Check It Out: A teen responds to the overwhelming needs around her

By Joan Janzen

A parent of five children said every time he leaves the house to go on a trip with his kids, he gains a better understanding of how the McCallisters were able to forget Kevin in the movie “Home Alone.” Although fictional movies provide excellent entertainment, nothing compares to a true story like the one I’m about to share.

Katie Davis shared her story on Family Life Today. She left her home in Tennessee after graduating from high school in 2007, intending to spend a year in Uganda working at an orphanage. The one year turned into fifteen years and a very unusual story of Katie fostering over 40 kids by the time she was 28 years of age.

“I fell in love with the people, and the culture is so warm and hospitable,” she said. I had never experienced that immense poverty.” She came to realize that the majority of the children in the orphanage had families right in their small community, but because of poverty, they sent their kids to the orphanage. Children living there were eligible for sponsorship to attend school; however, it required their families to make a huge sacrifice.

The government was pushing for more foster care as opposed to institutions. “Uganda is super community oriented, and it’s not uncommon to raise your sister’s kids or grandkids, but it’s the poverty that’s a hurdle,” she said.

Her story began when a grandmother was raising her twin 5-year-old granddaughters after her daughter had passed away. When the grandmother’s health deteriorated, she was considering sending the girls to the orphanage.

“I asked, if I could get money to send the girls to school, would she want to keep the girls at home. She said yes and started crying,” Katie recalled. “I called my parents and said I need $100 a month. My parents are huge advocates and they taught me about loving your neighbour as yourself.”

Katie’s parents contacted family and friends in the US to help sponsor kids. Meanwhile, word spread quickly in Katie’s small community in Uganda. “In my first year, I was raising money to send 40 kids to school,” she said. When I think about it now, I think, what was I doing?” She was still in her teens at the time.

Her first foster kids were three girls, who were living with their ailing grandmother. When the 9-year-old was hospitalized, Katie stepped in and took care of the two younger siblings, who she was already sponsoring. “The grandmother passed away, and we couldn’t find a family caregiver, so I became their foster mom,” Katie said. “I fostered 40 kids over the course of the next ten years, but I had a lot of Uganda neighbours and friends who were helping me. I could not have had that many kids in the United States.”

The young teen started writing a blog to keep friends and family updated. “A ton of people started reading my blog and wanted to help. I was just a kid, but as long as the funds were coming in I was going to use it to help more people in my community,” she said.

After she started writing her blog, she was approached by publishers about writing a book. She was 20 years old when she wrote her first book and has written two more books since then, one of which was a New York Times best seller. How she had time to write while fostering all those children is another mystery.

Before long, she formed a non-profit organization to distribute the funds and named the ministry the Ugandan word for “truth” after her favourite verse, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

At that time, she began hiring community members to help. Now, 18 years later, they have two schools, with each student assigned a personal mentor. “Each student has a one-on-one relationship with someone who checks on them in their homes, someone they can look up to,” Katie explained.

In 2015, Katie married Benji Majors, who had come from Tennessee to work in Uganda. “He is unequivocally one of the greatest gifts of my life,” she said. Together, they spent the next two years adopting their thirteen foster girls, who ranged in age up to 16 years. The girls were all sets of two or three siblings.

Since then, Katie and Benji have returned to the United States, where nine of their adult daughters now work or attend college. The remaining four are in high school and live at home, along with Katie and Benji’s two young biological sons.

“If our foster kids returned to their families it was a huge celebration because we had our eyes set on that the whole time. Other times, it was sad because we hadn’t expected that to happen,” Katie said. “In our home, we are all in with loving each child, whether they’re going to be with us forever or will return to their biological families.”

Their home has an unusual family dynamic, which is why their four-year-old biological son once asked, “Mom, who is my biological family?”

Katie’s story is incredible. It relays how one teen impacted so many lives simply because she responded to the overwhelming needs around her.