Homecoming queen, the president and the top student of her class—this is Katie Davis back in high school. Both beauty and wisdom, the 18-year-old Katie has so much ahead of her. But God has SO much ahead for her even.
Katie never thought that a three weeks missions trip to Uganda would change the course of her life forever! It was December 2006, during the winter break of her senior year of high school when Katie volunteered to join a missions trip to Jinja, a small Ugandan village. She fell in love both with the place and the people and the desire to stay and serve in that place grew in Katie’s heart. However, after three weeks, the mission trip was over, and she needed to go back to Tennessee.
When Katie Davis Majors was just 18, she traveled to Uganda for three weeks. She returned to teach in an orphanage and wound up adopting 13 girls there – as well as meeting her husband. She joins Kathie Lee and Hoda to talk about her new book, “Daring to Hope: Finding God’s Goodness in the Broken and the Beautiful.”
She finished high school and was planning to pursue nursing in college. However, during the summer of 2007, she decided to drop all her plans and listen to God’s call to go back to Uganda where she started teaching kindergarten at an orphanage.
“I knew in my heart that something is not quite right. And after that the original trip to Uganda I went, ‘Oh! Something is REALLY not right. I’ve got to do something,” Katie said as she recalled how she came up with her decision to go back to Uganda. “God has opened this door to go to Uganda, you go to Uganda. God put this person with a need in front of you, you meet the need. And just out of meeting the needs one person at a time turned into this whole life.”
In 2008, she founded the Amazima Ministries to help educate and empower the people of Uganda. And by the time she was 23, she’s already a mother to 13 abandoned Ugandan girls. Taking care of these girls all alone wasn’t easy for Katie. However, God was just so faithful.
In 2015, she got married to a man named Benji Majors who loves her, supported her on her call, and accepted all her 13 adopted children. “Yes, that has been God’s greatest gift to me, absolutely, to find a husband who not only was willing but was excited to jump into our crazy life,” Katie said when asked if she was surprised to find love in that foreign land.
She eventually gave birth to her very own son, Noah. Now, Katie still lives in Uganda with her beautiful family, fulfilling the call that God has planted in her heart.
“In ten years of living and loving, of huge loss and a great blessing, deep sorrow, and immense joy, I have known Jesus more intimately than I originally thought possible. He met me here. He met me in the unexpected places of my story and He met me when the trials were too great and the night was too long. He invited me to sit at His feet, to know the better thing, relationship with Him. When my story was not what I expected He picked up each piece and held it tenderly and wrote His name on the pieces and on my heart. Jesus took my naïve optimism and forged a deep hope that grew in long hours and months and years of clinging only to Him. Jesus took my wild-eyed desire for adventure and showed me that the greatest adventure would be in allowing Him to peel back the layers of my heart, in searching the lines on His face, in truly knowing Him and being known by Him. He showed me that He wasn’t Jesus who desired my productivity, He was Jesus who desired me. All of me poured out before Him.”—Katie Davis Majors