When an 18-year-old from Nashville visits Uganda on a mission trip, she is so affected that she moves back for one year to teach in an orphanage. Within a short time she discovers the needs around her are so great that she feels led to start a nonprofit that feeds, educates, and shows the love of God to children in Uganda. Finally faced with a choice between the United States, her parents' wishes for her college education, her boyfriend, and staying in Uganda, Katie must decide: will she give up her life and buy a one-way ticket to Uganda? As the subtitle suggests, this is a story of an amazing young woman with no limits to love. Davis eventually adopts—one by one or in groups of siblings—14 children, with hundreds more being sponsored through the nonprofit Amazima (truth) Ministries she establishes. This is an emotionally charged and vivid account of a person following in the footsteps of Mother Teresa, asking God, "Whom would you have me help today?" and believing the answer is right before the eyes of the one praying that prayer. (Oct.)
Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption
Narrated by Jaimee Draper
Katie Davis MajorsUnabridged — 8 hours, 57 minutes
Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption
Narrated by Jaimee Draper
Katie Davis MajorsUnabridged — 8 hours, 57 minutes
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Overview
My life in the red dirt of Uganda... "Sometimes I want to spend hours talking with my best friends about boys and fashion and school and life. I want to go to the gym; I want my hair to look nice; I want to be allowed to wear jeans. I want to be a normal young woman living in America, sometimes. But I want other things more. All the time. I want to be spiritually and emotionally filled every day. I want to be loved and cuddled by a hundred children and never go a day without laughing. I want to wake up to a rooster's crow and open my eyes to see lush green trees that seem to pulse with life against a piercing blue sky and the rusty red soil of Uganda. I want to be challenged endlessly. I want to be taught by those I teach, and I want to share God's love with people who otherwise might not know it. I want to work so hard that I end every day filthy and too tired to move. I want to make some kind of difference, no matter how small, and I want to follow the calling God has placed on my heart. I want to give my life away, to serve the Lord with each breath. At the end of the day, no matter how hard, I want to be right here in Uganda." -Katie Davis
Editorial Reviews
I am recommending Kisses from Katie to everyone I know.
Katie Davis is an inspiration to me as a wife, mom, and follower of Christ. Her devotion to the Lord and her love for His children challenge me to give sacrificially, serve selflessly, and live out my salvation with radical abandon!
As I read Katie's book, I felt like I was reading Amy Carmichael. As Amy did in her life, Katie shows Jesus to be amazingly wonderful not only in what she writes, but also in how she selflessly cares for the fatherless. If you want to love Jesus more and better understand his love for the least of these, read Kisses from Katie. She is for our generation what Amy was for hers: a hero in fulfilling God's call to care for orphans.
"Katie is one of the most courageous and inspiring young women I have ever met. She is a role model of what it looks to follow Jesus in the twenty-first century. Kisses from Katie will be one of those books you cannot put down. It will literally transform everything about you and guide the way for you to take your ordinary life and fashion it into something extraordinary."
A breathtaking journey into the sorrow and beauty of abandon to Jesus Christ. Katie Davis is young, still learning daily how best to serve. Yet her reckless, Peter-like love calls the bluff of a Christianity that refers to Jesus as ‘Lord’ with only partial intent of doing what he says. This is not a book to read if you wish for your comfort, convenience, and control to remain undisturbed. But if you stand willing to act upon belief, here you will encounter the full heartache and joy that await any person who ventures near to God’s heart through adoption and other ways of loving the orphan in distress.
I was profoundly moved, challenged, and convicted as I read Kisses from Katie, and I came away wanting to know Jesus the way that Katie does. This is an honest and compelling account of one young woman's journey of obedience to a Jesus who loves the whole world, especially the forgotten and the marginalized. Jesus was the most revolutionary and subversive man who ever lived. Following Him should lead us to be graciously radical in His name.
Katie Davis has the story that makes radio talk show hosts stop in their tracks and say with deep disbelief, ‘No, she didn't.’ But, yes, she did! At the age of nineteen, Katie Davis left the upper-middle-class life to move to Uganda, start a nonprofit organization, and begin the adoption process for thirteen daughters who needed a mother. Now she is the young dynamo of the gospel, bringing love and joy not just to her children but to an entire village and region. She is an inspiration and a testament to what God will do when one is willing to be used.
With reckless abandon, Katie Davis followed her heart to care for orphans living in extreme poverty in Uganda. Her stories captivate the reader to take action, join her work, and make the world a better place for children—one by one.
"I was blown away when I first heard of Katie's incredible story. I'm excited many others will now have the opportunity to be inspired and challenged by it."
"Scripture is filled with remarkable stories of children being used by God to accomplish His purposes here on earth. Kisses from Katie is another wonderful reminder that ‘big’ things for the kingdom do not come from age or experience, but as an overflow of a deeper love within. I highly encourage you to read this captivating account of obedience to God’s call, and I challenge you to consider what you are doing to ‘care for the least of these.’
When you think of what one young woman can accomplish by simply being open to God’s call no matter the cost, you begin to ask questions like, Am I really open to God’s will for my life? Through Katie’s life, we’re reminded how God can use ordinary people to do extraordinary things for Him. We simply need to be willing to be used."
When you think of what one young woman can accomplish by simply being open to God’s call no matter the cost, you begin to ask questions like, Am I really open to God’s will for my life? Through Katie’s life, we’re reminded how God can use ordinary people to do extraordinary things for Him. We simply need to be willing to be used."
"Scripture is filled with remarkable stories of children being used by God to accomplish His purposes here on earth. Kisses from Katie is another wonderful reminder that ‘big’ things for the kingdom do not come from age or experience, but as an overflow of a deeper love within. I highly encourage you to read this captivating account of obedience to God’s call, and I challenge you to consider what you are doing to ‘care for the least of these.’”
"I was blown away when I first heard of Katie's incredible story. I'm excited many others will now have the opportunity to be inspired and challenged by it."
“With reckless abandon, Katie Davis followed her heart to care for orphans living in extreme poverty in Uganda. Her stories captivate the reader to take action, join her work, and make the world a better place for children—one by one.”
“Katie Davis has the story that makes radio talk show hosts stop in their tracks and say with deep disbelief, ‘No, she didn't.’ But, yes, she did! At the age of nineteen, Katie Davis left the upper-middle-class life to move to Uganda, start a nonprofit organization, and begin the adoption process for thirteen daughters who needed a mother. Now she is the young dynamo of the gospel, bringing love and joy not just to her children but to an entire village and region. She is an inspiration and a testament to what God will do when one is willing to be used.”
“I was profoundly moved, challenged, and convicted as I read Kisses from Katie, and I came away wanting to know Jesus the way that Katie does. This is an honest and compelling account of one young woman's journey of obedience to a Jesus who loves the whole world, especially the forgotten and the marginalized. Jesus was the most revolutionary and subversive man who ever lived. Following Him should lead us to be graciously radical in His name.”
“A breathtaking journey into the sorrow and beauty of abandon to Jesus Christ. Katie Davis is young, still learning daily how best to serve. Yet her reckless, Peter-like love calls the bluff of a Christianity that refers to Jesus as ‘Lord’ with only partial intent of doing what he says. This is not a book to read if you wish for your comfort, convenience, and control to remain undisturbed. But if you stand willing to act upon belief, here you will encounter the full heartache and joy that await any person who ventures near to God’s heart through adoption and other ways of loving the orphan in distress.”
"Katie is one of the most courageous and inspiring young women I have ever met. She is a role model of what it looks to follow Jesus in the twenty-first century. Kisses from Katie will be one of those books you cannot put down. It will literally transform everything about you and guide the way for you to take your ordinary life and fashion it into something extraordinary."
“As I read Katie's book, I felt like I was reading Amy Carmichael. As Amy did in her life, Katie shows Jesus to be amazingly wonderful not only in what she writes, but also in how she selflessly cares for the fatherless. If you want to love Jesus more and better understand his love for the least of these, read Kisses from Katie. She is for our generation what Amy was for hers: a hero in fulfilling God's call to care for orphans.”
“Katie Davis is an inspiration to me as a wife, mom, and follower of Christ. Her devotion to the Lord and her love for His children challenge me to give sacrificially, serve selflessly, and live out my salvation with radical abandon!
This moving debut memoir tells Davis' story of moving to Uganda and founding Amazima ministries, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bettering the lives of underprivileged children.
As a teenager, the author found herself hungering for an out-of-the-box experience that would allow her to do "something incredible for God and others." She researched opportunities at orphanages and discovered a Ugandan home for abandoned babies that needed volunteers. Over the Christmas holiday in 2006 and just six months before Davis graduated from high school, she "lost part of [her] heart to a place [she'd] never been before." A pastor whom she met during the trip invited her to teach at a kindergarten he would soon be opening, and Davis accepted. While she knew she would be giving up what most young, upper-middle-class adults take for granted—a comfortable life, college and prospects for a good career—she didn't yet realize how much her work would change her. Davis came to love the people and especially the children in her village as much (if not more than) the members of her own family.At 19, she adopted four homeless little girls; by the time she was 22, she had become mother to 10 more. Her personal sacrifices cut her to the bone but taught her that "to be real is to love and be loved until there's nothing left." The profundity of this young author's commitment to God and to going to "the hard places" is nothing short of remarkable.
Though frankly evangelical, Davis' book is still a refreshing read for those seeking the inspiration to follow the stirrings of their own hearts.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940172159046 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Oasis Audio |
| Publication date: | 10/04/2011 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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FOREWORD
People who really want to make a difference in the world usually do it, in one way or another. And I’ve noticed something about people who make a difference in the world: They hold the unshakable conviction that individuals are extremely important, that every life matters. They get excited over one smile. They are willing to feed one stomach, educate one mind, and treat one wound. They aren’t determined to revolutionize the world all at once; they’re satisfied with small changes. Over time, though, the small changes add up. Sometimes they even transform cities and nations, and yes, the world.
People who want to make a difference get frustrated along the way. But if they have a particularly stressful day, they don’t quit. They keep going. Given their accomplishments, most of them are shockingly normal and the way they spend each day can be quite mundane. They don’t teach grand lessons that suddenly enlighten entire communities; they teach small lessons that can bring incremental improvement to one man or woman, boy or girl. They don’t do anything to call attention to themselves, they simply pay attention to the everyday needs of others, even if it’s only one person. They bring change in ways most people will never read about or applaud. And because of the way these world-changers are wired, they wouldn’t think of living their lives any other way.
This realization came to me on my first day in a small village near Katie’s home in Jinja, Uganda. My driver took me from Entebbe airport to the village because that’s where Katie happened to be when we arrived. The place is called Masese (pronounced Ma-SESS-ay). It is a place of intense poverty; it’s filthy and it smells like raw sewage rotting in the hot sun, often made worse by the distinct odor of homemade moonshine. To drive through Masese is to witness one gut-wrenching scene after another, and Katie absolutely loves it because she loves the people who live there.
Masese is located at the foot of a hill. On top of that hill is a school where the ministry Katie directs supplies food to the school students and, by special arrangement with the school officials, to the children of the village too, even if they are not enrolled in the school. The school was my first stop in Uganda and I could easily tell the schoolchildren apart from the village children. Certainly, the students’ uniforms distinguished them, but so did their cleanliness, their shoes, and the fact that their noses weren’t running and their mouths weren’t bleeding.
Many of the village children appeared to be sick, but one little girl, who looked to be two or three years old, stood out more than the rest. Her tiny body seemed barely able to carry her enormous belly, and her dirty skin was dotted with unidentifiable bumps that each resembled a wart, a blister, and the kind of sore that appears with chicken pox, all in one lesion. A wound that was part scab, part raw and oozing covered about half of her little mouth. I watched Katie walk over to this fragile child, pick her up gently, assess her needs almost instantly, and begin asking other children questions about her.
“Who is this child?”
“What is her name?”
“Where is her home?”
“Where is her mother?”
At first, no one seemed to know the answers, but word must have spread that “Auntie Kate” wanted to know about this child, because soon the little girl’s aunt approached Katie to say that her name was Napongo, her mother had gone to Kampala and had been away for months. Her father had gone somewhere else (gone is a word far too often associated with fathers in Uganda). The aunt, who must have been twelve or thirteen years old, was responsible for the little girl.
Within a few minutes, I was being jolted along the uneven road from the Masese school in Katie’s sixteen-passenger van with the fragile little girl, her aunt, and four of Katie’s fourteen children. We were headed to the home of Katie’s friend Renee to give Napongo a bath because Renee’s was the closest place Katie knew that had clean running water.
I watched in awe, and a bit of disgust, as the little girl stood motionless in the tub as Katie ran water from a portable showerhead and sprinkled it on her wrists. I silently wondered why she didn’t move a little faster with the bathing process and then it dawned on me: Perhaps the little girl had never been in a bathtub. Having her entire body sprayed with the showerhead could have terrified her. Katie was dripping water on her own wrists, and then on the little girl’s, to help her feel safe and at ease.
Napongo barely moved as Katie tenderly ran a bar of soap over her. The clean, clear water that came out of the showerhead became dark red as it rolled off her into the drain. And then, in a move that surprised Katie and me, the aunt walked into the bathroom, took the soap from Katie, and began to scrub the little girl. I was afraid the child would burst into tears, but still she stood without squirming or squealing or raising any of the objections toddlers typically raise.
Katie and I watched quietly, both of our minds filled with the same question: “How can it be that this aunt, who isn’t clean herself and lives in squalor in a dirty village, knows the importance and urgency of cleanliness for this child?” She was washing the little girl with determination and concentration, as though she understood that this activity was vital to the child’s well-being. More than likely, this auntie had really wanted Napongo to be clean and well all along, but simply didn’t have the means to help her.
When the child had been bathed to her aunt’s satisfaction, Katie wrapped her in a towel and carried her to a nearby bed. She knelt in front of her and began to remove jiggers from her feet. Jigger was not a word I’d heard before. In Uganda, jiggers are everywhere and they cause much trouble. They are small insects that burrow painlessly into a person’s skin and create a tiny egg sac, leaving a little bump that appears as inflammation. While having jiggers doesn’t hurt until they have practically infested an area of the body, having them removed can be excruciating. But the child didn’t wince, scream, or jerk in any way as Katie removed the jiggers and cut away dead skin around them. She simply sat silently as a few tiny tears made their way slowly down her face.
I backed into a corner, thinking that if I fainted, I wouldn’t fall backward; I would simply slide down the wall. I told myself it was fatigue from jet lag, and it was—partly. And partly it was a mixture of disgust, sadness, and shock over the child’s willingness to so quietly endure this painful procedure.
Under normal circumstances, I might have been tempted to think the little girl was too sick to recover. But because I knew she was in Katie’s care, I had every reason to believe she’d be just fine.
I knew the stories. I’d read all of Katie’s blog, her chronicle of her life and work in Uganda, starting in 2007. I knew that if anyone could give a little girl the love and attention she needed, it would be Katie. I was aware that Katie would not only tend to the child for part of an afternoon but for days or months to come if necessary.
Not unexpectedly, about ten days later, Katie saw Napongo in Masese. She was not improving as Katie had hoped. Certainly, she looked better than she had when I first saw her. The wounded place on her mouth had healed completely, probably because her young aunt applied the antibiotic ointment Katie gave her, as instructed. But the child’s belly was still enormous and tight. The sores all over her body remained. Ugandans recognized the disease and had a name for it, but no one anywhere could translate that name into English.
So, for the remainder of my stay in Uganda, Napongo lived at Katie’s house with the rest of us. She received nourishing meals and vitamins, plus the affection and care of fourteen sisters. On her first Sunday there this child, who literally wore dirty tatters and went barefoot every day because she had no other option, had a brand-new sundress and a pair of shoes to wear when she went to church for the very first time.
One of the moments with Napongo etched most deeply in my mind took place when Katie took her to be tested for HIV. Katie and I, with all fourteen girls and Napongo, piled into the van and went to Renee’s house because Renee had HIV-testing supplies. Napongo sat on the kitchen counter. I once again stood in close proximity to the wall—just in case. This child who had so stoically endured the painful removal of her jiggers began to shriek as the needle pierced her veins. The sound was like a vise grip on my heart as I watched drops of her young blood fall on the paper testing strip. Katie, Renee, and I, along with a couple of other friends, waited nervously, fully aware of what the test results would mean to Napongo’s life and future.
And then, after a weighty sigh, Renee announced with a whisper, “She’s positive.”
The kitchen was silent.
Today, Napongo’s mother has returned from Kampala and has learned to love and care for her in a whole new way. With Katie’s help, Napongo is receiving regular HIV treatments, infusing new life into the body that was wasting away only a few months ago. She attends preschool, and she runs and laughs and dances and giggles—as four-year-old girls are supposed to do. Katie and her family visit Napongo often, amazed and overjoyed by the way her life has turned around.
Napongo’s story is only one. Many others in Katie’s community can tell of times when she took notice of their situations and stopped to provide as much help and compassion as humanly possible. During my short stay in Uganda, I witnessed a steady stream of people who dropped by Katie’s house or stopped her on the street for various reasons. One woman, a neighbor, came at night. She had a fever and wasn’t feeling well. Katie quickly put on a pair of latex gloves and pricked her finger to test for malaria. Over the next few days, someone dropped by to ask Katie for a letter of reference to help him obtain a visa to the United States. Someone came to speak to her about his schooling. A neighbor stopped by to share her struggles with her health and finances. As Katie cared for each one and did what she could do to assist or encourage, I realized that there are no statistics in Katie’s world. There are only people, and every life matters.
You’ll see that over and over again throughout these pages. It’s not only the way Katie lives, it’s also the way you can live if you choose to do so. Human suffering and need are everywhere. Katie is not a superhero; she’s really just an ordinary woman who wanted more than anything to obey God and say yes to whatever He asked of her. It just so happened that a great adventure awaited her when she did, and she now finds herself in the midst of a remarkable story that is unfolding in jubilant ways, in heartbreaking ways, and in courageous ways every day.
God has been writing a story in Uganda for a long time. He’s used lots of people to accomplish what He has wanted to do there over the years. Some of them have given their lives for His purposes in this country, and though we don’t know them, we honor them. Others are giving their lives to participate in all God is doing in this land today, as we write this book. They are both Ugandan natives and citizens of countries far away; they are Katie’s friends and colleagues; they are ordinary people who love an extraordinary God; they are part of Katie’s story and part of God’s ongoing story here.
If you are ordinary but hungry to obey God, may you find inspiration and encouragement in these pages. May you find the strength to say yes and be launched into your very own amazing story.
—Beth Clark
© 2011 Katie Davis
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