Non-fiction Book Review: Kisses from Katie

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Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis with Beth Clark is a book that inspires you to think. It challenges, and it moves you to tears. It also moves you to action.

Katie Davis went to Uganda straight out of high school, agreeing with her parents that she’d return and go to college. They were okay with the idea and let her go. When Katie got there, the needs faced her everywhere she looked. She ended up being a lot more than a kindergarten teacher. She became a mother.

Orphaned, abused, diseased, and neglected children were everywhere, and Katie began to adopt. By nineteen years of age, Katie had adopted six little girls. She shares, “Adoption is wonderful and beautiful and the greatest blessing I have ever experienced. Adoption is difficult and painful. Adoption is a beautiful picture of redemption. It is the Gospel in my living room.”

“If being a new mother taught me anything, it was just how inadequate I truly am and just how dependent I am on my Father to give me the strength and grace for each day.”

Katie found the need to begin a ministry that she named Amazima, which means “Truth” in the Luganda language. Her Amazima association provides sponsorship for needy children, providing them with schooling, medical treatment, and school supplies.

By age twenty, Katie had legally adopted fourteen girls and was managing over 300 sponsorships. She has a helper and lives with thirteen girls in her home in Uganda. She also ministers to a neighboring town where the people live in squalor. Many times, her family takes in children in order to nurse them back to health.

Katie has learned to trust God for all the needs of her family and the sponsored children. She says, “Serving God and my family with all of me, that is my treasure.”

I absolutely loved this book! I believe that anyone who has a heart for people will be challenged by it.

I can recommend it with a few caveats. There are a few times that Katie’s words don’t add up theologically, though we understand what she means. For example, she says when she is with those very poor people, “They allow me to see Jesus in their faces.” Well, not if they’re not Christians, but I think she is saying that ministering to the least of these is the same as ministering to Jesus (Matthew 25:40).

She also says, “I serve the God who used Moses, a murderer, to part the Red Sea, a God who let Peter, who would deny him, walk on water. A God who looks at me in all my fallen weakness and says, ‘You can do the impossible.’” Of course, we understand what Katie’s saying here, but Moses didn’t part the Red Sea; God did. Peter had no power at all to walk on water; Jesus enabled him to do that. And, of course, only God can do the impossible.

My biggest theological issue was with Katie’s willing participation in serving communion in a Roman Catholic service in the U.S.A. She says it’s her “favorite part of the mass.” (I am not sure what church Katie attends in Uganda or in the States. It was her parents’ church.)

It is very clear in the book that Katie knows the Lord as her personal Savior and that she shares the gospel of Jesus death for our sins, His burial, and His resurrection with those to whom she ministers. She shares about adults and children trusting Christ as their Savior.

This is a wonderful book. I believe it will inspire anyone to do more for others. It’s well written and full of heart. I give it five stars.