Kisses From Katie

I just finished reading a book called “Kisses from Katie,” a book by a 23 year old girl living in Uganda named Katie Davis. Katie moved to Uganda right out of high school to serve for a year with the intentions of then coming back and going to college. That year flipped her world upside down. She tried coming back to school for a semester, but at that time realized she was suppose to be in Uganda. She has now been back in Uganda for a couple of years and is a mom to 14 little girls! Maybe we would question if that is a little much? Through reading her book though you see just how the Good Shepherd brought these little ones her way.

Katie was initially teaching school and noticed that a lot of children would stop attending school because they had to help scavenge for food and many didn’t come because they didn’t have the money to pay the school fees. Katie then felt directed to start a non-profit sponsorship program. Today through the program she started she feeds and helps send 400 children to school and she also feeds 1,600 displaced children in a slum community. In the same slum community she has been able to teach women how to make beaded necklaces that she sells in the US so that they can provide for their families. During the process of these other ministries she met each of her daughters. She would come across a little girl that had no one to take care of them and for some of them Katie taking them in literally was a decision between life and death.

This book is both challenging and heart-wrenching. When we know our brothers and sisters by name and truly see what they go through it makes all the difference. Some say Katie’s writing style is very direct and she really focuses on the poor. Yet if you know the names of the poor and forgotten it makes all the difference. For me if reminds me of the urgency to share the good news and reach out.

By far the stories in the book are the best, but below I have listed some of my favorite quotes:

“I don’t always know where this life is going. I can’t see the end of the road, but here is the great part: courage is not knowing the path. It is about Peter getting out of the boat, stepping out onto the water with complete faith that JC will not let him drown.”

“I realize that the hard places are good because it is there that I gained more wisdom, and though with wisdom comes sorrow, on the other side of sorrow is joy. And a funny thing happens when I realize this: I want to go to the hard place again. Again and again and again. 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 the sorrow because He entered for us first and by His grace, redemption and beauty are on the other side. “

“The good news of JC changes people’s lives and their eternity. And that is worth spending my life for.”

“This plan, these ‘accomplishments,’ are so not my own. I am dependent. Powerless. Weak. Drowning. While those adjectives may sound scary, they put me in a beautiful place, a place where I couldn’t go one minute without crying out to my Father or I would sink. I remember being so grateful for that place and I still am.”

-Melissa