Rob and El Falls joined us at PY Summer Camp 2025, bringing their five children with them as they served as some of the camp’s Missionaries in Residence.

Across the week, Rob gave the evening talks, and also led two all-in seminars on ‘What does it look like to leave everything behind and go overseas on mission?’, one to the older group, and one to the younger.

Rob, along with his family, are missionaries in Vanuatu, serving with Australian Presbyterian World Mission in partnership with the Presbyterian Church of Vanuatu. He’s based at Talua Theological Training Institute as the Academic Dean & Deputy Principal, with his main role being to raise up the next generation of leaders for God’s church in Vanuatu and across the wider South Pacific.

Yet long before Vanuatu, Talua, and theological training, Rob was a teenager in Sydney whose own faith was being shaped in small groups, Bible talks, and at PYNSW camps.

Formed by faithful leaders

Rob grew up on Sydney’s North Shore in a Christian family attending Wahroonga Presbyterian Church. Yet it was youth group and camping ministry that really helped make his faith personal.

“It was the youth group there that really led me to have a personal faith,” he says. “And PYNSW camps were a big part of that.”

Camping ministry, he reflects, was formative. “Camping ministries are really important and PYNSW was the main camping ministry that I was involved with through high school. PYNSW has always been where I was really formed as a young Christian and I’m really thankful for that.”

While at university, Rob joined the PY Committee, helping with governance and bringing a youth voice to the community. “I really have a huge heart for PYNSW and that’s just because PYNSW had a huge heart for me,” he says. He remembers the steady faithfulness of leaders. “Just regular leaders, often the same leaders year after year, investing in the youth at PYNSW camps.”

A growing conviction

During his university studies, Rob began to sense a deeper call.

He describes growing up in a suburb with “five good Bible teaching churches.” But as he encountered different cultures and contexts, he saw the contrast.

“It became very clear to me that there were places around the world that had zero access to good Bible teaching churches,” he says. “I had this long growing conviction that it just felt unfair that there were places around the world that were less reached and less resourced with the gospel.”

That conviction eventually led him and Elena to study at Christ College, and then to mission in Vanuatu. While many there identify as Christian, Rob explains “that doesn’t sink very deep… you can still go to many different islands and not find good Bible teaching, not find easy access for people to have a clear understanding of the gospel.”

So they went, committing themselves to training leaders who would serve churches across islands, villages and remote communities.

Mission in real life

As Missionaries in Residence at PY Summer Camp in 2025, Rob and El were invited to lead a seminar. They gladly accepted.

They began with a short video their children had put together: a “day in the life of a missionary kid.” It showed school, ministry life, and even a makeshift basketball hoop nailed to a coconut tree.

From there, Rob shifted the focus from what they do to why they do it.

They shared about the strategic importance of Talua Theological Training Institute, the need for clear gospel teaching, and the fruit of the ministry seen in graduates—like a chaplain now serving in a school, a woman who began a ministry to women across her island, and a pastor faithfully shepherding a very isolated community.

Pray. Give. Go.

The heart of the seminar, however, wasn’t simply information. It was an invitation.

“We spent quite a bit of time saying what youth can do to be part of missions,” Rob says. The framework was simple. “Pray. Give. Go.”

First, pray. “Youth you might feel like, ‘What can I do?’… We wanted to really get across the point to please be prayerful for mission.” He challenged campers to know their church’s partner missionaries, read their updates, pray for them in youth group, and invite them along when they are back on deputation/home assignment.

Second, give. “Young people do have some money, whether from birthdays or casual work. If they give small now then they’re more likely to give big later.”

And finally, go. “We pushed pretty hard,” Rob admits. “If you don’t know what to do with your life, this could be it. Or no matter what you do with your life, could you take it somewhere that is in greater need of the gospel?”

For leaders and churches

While the seminar spoke directly to young people, Rob is clear that leaders and parents play a crucial role.

“Make mission a big part of their lives,” he urges. “Don’t feel like you need to wait till an ‘adult’ says something to talk or speak or pray or think about mission.”

Instead, he encourages churches to “embed global mission into the DNA of your youth ministry and kids ministry.” That might look like regular prayer, inviting missionaries to youth nights, supporting them financially, and helping young people see global mission as normal Christian discipleship.

“You want to hear about mission and see mission when you’re a youth.”

After all, that’s how it happened for him. Seeing mission modelled in his own church “opened my heart and my life to the possibility of God sending me too.”

At PY Summer Camp 2025, Rob and Elena weren’t simply sharing stories from Vanuatu. They were inviting the next generation to lift their eyes, to pray boldly, give generously, and perhaps, one day, go.

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If you would like to learn more about the work of the Falls in Vanuatu, you can do so via their website -> https://www.fallsvanuatu.info/