Kisses from Katie: love at work among the orphans of Uganda

Katie Davis tells how she 'quit her life' answered a calling from God and became the adoptive mother of 13 orphaned Ugandan girls. And she's still only 22.

In 2007, at the age of 17, Katie Davis ‘quit her life’ in Nashville, Tennessee for a year in Uganda. Five years on, she is still there running a not for profit organisation, mother to 13 orphaned girls and doing the work God called her to do. And she's still only 22!

This is a story of miracles; but not the sort performed by a celebrity healer to a big audience on a big stage. These are the miracles that no one sees. These are the miracles that come from a life given wholly to service without reward. 'Kisses from Katie' could easily become a sequence of these individual accounts, but the professional on the case; writer Beth Clark, who actually went to Uganda to see Katie’s work for herself, keeps the whole narrative together.

The book follows the change in Katie as she starts out an alien in a foreign land, only to become a foreigner in her own culture. “My knees are dusty orange, stained by the soil into which they press for hours as I beg God for the mercy and strength to continue,” concludes Katie, comfortable now in her world of contradictions: suffering, rejoicing, squalor, beauty love and pain. This is no self aggrandising record of achievement here. It’s a moving and personal account of God honouring the sacrifice of a young life given up to honour Him. This is how you combine a career in business, a family home life and a calling from God, and discover yourself in the process.