My Missionary Daughter

Many of you have heard bits and pieces about our daughter in Ukraine. (She is now safe in Romania). The reactions of some have been along the lines of “Wait. What? You have a daughter in Ukraine? What is she doing in UKRAINE?” If this has been your reaction, I’d love to introduce you to Emily and her husband Mitch.

Emily is our oldest of four children. She was born in 1998 and grew up in Nashville. She is delightful. As a child, she was thrilled to be wherever she found herself. Wherever we took her and whatever we had to do there, she just thought it was the greatest thing in the world. It is a wonderful trait and has served her well in her international and missionary travels.

She grew up in a church with a very active international missions department and many in our social circle had previously lived overseas as missionaries. I went on two short-term missions trip in 2002 and 2003 to staff an international Christian music festival in Hungary. It was a very family-friendly festival. So, when I returned in 2010, I brought Emily along. This time, the festival was in England. She was 12 and, like every time she was anywhere, she was thrilled! She was a trooper. She worked the registration table, served in the coffee shop, and assisted the director of the children’s choir. She also befriended a Romanian girl that was her age. Thanks to Facebook, she still stays in touch with her.

My daughter Emily (age 12) working the registration table at the Sozo Festival. Snitterfield, England 2010.

As her high school graduation approached, her interests were in special education, social work, and Christian missions. She decided to take a “gap year” before college and attend a six-month Discipleship Training School (DTS) with Youth with a Mission (YWAM). I first heard of YWAM when I was a teenager and by this time in her life she knew of several current and former “YWAM-ers.” So, this was an organization familiar to us. YWAM has bases all over the world that host these schools and Emily found one that specialized in orphan outreach in, of all places, Ukraine. Come to find out, the head of this base was from Franklin, TN–can you believe it? And the Christmas before Emily’s high school graduation, he and his wife were in town visiting his family! We got to have them over for dinner and talk about the school, the DTS base, and the safety and stability of Ukraine. Emily made her decision.

Post-tears Lara drops post-tears Emily (age 18) off in Kyiv, Ukraine for her six-month YWAM DTS. 2017.

So in 2017, my wife and 18-year old daughter got on a plane and flew to Ukraine, where she was met by others from the base to take her 160 miles southwest of the capital to a city named Vinnytsia while my wife returned home. At this school, Emily attended lectures, ministered at local orphanages, and traveled to Poland and France to serve the homeless. And, most significantly, she met Mitch (aka Mitchell, aka Vladimir) Long, the only other American student. She fell in love with Ukraine. And eventually with Mitch.

She came home to Nashville, married Mitch in 2019, and earned her Bachelor’s degree in 2020. They moved out West, closer to his family and stomping ground, but they always wanted to go back to Ukraine as missionaries. They were living in Montana in 2021, where Emily was working at a grocery store deli, while Mitch found work as a roofer. They saved some money and decided to take an exploratory trip back to Ukraine during the winter, a Montana roofer’s off-season. Their intentions were to connect with some ministry contacts they had made during their DTS to see what opportunities might be available for mission work. They were planning on staying six months to a year, depending on their fundraising. They went to Kyiv, where they had some contacts and where Mitch had spent considerable time already working with an outreach that served the youth of families displaced by the 2014 conflicts in the Eastern region of the country.

So, that’s how my daughter ended up in Kyiv on February 24th when Russia started attacking. They have since been in hiding, have helped other families reach safety, and have themselves fled to Romania. They are safe now and have joined the staff of the YWAM base in Cluj-Napoca (I told you, these bases are all over the world!). They just got their own apartment after being housed temporarily by the base and they continue to minister to Ukrainian refugees crossing into Romania. Thanks to their supporters (they are 100% volunteers) they have been able to distribute food, money, and renovate apartments for refugee families.

Many of you have asked how you can support them financially (did I mention that they live off of donations?). Thank you. James and Shannon Doherty are friends of theirs in Montana and are handling Mitch and Emily’s donations through their nonprofit Dignata/Business for Orphans. This allows your gift to be tax-deductible. Simply go to this site and choose “Mitch and Emily Long’s Ukraine Missionary Work” in the dropdown menu. I’m super-duper proud of them, even though I miss them, and have spent more than one sleepless and distracted hour thinking of them. Follow along their journey on their website and socials.