http://www.2theadvocate.com/features/faith/
The Baton Rouge Advocate did a story on my orphange in Uganda, this was in the paper today July 19th 2008.
FAITH MATTERS
Music has allowed Vicki Yohe to walk in her destiny.
The Baton Rouge resident has traveled all over the world in 18 years. She’s shared the stage with some of gospel music’s top artists and ministers and has earned her own acclaim with such hits as “Because of Who You Are” and “The Mercy Seat.”
But Yohe would rather talk about “her” 35 children than her music.
The majority of Yohe’s children — about 32 of them ages 3 to 16 — reside in an orphanage in Africa.
“I felt my destiny was singing,” said Yohe, who has been singing since she was about 5. “But about 2‰ years ago when we opened that orphanage in Africa, I found my destiny,” she said.
Yohe, 42, said her singing has given her a platform to raise funds and other aid for New Destiny for Children orphanage in Jinja, Uganda.
“It’s really changed my life,” she said. “You know everywhere I go to sing, but I will not accept an invitation unless I’m allowed to talk about the orphanage, because that’s where my heart is.” Yohe’s heart is also at home, where she has three other children — a 6-month-old and 3-year-old she adopted in the United States and a 17-year-old nephew who lives with her.
Yohe said she and her husband, Troy Hodges, have been married 12 years, and have been unable to have a child of their own.
“For nine years, I wanted to have a baby; I cried about it,” she said. “God spoke to me and said, ‘I was waiting for you to get your eyes off of yourself.’ It just shows you when you take your eyes off yourself, look what God can do.”
In less than two months, God opened the door for Yohe to adopt her first child in 2005.
That’s when Yohe, a Hammond native, and Troy, a Denham Springs native, decided to move to Baton Rouge from Nashville, Tenn.
With Yohe playing about 140 dates a year, the couple thought it would be best to be around family as they cared for their children.
“We’re excited to be back in Baton Rouge,” she said.The couple moved their business office to Baton Rouge in the spring. The office has five members.
Yohe said she can only get to the orphanage about three times a year for about one to two weeks at time. Still, she’s very aware of what’s going there.
“We’re very hands-on,” she said. “We run the orphanage from here.”
Yohe said God gave her the vision to open the orphanage in the country, which she said has more than 1.7 million parentless children.
“Our whole vision of an orphanage is somewhat different from a lot of orphanages, because God told me to go there and create a mansion,” she said.
The mansion has a $15,000-a-month budget and has 19 staff members, including two chefs.
“God said, ‘Vicki, I want them to wear brand-new clothes. I want them to feel what it’s like to take tags off their clothes.”
Yohe said for years she had grown tired of the images of hungry children with flies around their eyes.
“We’ve got to change the mind-set,” she said. “We’ve got to do more than feed them, we’ve got to empower them.”
Yohe envisions adding 28 more children this year. Eventually, she hopes to have a Bible school or college on the compound.
“They’re my kids. We’re raising them to change Africa as leaders,” she said.
Most of the funding for the school comes from donations from churches and individuals and product sales. Yohe said 100 percent of the profits from her CD sales go the orphanage.
To find out more about the orphanage or to help with donations,
go to
www.vickiyohe.org or
www.newdestinyforchildren.com.
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