walked through that, it makes you question everything. It either solidifies what you believe or it can break you apart.”
The Dallas-Fort Worth Realtor says he found hope in the principles of trust, faith, and change during the darkest moments in his life.
When Christina was born, Mosley said he slipped out of the delivery room and fell to his knees, dedicating his child’s life to God.
“I never knew how prophetic that prayer would be 27 years later when I held her hand while she breathed her last breath,” he said. “If that doesn’t rock your world or change your life, then nothing will. There are no words to describe that kind of pain. With all my experience in real estate, accumulating, buying, and selling over 100 houses, buying and keeping 123 rental properties, in all the real estate work that I’ve done, I always thought that if I worked a little harder, researched a little more, I could fix anything, but this was something I could not fix. That devastated me.”
His efforts to honor Christina have not only brought Dasha Shastun into the Mosleys’ lives but have helped countless others around the world.
“It’s like, how are you going to let your pain change you into more of the person God wants you to be?” he said.
You can make a donation to Capturing Grace or read more about Mosley’s adventures by subscribing to his Capturing Grace blog.
