Kisses From Katie

18 year old Katie Davis' commitment to follow Jesus completely led her to Uganda on a short term mission trip. That trip turned into a life time commitment to bring love and hope to the Ugandan people. To begin meeting the overwhelming needs she founded the NGO Amazima (truth) that provides food and education to over 1600 children and is developing sustainable businesses so parents can support their own families. Katie also legally adopted 14 girls who had been orphaned or abandoned in the aftermath of the war torn region. She and her family are radically living tangible love.

Here is one of the many beautiful insights that she shares:

"Mommmyyyy!" I heard a yell as I bounced quickly along the pitted road that leads to our program in my sixteen-passenger van. I stopped quickly, turning the van around to go back for Prossy, who had been walking home to get something.
"How did you see her?" asked my dad, who was visiting.
"I didn't! I heard her yell, 'Mommy,' " I replied.
"But everyone calls you Mommy. Even people we don't know call you that around here."
"Yeah, but I know when it's mine," I explained matter-of-factly.
And then I thought about what I had said and tears began to well. How incredible, what God has done for me. For us. It is true, hundreds of people in this area call me Mommy. Even people whom I have not met before recognize me as the woman who cares for the children and call me Mommy before even having made my acquaintance. On any given day, I can drive down the road between my home and Buziika, and if it is the right time, when kids are heading home from school, I will hear "Mommy! Mommy!" being shouted about every two seconds as I pass all the children on the road. I smile as I hear them. But for fourteen "Mommy"s I stop. I can hear the difference.

"I believe there is only one truly courageous thing we can do with our lives: to love unconditionally. Absolutely, with all of ourselves, so much that it hurts and then more."

"I would like to say that as I am surrounded by sorrow and destitution, it gets easier or less painful. But it doesn't. . . Each and every time, it is overwhelmingly devastating that people have to live, and die, like this - like my girls and I see happening around us. While it does not get easier, I have found that I am able to face each situation with a little more hope. I always hope my friends will live here on earth with me, but I tell them with a new senses of urgency about Jesus mostly because I want them to live with Him, experience His profound, unconditional love, whether here or in heaven. I see sadness, but I also see redemption."

"I have learned along my journey that if I really want to follow Jesus, I will go to the hard places. . . . So we go. This is where our family is today and where I hope to stay - loving, because He first loved us. Going into the hard places, entering into sorrow because He entered for us first and because by His grace, redemption and beauty are on the other side."