One of the many blessings of our trip to Uganda was getting to hang out with miss Katie Davis for a few days. I had heard about Katie from the president of Children’s HopeChest Tom Davis back in February and had read her blog a couple of times. I was really excited when I learned that she would be joining us on our trip.

Katie first came to Uganda in 2006, and returned in the summer of 2007 to teach kindergarten for one year. She lived with a man named Pastor Isaac and really immersed herself in the culture and even learned the “Lugandan” language.  She tells such funny but heartbreaking stories about the children she taught… about how they used to LITERALLY eat their pencils because they were so hungry. She said they kept the pencils at school so they wouldn’t get lost at home, and at the end of each day when she went to collect them, some of the children said they didn’t have them. When she asked what happened to the pencil and they replied that they had eaten them… she of course thought that they were really just trying to sneak them home. So she asked them to show her their pencils and sure enough… they brought up just the metal part with the eraser on the end and the entire wood part had been chewed off. Can you imagine being so hungry at school that you have to EAT your pencil?

During this year, Katie recognized a great need for some kind of sponsorship program to help the orphaned children in Uganda pay for school fees. So she decided to do something about it. Without knowing the first thing about starting a non-profit organization, Katie began Amazima Ministries International. Sponsors in America pay $300 a year and this covers school fees, a uniform socks and shoes, school supplies, two hot meals every day, and all necessary minor medical care for one child. Her program is currently sponsoring 350 children! On Saturday mornings all of the children in the program come over to Katie’s house for lunch, fellowship, baths and bible study and get to leave with a bag of food for their family.

And…. as if the Amazima program was not enough, in January 2008, Katie became the mother to three little girls. You can read that story here.  Since then, she has added ten more girls to the family each with a different heartbreaking story. It makes me think of what would have happened to these children if they didn’t have Katie, and how many more there are just like them in the world that don’t have a “Katie”.

In addition to her sponsorship program, being the mom to 13 and foster mom to many, Katie also has projects such as putting together birthing kits (she has actually had to deliver babies in Uganda… and once it was quintuplets!) Because so many newborn children and mothers die during the child birthing process due to simply lack of hygiene, she has decided to put together kits and for around five dollars can fill a gallon zip-lock baggie with a large plastic sheet for the mother to lay on, soap and rubber gloves for anyone assisting the mother, a sterile string for tying the umbilical cord and a new razor blade for cutting it, and a snuggly new receiving blanket to wrap the new baby in. She also spends her days in the village finding orphans who need sponsorship, visits with families of children in her program and has recently started a new feeding program for the a group called the Karamajong that serves up to 1500 children twice a week.

Ummm… have I mentioned? Katie Davis is 20 years old.

The newest addition to their family…Grace.

Katie’s blog reads like fiction… as in.. this can’t be real… this can’t be the life she is living. But, she will assure you that it IS real, she is living in the center of God’s will for her life, and she has never been happier. She doesn’t want any of the glory to go to her because she truly know that she is doing GOD’S work.

“So people tell me I am brave. People tell me I am strong. People tell me good job. Well here is the truth of it: I am really not that brave, I am not really that strong, and I am not doing anything spectacular. I am just doing what God called me to do as a follower of Him. Feed His sheep, do unto the least of His people. People tell me they miss me because I am so far away. And here is the truth of it: I’m not. I’m right here, right here on this same Earth as you just doing what I can to make it a little bit better, a little bit more like His kingdom.”

She is one of those people that makes you want to DO better, to BE better, just by being around her.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 11:16 am and is filed under Africa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.