Safe All Along: Katie Davis Majors

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Safe All Along

Guest:Katie Davis Majors

From the series:Safe All Along (Day 1 of 3)

Air date:December 2, 2024

Dave:One of the exciting things about December is we get to bless our listeners, as they bless us, with some pretty cool premiums. If you give a donation, of any amount, to FamilyLife this month, guess what happens? It’s pretty cool: your donation is doubled. So that’s incredible; that’s the match. We have generous donors, who said, “I want to match anything that’s given, up to $2.5 million,” which is crazy; which is amazing. And then, we get to send you some gifts.

Ann: That’s what I was going to say: we want to send you two books, just as a “Thank you.” And the first one’s a devotional by Katie Davis Majors called Our Faithful God Devotional. It’s so good; it’s about God’s unchanging character. And then, we want to send you a second book—it’s a children’s book by Ruth Chou Simons—and it’s called Home Is Right Where You Are. And it’s a kids’ book that’s gorgeously Illustrated, based on Psalm 23. We want to send these to you if you give a donation of any amount.

And let me just add: this isn’t just about donations, and giving you gifts, and our thanks; we just want to say, “We can’t do this ministry without you.” We want to impact families; we want to impact marriages. We want to take the gospel to the ends of the earth, and we think, and we know, that family and marriage is one of the best ways that we can do that. And so see this as really a way that we can partner together to reach people for the kingdom of Jesus.

Dave: Really, changing the world, one home at a time. So if you’d like to jump in, and do that, you can go to FamilyLifeToday.com and send a donation there. Or you can give us a call at 1-800-358-6329.

Ann: Or you can mail us your donation at FamilyLife, 100 Lake Hart Drive, Orlando, FL 32832.

Dave:But make sure you let us know you’d like your copies of Our Faithful God Devotional and Home Is Right Where You Are. And let us just say, “Thank you.”

Ann: Yeah, “Thanks.”

Dave:If you sacrifice to give, we want to bless you; but you will be a blessing, not only to us, but to thousands and, maybe, millions of others that get to hear this program.

Katie:Amazima is the Ugandan word for truth. We want every family and every student that we encounter to know the truth of who Jesus is, and who He created them to be, and that they do have a hope and a future far beyond an earthly hope—and a hope and a future in heaven.

Ann:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave:And I’m Dave Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave: So when you look at a picture of our guest’s family, it makes you stop and go, “What is happening here?”

Ann: Well, and some of our listeners—maybe, you’re like us, that you’ve heard about our guest; and you’re like—“What in the world is happening?! How could this woman do this?”

Dave:Well, tell them who it is!

Ann: We have Katie Davis—

Dave:—Katie’s over there—she’s smiling; she’s afraid to even say anything.

Ann: Katie Davis Majors is with us today. Katie, we can’t wait to talk to you—because we are going to talk about these books—but we really want to hear your story, your life story; because it’s very unusual. So we’re really excited that you’re here.

Katie: Thank you.

Dave:Well, what I was talking about—when you talk about a family picture—seriously, when I went on the internet, and I looked you up; I’m like, “What is happening?! There’s like/it looks like a hundred kids.” There’s not a hundred kids; how many?

Katie:Fifteen.

Dave:Fifteen kids, and how did they all come to be a part of your family?

Katie:I moved over to Uganda. Actually, right after high school, I moved to Uganda. I thought I was going to do a gap year there: working/volunteering at an orphanage. Really just fell in love with Uganda—the people, the culture—they’re so warm, so hospitable, so kind. I was also really overwhelmed by the need; I had never experienced such immense poverty and need. As I was living at this orphanage, and befriending all the kids that lived there, I came to realize that a lot of these children had family. They had living moms and dads, and grandparents, and relatives, right in that same community.

By and large, in East Africa, children who live in an institution—they might not be completely abandoned by their family—their family might not have died. They send the children to live in an orphanage, because they really believe that they’ll have a better life there.

Ann: I didn’t know that.

Katie: This is an old statistic: but about 85 percent of children in East Africa, as a whole, that live in institutional care, have at least one living parent. The Ugandan government, and the governments of the surrounding countries, are actually doing a really good job, trying to push for more foster care as opposed to institutions. Research is showing that it is not beneficial to a child to grow up, as one of one hundred fifty kids, with just a few caretakers. And so that was the situation that I lived in.

Ann: Take me back, just for a second, because you’re probably 18/you’re 18 years old.

Katie: Yes, I was.

Ann: You walk into this orphanage, and you start spending your time with all these kids. What did you feel when you realized: “This is how these kids are living over here”?

Katie:I think I was simultaneously overwhelmed with:

Love for these kids—I mean, they were just all so wonderful and so sweet; and I befriended them—I taught a little kindergarten class in the morning on the grounds of the orphanage; and then, in the afternoon, I would just hang out with whoever was home from school. They got to be my friends.

But I was also so saddened by the idea. I think my kind of American mindset, or the stereotype I had in mind, was that they had to live in this place because something bad had happened to their families. And so I was so saddened to hear them talk about parents; and grandparents; and even sometimes, brothers and sisters that lived a ten-minute walk from where we were.

And the reason they couldn’t live at home was just poverty. Their parents wanted them to eat three meals a day. They wanted them to be able to afford to go to school; school wasn’t free. And so if you lived at the orphanage, you could get a sponsor from America; and then, you could go to school. Parents were making this huge unimaginable sacrifice to say, “No; actually, you go live somewhere else so that you can have”—what is perceived as—”kind of a better life.”

Ann: Did the parents ever visit their kids?

Katie:Yes, sometimes, they would visit; sometimes, the kids would go visit them. I remember the government would mandate that the kids go home for the Christmas holiday. At Christmas break, there were nine kids that stayed in the orphanage—and one hundred twenty went offsite—meaning, one hundred twenty of them had families. I was thinking, “If these families love their kids, and they want their kids,”—and Uganda is a super community-oriented culture; it’s not uncommon to raise your sister’s children or, if something happens to someone in the community, to bring those kids into your home—it’s just poverty that’s kind of the hurdle for people.

I just remember thinking, “If these kids have families, that they can go visit for a couple weeks at a time, surely we can do something to make it so that they can live with their family all the time.” That’s kind of how—very organically, without any vision, or strategy, or five-year plan, or whatever—that’s how the ministry I founded, Amazima, was started.

There was a grandmother in the community, whom I had gotten to know at church. She had twin five-year-olds she was raising because her daughter had passed away. They were coming up on the age, where they would need to start school. She was thinking about asking the man, who ran the orphanage, if her girls could have a spot there. I asked her if I could help—if I could somehow get the money to send the girls to school; maybe, I could help out with food, from time to time; or medical care if they need to go to the hospital—“If I could help out with the financial part of it, would you want to keep the girls at home?” She just started crying, and was like, “Of course; I want to raise these girls. I want to raise them in their community. I don’t want to send them to live somewhere else, but I want them to have access to education and a future.”

I’m 18 years old; I call my mom—I’m like, “Hey, I need $100; look what we’re going to do with it,”—kind of start describing what I’m seeing to my parents. My parents are huge advocates. I mean, obviously, they’re incredible—they’re the people who taught me about Jesus; about love, and service, and loving your neighbor as you love yourself—they had instilled that in me. As I was telling them these stories, they were like, “Okay, we’ll help.” So they started telling friends and family, here in the United States, like, “Hey, if you give Katie $100, she can send kids to school; and she can buy them food; and she can help them out with medical care.”

I started sponsoring these two twin girls to go to school so that they could stay at home with their grandmother, live in their community with their siblings and their neighbors, where they had grown up. And that same grandmother would say to me, “Hey, there’s another family”—up the hill, and over here, and down the dirt path—”that their kids don’t go to school at all. What do you think?” And I’d be like, “Oh, okay; I’m on it.” So within my first year of living in Uganda, I was raising money, from the United States, to send 40 children—

Ann: Come on!

Katie:—to school. I had my afternoons free every day; and so I would just walk to these people’s homes. I would walk down these red dirt roads—and just the generosity of the people that I encountered was so mind-blowing—they would always invite me in; they would always prepare food for me. And these are people who—I mean, I grew up in a very affluent situation—these are people, whom I’m looking at, thinking, “You do not have enough—you do not have enough food—to be sharing it with me.” I mean, it took me a long time to learn to receive what people were trying to share with me, because it didn’t feel right. Just the hospitality, and the warmth, and the generosity that I received from these families was so incredible.

Ann: Are you just thinking: “We can expect more from our kids”? I’m just thinking, as a parent—I’m thinking as grandparents—I’m thinking, “You’re an 18-year-old girl.”

Dave:—kid; you’re a kid!

Katie:I am a kid, for sure. I think about it now, and I’m like, “What?! What were you doing?!”

Ann: Go back through this, because how many did you sponsor?

Katie: I was paying for 40 kids to go to school—

Ann: Forty kids!

Katie: —in that first year.

Ann: And you had gotten sponsors from the United States.

Katie: Yes—I mean, it was just really organic—friends and family.

I started writing a blog just as a way to keep the couple of friends and family, who were sending in money, just to keep them/give them a little update. I don’t think people were using the term viral back/way back then; but essentially,—

Dave: —it went viral.

Katie: A ton of people started reading my blog; and they wanted to help, and they wanted to send money. I was, again, a child—didn’t know what to do with money—but I was like, “Hey, as long as the funds are coming in, I’m going to use it to help more people in my community.” And so decided to formalize the thing, like, “Okay, this is going to be a nonprofit. We have to have a good and legal way to be collecting the money and distributing it.”

As I really prayed and asked the Lord—“What would You have this ministry be about?”—I kept coming back to the verse in John, where it says, “You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” It’s Jesus who says that, and I wanted that. I wanted these kids to—not just have access to education, and medical care, and their basic human needs; of course, that was important—but more than that, I wanted them to know the gospel. I wanted them to know their worth and their value because of Jesus.

Amazima is the Ugandan word for truth. And our mission has remained: “We want every family and every student that we encounter to know the truth of who Jesus is, and who He created them to be, and that they do have a hope and a future far beyond an earthly hope and a future—which we hope we’re able to provide them through education—but far beyond that, they have a hope and a future in heaven.”

And so we started meeting together on a little tiny front porch, not much bigger than this table. We would sit outside, and we would study the Bible together. We would make a big pot of rice and beans; so that, we could share a meal together.

Ann: Who’s we?

Katie:Myself, and these 40 kids, and some of their family members, and whoever would [be there]. In Uganda, most of life takes place outside—you cook outside; you eat outside; you do your laundry outside; you hang it up outside—and so you’re kind of always in this space with your friends and your neighbors.

God has so tremendously blown away any expectation that I ever had of what this ministry could be. It was always really important to me that these kids had a direct relationship with somebody at Amazima—which of course, at the beginning—was just me. And then, I hired my friend; I hired a woman who had been translating for me in the kindergarten classroom, where I was still volunteering some. I said, “Hey, in the afternoons, when we’re not doing that, can you come with me and translate for me in these homes and help me get to know these people?” She was/at first, it was just me and her. And as we got more and more funds, we wanted to help more and more students. I began to hire other community members to kind of help keep track of all the logistics.

And today—so this was, oh my goodness, almost 18 years ago—so fast-forward to today: we have two schools. We actually ended up building a couple of really beautiful, really nice schools in the community to send our children to and to also invite other students from the community to come to. The school day in Uganda is very long: kids leave super early in the morning and they come back really late at night. And it was really, again, important to us to have that relational component of the ministry. So every student is assigned a mentor, who’s an Amazima staff member; and their goal is truly just to be a person, who’s continually checking in, and continually pointing these students toward Jesus.

There was a woman in my community—when I was 15, 16, 17 years old—who really took an interest in me, and started inviting me to go on walks, and inviting me to study the Bible with her. I had grown up in a believing home, and I knew who Jesus was; but the way that this woman—Jenny, who mentored me—the way that she loved the Word, and the way that she talked about Jesus and to Jesus, as if He was just right there in her living room—like her buddy or something—that was so transformational to my faith when I was very, very young. And so I want to make sure, and at Amazima, it’s a big part of our mission, that these students are intentionally discipled.

Ann: And it’s one-on-one.

Katie: Yes.

Ann: That’s what’s so crazy; I was thinking five-on-one would even be good, but one-on-one is incredible.

Katie:Yeah, they do. I mean, it’s a mix—they have small groups, where they meet—but they also have mentors who come and check on them in their homes and do one-on-one discipleship with them. I think that’s just super transformative in our faith, to have someone older than us—that we are looking up to—and who’s a little bit further down the road, who can say, “You’re going to make it,” “You’re going to make it through this.”

Ann: We always say: “To have somebody ahead of you, beside you, and behind you”; you grow when you have that, for sure.

Dave:But I mean, what’s amazing about your story—we’ve been to Africa, and we come home—a lot of people have gone on a mission trip, and it’s awesome. We went there for a week and, even, went into the bush outside Nairobi; it’s incredible. But you go—you see a need—you’re 18 years old; and now, you’re in your 30s. But it’s like, “I can’t just go home. We need to do something.” I mean, it’s pretty powerful.

So you know what? Every once in a while, I write a song—

Katie: Okay!

Dave: —for guests.

Katie: Wow!

Dave. So here we go.

Ann: I bet this has never happened.

Katie: This has never happened!

Dave:Well, here’s the thing: my producer actually gave me the idea. You probably don’t know this; but there was an actress, back in the 1930s, named Bette Davis. You ever heard that name?

Katie: Yes.

Dave: And you got the same last name. And then, in the ‘80s—I don’t even know if you were born yet—there was a singer named Kim Carnes, who did a song called Bette David Eyes; you ever heard it? So here’s the song. I changed the lyrics, based on your story, sort of like this—Jim’s in there, smiling—[Dave sings]:

She’s got 500 kids now,

That ain’t no lie.

She loves each like Jesus;

She’s got Katie Davis eyes.

She took a trip in high school;

Uganda was a surprise.

She felt calmed by Jesus,

With Katie Davis eyes.

When He calls you,

He will give you eyes

To see the pain around you.

Then He moves you, with compassion,

To make a difference with action.

That’s Katie Davis eyes.

She’s doing the drumbeat!

Katie Davis eyes.

We need Katie Davis eyes.

Ann: That is the truth.

Katie: Wow!

Dave: Anyway; honestly, it’s a joke. But you had something—this heart of compassion to see—and so I’m making a joke, but it is true: “It’s eyes!”

And again, you’re not Katie Davis anymore; you’re Katie Davis Majors. So when did you get married? Was it long after that?

Katie:Early 2015—we got married in January—so eight years later.

Ann: But we have to go back to adopting these kids.

Katie:The adoption process in Uganda is super long. You start with foster care; and then, you have to foster a child for, at least, three years before you’re even eligible to submit adoption paperwork.

I fostered probably 40 kids. And sometimes, that was more of like: “Hey, let’s get you healthy and back on your feet,” or “Hey, let’s help get your family situation healthy and stabilized,” or “Let’s look for relatives within your community that you might be able to go and stay with.” And those kids would go back and live with family seven different times; that was not an option.

My kids are sibling sets, for the most part. And for various really hard, really devastating reasons, they didn’t have family members that could take care of them. And so I ended up fostering them, and fostering them over a long period of time. I was fostering all 13 of our daughters, whom we did end up adopting, when I met my husband.

Dave:I mean, this story just keeps going. I can’t imagine stepping into a life, marrying you; and then, getting 15 kids. Yeah; that’s cool.

And you’re a great writer.

Katie:Thank you.

Dave:We have your book, Our Faithful God, which is a 52-week devotional, as a gift to our listeners if they give a gift to FamilyLife, especially this month in December. It’s matched, so it’s doubled.

Katie:Awesome.

Dave:So I just want to say to our listeners: “Give a gift this month; it’ll be doubled. And we’re going to send you Katie’s book, Our Faithful God.” Here’s how you can give a gift: FamilyLifeToday.com; or you can give us a call at 1-800-358-6329. And I just found out this is the best way to do it on your phone—just go to 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word, TODAY—and we’ll send you Katie’s book.

Ann: And Katie also has another book called Safe All Along: Trading Our Fears and Anxieties for God’s Unshakeable Peace; that’s a really good subtitle. We have that in our store, and you can get that at FamilyLifeToday.com.

But also, Katie, you’ve got this beautiful devotional that Dave just talked about: Our Faithful God: 52 Weeks of Leaning on His Unchanging Character. Each one is really probably special; but can you share one that has really stood out to you, of one of these days?

Katie:Sure.

“Do not be afraid”; it is the most-often repeated command in all of Scripture. God must have known how quickly fear and anxiety slip into our hearts. Our minds so readily begin to spiral into worry. And before we know it, we are in a deep abyss of “What ifs?” and “What abouts?” I’m often surprised by how frequently I have to learn, again, not to be afraid; and by how quickly—just when I think I’ve got it mastered—I forget, yet, again.

We read about how Abram gave up his right to the riches he plundered from the four Eastern kings while saving Lot. He rejected the offer of instant wealth because he wanted God, alone, to receive all the glory when he finally inherits the land God has promised and becomes a great nation. I have a lot to learn here. Often, when I don’t understand what God is doing, or when I feel that he’s taking too long to come through on His promises, I’m inclined to take things into my own hands, to look for sufficiency and a solution elsewhere; but not Abram.

He’s far from home. He’s getting old; he still has no children, but he trusts fully in the promise of God. In reply to his faith—this clear show of trust—God says to Abram, “Do not be afraid. I am your very great reward” (Genesis 15:1). God Himself is what we are seeking; God Himself is what we are longing for; God Himself is what we need above all else. But among all these blessings that God gives, the very greatest reward He gives to Abram, and to you and me, is Himself.

It has been a great many years since God promised, through Jesus, that He was preparing a place for us to live eternally in heaven. Oh, how I long for the fulfillment of that promise. I long for the promised day when Jesus will restore us to Himself and wipe away every tear from every eye. Yet, in Abram’s waiting, and in our own, this is God’s promise: He will be our shield, our exceedingly great reward. No matter how long we wait; no matter what sorrow, or loss, or heartache this world throws at us, God will still be God, and He will still be good. And He is enough for us—life with Him here and now; and life with Him, eternal—is our greatest hope, our greatest reward.

Dave:I mean, what a great thought, especially this month, [with] the craziness of life. Christmas is awesome; but man, oh man, it’s easy to put your hope in gifts or, even, family members.

Katie: Yeah, expectations of what it’s going to look like—I was having that conversation with a friend—it can get so lost.

Dave:Yeah; and again, let me just remind you: send a gift to FamilyLife, and we’ll send you Katie’s book. You’ll get 52 of those—you just heard 1—go to FamilyLifeToday.com and make a gift there.

Coming up tomorrow, we’ll have Katie Davis Majors back with us again. We’ll see you then on FamilyLife Today.

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