The Valley Academy

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Another Way Education Is Emphasized Within Church Planting

I support church planting with NTM PNG by teaching the children of missionaries. However, the need for quality education for the children from tribal church plants is very real. Below our communications manager describes R* Valley Academy and how it hopes to meet that need. I had the joy of spending some time a year ago at R Valley Academy helping them evaluate curriculum and think through policy, which is very much my jam. (Isn’t it lovely when the Lord uses one’s nerdiness for the nations?) I got to work with a few students and teachers, and their enthusiasm for learning and joy in the Lord overflowed. It is a unique place meeting a universal need.

Three of us NCA teachers working with the RVA teachers, just before they started their first school year with a seventh grade class of 16 children from church plants in the valley.

From Communications Manager Summer Zimmer: The I Church, along with missionaries Bill and Kelley Housley, had a vision to educate the next generation of believers in the surrounding R Valley. Quality education for children grades 7-12 is especially hard to obtain for those in remote valley villages with no roads and no infrastructure. R Valley Academy (RVA) was developed to support the locally planted New Tribes Mission churches by providing the next generation of believers with a higher level of education, along with spiritual modeling and mentoring. Students are recommended yearly by church elders before they’re able to return to RVA for a new academic year. In this way, RVA will continue to pour into the students who the community and church feel will be a future blessing to their village. 

RVA opened in Mtown in 2021 with 16 students who have now completed 7th grade. The 2022 academic calendar year has just started with 31 students total.  All staff are volunteer workers who are self-supported. The RVA goal is to produce well-educated, thoughtful PNG citizens with Christian values who love their country and desire to be involved in making positive, sustainable changes wherever they can.  

Pray for these 31 students and their teachers, that the Lord’s presence will be tangible with and a comfort to them as they’re away from their homes and families. Pray He will continue to grow them in understanding and spiritual maturity. Pray also for the staffing needs in science, math and English for the 2023 school year.