Vicki Yohe decided to record the song “He’s Been Faithful” after adopting her first child in March 2005. When she and her husband, Troy Hodges, were trying to decide what to name her CD, they agreed that “He’s Been Faithful” would be the perfect title.
“After being married for 9 years—no children—praying desperately that God would give us a baby,” she says, “my friend Darlene Bishop, from Ohio, who works with teen mothers, called me and said she’d have a baby for us in one week.”
Bishop told Yohe that the birth mother had just turned 16 and was going to give the baby up for adoption because she didn’t have anything to offer it, and her racist father was opposed to his white girl having a bi-racial baby.
“So I went there the next day and met this young lady,” says Yohe. “And the next week I sat by her side and I cut the cord and I was the first one to hold him. So the Lord has been faithful to me. I’ve been singing all these years and finally it’s the right time, the perfect time to title my CD ‘He’s Been Faithful’ because I have the most gorgeous bi-racial baby boy, Walker Winston Hodges.”
Little Walker has been around bishops, pastors and singers, people like Yolanda Adams and Bishop T.D. Jakes, who dedicated him to the Lord.
“Thank God Walker is alive,” says Yohe, “because so many people in his birth mother’s world wanted him to be aborted, but she said, ‘No, I can’t do that, but I will place him,’ and thank God she placed him in our hands.”
Yohe is busy being a mother, but she’s also busy as a singer, and her songs really have a way of connecting with people. One of Yohe’s most moving songs is “Anoint Me Lord,” from her 2003 release.
“I wrote ‘Anoint Me Lord’ when I was 16, and I’m in my 40s now,” she says. “That song is my prayer. When people want to know about Vicki Yohe they should listen to that song. I prayed that in my closet when I was 16-years-old and then I put it to music.”
“Anoint Me Lord” and several songs off her CD, “He’s Been Faithful,” will give you an idea of what Yohe wants.
“I want God’s hand upon my life,” she says. “When I open my mouth to speak or sing, I want people’s lives to be changed. I feel like if it’s not going to do ministry, then why am I singing gospel/Christian music? Is it going to just be to sing a cute song? Why use that if it’s not going to be ministry? It’s all about ministry with me.”
“I am a minister,” she continues. “I do exhort. My desire is to be anointed— that when I open my mouth to speak or sing that it’s not ‘just a song.’ Song selection is so important to me.”
A song off her 2003 release, “In The Waiting,” was one important song that had a profound effect on a listener.
“A lady called the ministry and told us how she walked into her bedroom to find her husband sitting on the bed with a gun to his head,” says Yohe. “She said, ‘What are you doing?’ and he said, ‘Our finances are messed up, our marriage is a mess, I just can’t take it anymore.’ She said, ‘Wait, wait, you have to listen to this song by Vicki Yohe, ‘In The Waiting.’ He said, ‘Ok, I’ll listen to it.’ She said she played that song and he put his gun down and began to weep.”
The full interview appears in Mark Weber’s book, “Anointed Voices,” available here.
Find out more about this remarkable recording artist at www.vickiyohe.org.
