The Lord is mighty, and He has given us a tool that can be used as a forge, a weapon, and a healing balm. His Word! It is more than a story or words on a page. It is powerful to change lives, communities, and even the land!

For more than a decade, Westsiders have served the Kingdom of God by partnering with locals overseas to care for the vulnerable, aid in community development, and plant churches. The One Life Child Sponsorship program serves as a doorway into many of these communities, causing a ripple effect that has profoundly impacted the children our sponsors have invested in and the families and neighbors surrounding them.

One such example is Phakam. This remote area is located deep within Thailand’s mountainous jungle on the border of Laos. Here, a group of hill tribes resides. Isolated from the rest of the world, these people live governed by their own rules and traditions. The area is so remote that there wasn’t even a road to get there when One Life’s partners (Amika and Toi) first arrived.

Paul Chang (Westside Student Ministries) first visited Phakam about 10 years ago – four years before One Life had begun building a presence in the area. Witch doctors and evil spirits hold a tight grip on this area, but that’s changing – in visible ways. Even the land and vegetation are responding to the spoken Word of God.

Let’s lean into this story in progress.

Through the faithful work of Amika and Toi, the couple who partnered with One Life to become Phakam’s site leaders more than five years ago, God is transforming the people, the culture, and the land!

It all began several years ago when Thailand’s government told Amika and Toi about Phakam – a developing hill tribe living deep in the country’s mountainous jungle. While there, Amika sensed God calling her to minister to this unreached people group. It was a big, daunting task – there wasn’t even a road to get to this remote area at the time!

Fast forward to today, and while there is a road, the trek to see the One Life care center at Phakam is still an adventure. While Amika and Toi now have a truck to transport them to Phakam, when it’s the rainy season, it’s mudslide season, which brings treacherous travel conditions. Sometimes, the slides are so bad that traveling by motorcycle is the only way to get there. When it’s dry, the winding road that hugs the side of the mountain is rutty and narrow, with steep drops along the edge. The conditions are enough to test the nerves of the greatest thrill seekers. Even so, the challenges of the journey are rewarded by the vast beauty in every direction.

At one point in the drive, the road crests a hill. Your eyes can scarcely take in the vast range of rugged green mountaintops patched with yellow rice fields where villagers diligently work to support their families. This is where Amika and Toi always stop their truck. They get out. And they pray. They pray over the land and the people stewarding it. They pray for the children and the families to not just hear words spoken about the Gospel but to hear the Word and for their hearts to be opened. They speak the Word as they look upon the villages. Then, they return to their truck and continue to the care center.

Along the way, the pair drive through Phakam’s century-old village filled with thatched-roofed houses built along the hillside. More than 200 people with the last name “Jaiping” live there. They have no running water or electricity, and their village school only goes through the sixth grade. Through opportunities provided with One Life sponsorships, all children in this village have access to a high school education.

Unlike most Thai and Western cultures, Phakam is a matriarchal society. Women lead their families, and men take on all the household responsibilities, like caring for the children and cooking the meals. Even so, both men and women work in the fields.

In this culture, husbands follow and worship the wife’s ancestral spirits. The spirits worshiped by these hill tribes are demonic. The spiritual oppression and darkness here are deep and significantly impact the people's health and well-being. When there is a need—spiritual or physical—the people turn to the local witch doctor’s demonic powers to solve the problem. If a person dies, it is assumed the spirits lacked the power to do so. If a farmer’s crop does not grow, the spirits are displeased.

It’s in this culture that One Life began shining the light of Jesus as they brought education, food, and other helpful resources to the children and their families.

“My first time up [to Phakam] in 2013, the spiritual atmosphere was so thick and dark, you could cut it like butter,” Paul Chang, Westside’s Middle School Director, says. “Even meeting with people there, they acted like we were sus’! Now it’s literally a light of a city on a hill. People are more welcoming. It shows the power of the Holy Spirit through the work of people like Amika and Toi.”

Paul has led group trips to Thailand and Laos for ten years. When he first began visiting, he distinctly remembers how afraid the children were to visit the One Life center. The children were suspicious of these “outsiders,” but more than that, they were terrified of the spirit world that enveloped them.

As One Life began sharing about the Holy Spirit, how God sent His Son to die for us, and how deep His love is for us, an intense spiritual battleground formed.

Renee Terrill, One Life’s Advocate, says, “Before One Life came to Phakam, the children used to physically see the evil spirits roaming between their homes at night, and they were terrified. After we built our center and introduced them to Jesus—while they can still see the evil— they are no longer afraid because they know that the Holy Spirit is stronger than any spirits sent to their homes by the witch doctor.”

While the idea of actually seeing evil spirits can seem strange to us in the United States, the One Life staff testify to having seen this firsthand.

During the first years of Amika and Toi’s ministry in Phakam, a man brought his child to be prayed over for healing. When the child was healed, he turned his life over to Jesus. Later, his wife came, asking for healing over their other child, and she, too, chose to follow Jesus. Upon hearing about this life transformation, the local witch doctor sent spirits to hurt the family, but the spirits returned, saying they could not enter the family’s home because, in the villager’s words, a “’Three Man’ in a long white dress was standing in the doorway.”

Amika and Toi understand this. Through the Holy Spirit, His endurance, and protection, they have slowly gained the villagers’ trust, and miracles abound.

Amika and Toi encourage the children to share the Gospel by themselves. They allow them to lead the groups to worship and pray, and they are taught to share and testify to what God has done in their lives. The duo also introduces the children to Bible verse memorization. The children recite the verses taught at the care center on their way to and from school, and Amika encourages them to practice at home. She says that even though she is not in the house, she knows the Word is being spoken out into the land, and the Holy Spirit is working.

Even the land is responding to God’s Word. Where the land of new believers was once fallow and void of crops, today it flourishes!

At One Life, we dream for the kids to grow as Jesus did. The mission is to provide for their physical, spiritual, and medical needs so they can grow in wisdom, stature, and favor with God and their communities.

As Amika and Toi care for the physical needs within the villages, many of the family members of the children come to Phakam to be in the place where the presence of God is so evident and to learn more about the Gospel.

“When we teach the Word, they embrace the message. The children have the same concept of Jesus – Jesus is powerful, more powerful than the evil spirit.” Amika believes we sow the seed, which helps them in their confidence in God’s presence. “We do not need to be afraid because we have Jesus.”

Learn more about Westside's Global Impact ministry

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”

— Isaiah 55:10-11