Group of Women Doing Good

Every Tuesday, a group of women shuffle into a church building to fellowship, study the bible and bring in the crafts they have made during the week. The group started meeting in 2003, which was only ten women who wanted to better their lives and their children's lives. After praying and being lead by God the women came up with a plan to empower the women and help them build a skill that could be used to sell items.  Once the crafts have reach the market and are sold, the money is brought back to the group. Which a loan for the money can be used for school fees, paying bills and helping with food. 

The women asking questions and working on their crafts

Weaving mates for sell

They are allowed to carry their babies to the group

The group of women and their crafts

Many Crafts

Kisses From Katie

Davis tells how God worked in her life for Ugandan ministry, adoption of 13 daughters

By CAROL STUART
For Brentwood Home PageKatie Davis, a former Ravenwood High homecoming queen who adopted Uganda as her home and is foster mother to 13 children girls, says she's just an ordinary person being used in extraordinary ways by God. 

Ravenwood graduate Katie Davis, 22, and her 13 daughters in Uganda. Click here for info on Tuesday's book release party at Fellowship Bible Church in Brentwood.

Davis, still not quite yet 23 years old, is back in Brentwood for the first time in over a year on an annual fundraising trip for her Amazima Ministry, but this time also in conjunction with the release of her book Kisses From Katie(Simon & Shuster). An all-day event at Fellowship Bible Church on Tuesday by www.147millionorphans.org will include a launch party for Davis, and she spoke at Cross Point Church in Bellevue last night.

"I just hope it encourages people to say yes to whatever it is that God puts in front of them," Davis said Friday. "It's not that everyone needs to move to Africa or adopt children -- that's how Jesus moved in my life. I hope the book as a whole tells the story of what God has done through a normal young girl from Brentwood and inspires other people ... If you'll be open to it, he can use that opening to do extraordinary things through ordinary people."

"Kisses From Katie" is released Tuesday.

Davis went to Uganda on a short mission trip with her mother back in 2007 to work with an orphanage, which they had found on the Internet, and was moved by the people and their circumstances. During that visit, a pastor who lived farther out in the village asked her to come back and teach kindergarten.

Katie initially planned to stay only for a year between high school and college. But, before long, it became her life -- including becoming a mom after a house fell on a girl age 9 who was living all alone with two younger sisters.

The book chronicles her story, from going against the wishes of her parents to attend college, and from friends and family who thought she had gone off the deep end.

"I mean my parents definitely were not for it," Katie recalls. "They thought I had gone a little crazy -- I don't even know what they thought. They have absolutely become 100% supportive; they're Grandma and Grandpa to my children."

Other people she knew also wondered if she "was a little nuts," but most have come around.

"Obviously, I've lost touch with some. I don't relate real well to 23-year-olds in America; I relate better to moms in Uganda," Davis said. "I have quite a few really dear friends in Uganda and feel I have a great support system. God has put a lot of people in my life who understand my life."

Find out more about Katie's ministry in Uganda at amazima.org.

Comparisons 'unfair to Mother Teresa'

Katie, who grew up Catholic, kind of brushes off comparisons some have made to her as a young Mother Teresa although she says she was inspired by her.

"I tell people all the time I don't feel like what I'm doing is extraordinary at all," Katie said. "As a mom when I wake up -- I don't really wake up until I've had a couple of coffees  -- but I may snap at one of the kids ... like when homework doesn't get done.

"Mother Teresa took a vow of poverty for life and didn't wear shoes. I live in a house, I make chicken pot pie for dinner ... I think that comparison is kind of unfair to Mother Teresa.  ... People who see where I came from believe I've given up a lot, but in my day-to-day life I don't feel like I've sacrificed much."

One of those things was that the world believes since she was near the top of her class, that her parents wanted her to go to college, and because they could afford it, that she should attend college. Katie did come home one time for a semester at Belmont in the fall of 2008, but ended up going back.

"By that point it was clear that I would spend my life or most of my life there," Katie said. "As chronicled in the book, I had promised to come home after this year and go to school. ... The hardest thing I've done is I left my girls with a friend ... No mom wants to leave their kids that long of a time."

She said she had to choose between school and pleasing the people around her -- or to follow God: "You can look at all the things I've placed right in front of you and choose to follow me," she recounted.

Katie has a Uganda woman who lives with her and helps take care of the children -- and the older ones also help with the younger ones as in other big families. And while she makes her yearly trip to the U.S., a college student from Canada she met at the orphanage comes back to Uganda each summer to tend to the kids -- this year she took her college classes in the summer due to the October book release.

The children range in age from 3 to 16, and while in Brentwood the two youngest -- ages 3 and 5 -- are with Katie but she Skyped the other day with the others. Grace, who has cerebral palsy, also had a surgery at Vanderbilt last week to lengthen a tendon in the heel.

Read about Katie's journey on her blog, kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com.

Katie and family share God's blessings with others 

Katie says her life isn't as harsh as some might think.

"When I lived at the orphanage, a lot of days we did not have running water. We did not have electricity ... We ate rice and beans every day, and I bathed with a bucket of water," Davis described.

"... When I first got my girls, I didn't have any money and was not funded, and we lived on a lot less. We've been able to move into a somewhat bigger house, with a stove and an oven. We don't have air conditioning, and the power goes out a lot. But there's a supermarket where I'm able to buy some normal food or the ingredients to make some familiar food. We live well, and we definitely try to share what God's blessed us with, with others."

At various times,  homeless people, children recovering from medical problems, or recovering alcoholics live in Katie's home. "I feel like God has moved us into a nicer house in a nicer area to serve other people," she said.

When she worked at the orphanage, Katie noticed that children would attend school one term and not the next. She asked around and learned their parents or guardians couldn't pay the fees.

"Simultaneously I saw a lot of single parents or guardians who didn't have jobs, who were poor, were bringing their children to drop off at the orphanage," she said.

The orphanage had sponsors from America for the kids' schooling, medical needs and other care. "People in the community thought this was the only way to give their child a good life, to bring them to the orphanage."

So Katie asked her parents and their friends to put out feelers for people to provide a couple of hundred dollars a year so these children could stay in their homes -- even if orphaned, with an uncle, aunt or grandparent.

So as people kept finding her blog, she began the Amazima organization which became a non-profit in 2008. She also started a feeding program for families with needs.

Katie, almost 23, now has 13 daughters living with her in Uganda.

Didn't think she would be a mom at 19

Meanwhile, Katie became a foster mother of orphaned children -- and now she has 13 (one was able to return to a family member recently).

"That was not something  I really planned," she said. "When I was little, I thought I would grow up and have kids, but I didn't think I would do it at 19."

A little girl down the road, Agnes, 9, was injured when her house fell on her, and Agnes had been living alone with her 7- and 5-year-old siblings. A friend helping Katie find kids for sponsors told her about Agnes -- and Katie learned treatment hadn't begun because there was no guardian to pay for it.

So Katie stepped up. It didn't start out as a foster / adoption process either, but since the younger children needed a place to go, they moved in with Katie. The oldest went there after spending a month in the hospital.

"I prayed about what to do ... I didn't want to put them in the orphanage ... and we couldn't find any family members who could take them. I just started praying and as confirmation, just a couple of days later the 5-year-old walked in my room and called me Mom. I took that as my yes to move forward."

'Kisses From Katie' video

So Katie fostered the children, although she is too young to get final adoption rights in Uganda.

Davis says the kids have different jobs on different nights, and that the older children are all expected to help with the others. And there's even a power struggle for some to have a caregiver because they've been used to living independently.

"That sometimes is a hard thing -- they don't know what a mom is, or how to love a mom," Katie said.

To find out more about Katie's ministry, visit amazima.org. Read her blog atkissesfromkatie.blogspot.com. Click here for information on Tuesday's event at Fellowship Bible Church in Brentwood.

 Kisses From Katie

Fostering In Uganda

Our very own Director, Walter Young, is offering hope of a future with a loving family for thousands of abandoned Ugandan children as part of a UK delegation lending their expertise to help develop the African country’s foster care system.

Life is very much a lottery for the tens of thousands of abandoned and vulnerable children left to fend for themselves on the streets of the Ugandan capital Kampala or in its multitude of orphanages. The risk of being dragged into a life of crime, prostitution or exploitative work is high while for those placed in the care of institutions their quality of care varies dramatically from home to home. But the future for these young people is looking brighter thanks to the efforts of Walter together with UK charity Substitue Families for Abandoned Children (SFAC).

Together with SFAC, Walter is working to share knowledge and best practice from the UK. The partnership has the backing of the Ugandan government, which is committed to supporting the country’s first foster care programmes to tackle the issue of abandoned and vulnerable children. He is helping the authorities establish infrastructures to identify, train and support foster carers, taking children out of orphanages and back into the care of communities.

The scale of the problem they are tackling is huge. UNICEF estimates there are 2.7m orphans in Uganda, with 44% of children left orphaned due to AIDS. Poverty and conflict has seen some mothers and fathers placing their children into orphanages because they don’t have the money to look after them. There are currently 50,000 children in more than 500 baby and children’s homes. These youngsters are seen as the lucky ones. Many who are orphaned are forced to live on the streets or under exploitative conditions of labour, sexual abuse, prostitution and other forms of abuse.

Child-headed households are common with older siblings supporting younger brothers and sisters, doing what they can to earn money to buy food. One in four households in Uganda fosters at least one orphan, but many of these care-givers are overburdened. They often lack the socio-economic capacity to provide adequate care and support for these children.

It is into this backdrop that Walter was invited by his friend Mick Pease – who founded the Leeds-based charity Substitute Families for Abandoned Children (SFAC) – to lend his expertise and knowledge of foster care infrastructure development and the delivery of care.

“Far too many children are being institutionalised in orphanages and while the Ugandan government and their partners are making progress towards ensuring those children are adequately provided for, a lot remains to be done,” said Walter.

“Organisations in Uganda are looking to the West to help address this problem.

“They want to get as many children as they can back with their own families, extended families or into foster care or adoption within Uganda. They recognise the huge benefits for a child of being in a loving family environment.

“The work we have started is to support that agenda and strategy, mostly helping local charities and NGOs to develop the expertise and know-how in foster care and to identify foster carers.”

Walter brings with him to Uganda a wealth of experience in social work. He qualified back in 1991 and worked for a time with Northumberland County Council before forming Team Fostering with his wife Elaine and friend the late Peter Richardson.

“We set up Team Fostering because we really believe in foster care, it is a great way to transform children’s lives, to help them grow up as rounded individuals and give them a better start in life,” said Walter.

“All the income we get is reinvested into the children, there are no shareholders so we can fully invest in children and give them the best possible start we can.”

That experience is serving Walter well as he works with the authorities in Uganda to transform the life chances of orphaned and abandoned youngsters.

While the Ugandan government is supporting a strategy to develop a foster care infrastructure to take youngsters out of orphanages and into the care of foster and adoptive parents, a lack of expertise and experience in this complex field has made it necessary to bring in knowledge from the UK.

“There is foster caring in Uganda, there is a culture of people looking after each other’s children in the community,” said Walter.

“But that tradition has been diluted by people moving to the cities to look for work and communities get broken up. One of the things that struck me was the courage of the children. There were children in difficult settings, child-headed households with no adults around to look after them.

“There was one 14-year-old boy looking after his younger brother and sisters who was going out to try and find work everyday, often couldn’t find work, but it was his bravery in not making a fuss and just getting on with it that really struck me. Family fostering which is properly funded and supported is in its infancy. It’s about how we tackle that, how do we develop a Ugandan way of fostering in a safe and appropriate way to protect children which is also appropriate for the country?”

For the past 14 years Mick Pease has travelled to numerous countries as far afield as Tajikistan, Brazil and Cambodia as a social work training consultant helping organisations and authorities to learn about and develop foster care.

“The best response is to try to develop community-based responses rather than removing children into orphanages without considering alternative family- based care solutions,” said Mick, 62, who lives in Leeds and has been a social worker for 35 years.

“It’s estimated that globally somewhere in the region of 80% of children living in orphanages have at least one parent living, some have both and nearly all have living relatives.

“I invited Walter at Team Fostering to travel with me to Uganda to input his ideas. What we are trying to do is to come up with a system which will be welcomed by international charities, governments and funders.”

The majority of Walter and Mick’s work is concentrated in Kampala and the countryside towns and villages surrounding the capital. Channelling funding into community-based care programmes instead of orphanages could help establish a proper care infrastructure in the country. But the media appeal and viewer impact of children being looked after in big institutions makes it difficult for charity workers to make a financial impact with donors in the more complex issue of family-based care.
Fostering In Uganda

“Getting funding for family-based programmes is a real challenge whereas funding for orphanage care has great donor appeal,” said Mick “My question to donors is, ‘if you weren’t able to parent your own children where would you rather have them cared for, in orphanages or in family-based care? Why should children from poorer countries be treated any differently than those in the West? They need a family just like our children do. The tragedy is that these family-based options have rarely been considered and it’s time they were. Children’s voices need to be heard and they deserve to have the opportunity to be raised in a safe family environment.”

Grinding poverty – the World Bank estimates that 38% of Uganda’s population live on less than $1.25 a day – exacerbates the challenge of building a better future for the country’s newest generation.

“Probably the single biggest reason why children are put into orphanages is poverty,” said Mick. “Families think they are doing the right thing putting their children in an orphanage because they will have a ‘better life’, access to education, food, healthcare and opportunities, without thinking of the psychological damage it inflicts on the child. We must never forget the longer term psychological damage and loss of identity for children raised in orphanages. Most children want to remain with their family, it preserves their sense of belonging and identity.”

As well as the major beneficial impact for children of being placed back into the care of relatives, foster carers or with adoptive parents, Ugandan society as a whole will prosper from their development.

Walter said: “The knock-on effects for Ugandan society are huge. Children will feel all the benefits of growing up in a caring family, to be a valued member of society and a productive member of the community. Ultimately, we would like the Government to take full responsibility for child welfare. The best case scenario is that the vast majority of the orphanages would not be needed anymore, or would be turning their attention to putting children into families and setting up foster carer and infrastructure programmes.”

Making Bug Spray

Bug Spray here is very expensive and that is if you can find it! So instead of looking high and low for it or having someone bring it from afar.... We made it instead. It is 90% of Alcohol, 10% Water, Lemon grass and Eucalyptus

pouring in Alcohol

Eucalyptus

Priscilla

Adding the Eucalyptus leaves

more leaves

Lemon grass

Lemon Grass

Who wanted Lemon grass

No more for you

Adding Lemon grass

St. Moses

St. Moses is a place that started out as an orphanage, but has also turn into a boarding school, daytime school and a working farm and garden. They have three house that are for the orphans, two boys and one girls. They have a hostel which is a boarding school for the children who need a place to stay will learning. They are a daytime school where they have tons of kids walking daily to learn. They also have a farm of cows, pigs, chickens, as well as a greenhouse and garden.  They started in the early 70's and have become one of the most popular schools in Jinja. There goal is to help the community by bring up the children into a sound foundation of education. 

Banana Trees

Some of the garden

Green House

Green House with the plants

Part of the playground

The girl orphanage

Beds for the Girls

One of the kitchens

Chickens

Baby chicks

The Hostel

Mutli Building

Learning Center

The View

Here are some of the views that God has blessed me with!! The best part is He keeps changing the view to something beyond my wildest dreams!! I am truly blessed by His work and the way He uses me in His divine work of art!!!

Fishing on the Nile

Reading God's Word at KLK

Feeling the Work of God at KLK

Fishing on the Nile

Last Friday I got the chance to cross something off my bucket list!! and It was fishing on the Nile!!! No I did not catch anything and yes I will be doing it again!!! But to tell my children that I got to go fishing on one of the larges river in the world is something to be proud of!!!!!

Naomi practice her casting

In the boat we go!!

One selfe

Local Fisher men Fish

Simon!!!!

His wife relaxing 

Trying for the best

They are enjoying their time together

Sewing Machine

Most people think a sewing machine is just a hobby, but here in Uganda it is a saving grace!!! With one sewing machine a family of eight can survive on the income that comes from the machine. By learning the facts about tailoring and putting them to use a woman can change here outcome in life. She can bring food to the table for her children, pay school fee so that her children can have a better way of life, even save a life from death. I am very thankful that God used me to bring the power of Christ and the love of sewing to the Uganda people. This one sewing machine has taught two woman to support themselves in there fight for a better life. One comes from a family of eight and the other from a family of six. Thank you for the support in the missions to bring a better life to the Uganda women!!!

Brand New Sewing Machine

Putting it to work

Eunice and Christine very happy to have the machine

Crossing the Street

 I am very thankful that God allowed me to see His beauty! God always surprises me with His glory!!!

Zebras

African Deer