The East Texas Healing Center is observing its seven-year anniversary inviting everyone to join in at 7 p.m. Saturday for worship and celebration, Cindy Hyde, founder of the center, said.

For the past seven years, the center has offered what Hyde calls "healing for the soul."

"This is a safe, peaceful, loving place for people to come and be restored," she said.

The center is a place of rejuvenation, according to Hyde, bringing people back to an emotional middle.

"What we focus on is more inner healing, or emotional healing," she said. "Things like bitterness, anger, stress, frustration, fear ... all of those things cause our physical bodies to become sick."

The Healing Center's goal is to help people deal with those issues through prayer and counseling.

"We had a lady come in who said she needed help because her husband had died of cancer, and she said she was not able to live her life and get over it," Hyde said. "She came in and we visited for a while and took her in for prayer. After we started, she realized she was not just mad because her husband had died and suffered, but she was mad at God for taking him."

The center is located at the corner of Hospital and Church streets, "which we find pretty ironic because we serve as a church for those who need it and as a hospital for the soul — a spiritual hospital if you will."

The Healing Center is a non-profit organization that survives solely on donations.

"We don't charge for any of our services; it's on a donation basis," she said. "We get no grants, and we don't have the financial support of any churches."

"Our services are not limited to Christians only, but we even atheist or nonbelievers," she said. "We're here for everyone. If someone needs help, we offer it to them, regardless, with or without the Christian aspect of the organization."

For more information about the center and what they offer, visit their Web site, healmelord.org, call them at 569-PRAY or E-mail them at sozomelord@yahoo.com.