Katie Davis had the whole world at her feet when she turned 18 and instead of doing what her peers were, she decided to follow the leading of the Lord and serve in a country thousands of miles away from the U.S.
Life was full of roses for homecoming queen and senior class president, Katie Davis, but a mission trip to Uganda, in her senior year of high school, changed her outlook on life completely and gave her a new vision for the future. Katie continued to pray and ask the will of the Lord for her life after graduation and was led to opt-out of university, and her yellow convertible, and opting to teach kindergarten in an orphanage in Uganda.
This decision was a result of her obedience to God, and faith in His choice for her life which led to Katie calling Uganda her permanent home in 2008. Katie started Amazima Ministries, which is Ugandan for “truth.” It was founded to change the lives of the people, restore relationships through the word of God.
Making a huge difference in the lives of those around her was central to Katie and by the time she turned 23 years old, she had become a mom to 13 girls who were adopted and raised by her as her own. She says she learned the value of true love by fostering and adopting the girls.
She writes on her blog, “In those early days of laying sleepy heads on pillows and training tiny hearts to know Jesus, I had no comprehension of the wild, devastating, uncontainable love I would feel for them. I didn’t know that they would somehow become extensions of me, that when they hurt I would hurt more deeply than I ever had before, and that when they showed delight over a success or excitement for God’s Word, my heart would swell within me and I would be unable to contain tears of joy. I didn’t know that sometimes I would look at them and feel so much love that my heart would physically ache within my chest.”
While teaching in Uganda, Katie met Benji Majors for the first time when he arrived to be a missionary in the African country. They both belonged to the same town of Franklin, Tennessee, but had never met before. “We shared a hometown with only a few hilltops to keep our adolescent lives from ever intersecting,” Katie writes. “My husband’s love is just another way God has chosen to pour [out] His extravagant love on me, another constant reminder that He rejoices over me, and over each one of our daughters. I watch them come alive under the loving gaze of their new father, I hear the delight and the certainty in their voices as they call ‘Dad.’”
The couple got married in 2015, and her 13 adopted Ugandan daughters were her bridesmaids as she didn’t have any friends there. Today as she lives in Uganda with her husband, she continues to share Jesus with everyone she meets. “I live in Uganda with my husband and my children. The people here, they are my neighbors, my friends, my family. These are the streets on which we live, the community we pray with, the friends we eat with, the people I wave to on the street. This is my home. What I do here, you can do there, right where you are.”
You do not have to live in Uganda to be the hands and feet of Jesus as you can do it where you are right now. May we learn to love everyone with the same love that our savior has for us and be filled with the Holy Spirit every day of our life.
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