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