Legacy Stories: Stephen & Barbara Arbo
STEPHEN ARBO
Steve Arbo is a leader in prayer and an in-depth Bible teacher. He and his wife, Barbara, personify the hand-in-hand relationship between prayer and revival. The parents of two sons, the husband and wife team has traveled extensively for over thirty years, preaching the gospel throughout the USA, Canada, Europe, and the Caribbean. They have recently returned to New England to live out their dream of establishing a place of prayer.
My first introduction to Vicki was in 1974. I was given a tape of her ministering at Christ for the Nations in Dallas, TX. That was the first time I had ever heard anyone “sing” out healings!
I thought to myself, either this person is a real kook and this is not of God, or this really was God. The more I listened to the tape, the more I became convinced this was indeed God’s hand upon this woman.
In 1976, I attended Christ for the Nations. I flew down to Dallas out of Bangor, Maine, as I lived in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, and it was much cheaper to fly out of there. We got in and had to spend the night, so I went by Glad Tidings Church where Bob Gass was the pastor to look up our old youth pastor. He was away at a youth camp. They said they had just extended meetings they had been having with Vicki Jamison. There was that name again! So I went to the meeting that night. This was the most anointed meeting I had ever been in!
After my second year at school, I noticed an ad in the daily announcement sheet that Vicki Jamison Ministries needed help on a mail out that they were doing. I had afternoons free and her offices were right on campus, so I went and spent the week helping with the mail out.
That week Vicki came into the office several times. What a joyful, glamorous woman of God I found her to be. She had a real presence of God about her–you could even say Holy–but real, a real person with joy, care, concern and a good sense of humor! She was just the same in the office as she had been in that meeting in Bangor.
That year I became a full-time volunteer with her ministry and that turned into a full-time job working for the ministry. One of the highlights of each month was working at her monthly meetings at Tyler Street Methodist Church in Oak Cliff, a suburb of Dallas. The worship and glory of God that filled that church as she and Sharon Bell (now Stromley) would lead people into the very throne room of God.
And the miracles in the lives of people, as God showed His loving kindness to people that came was truly an unforgettable experience. I can remember the crowds that would wait outside the church for hours until the doors would open an hour before the service. And how Vicki would spend time at the end of each service to pray for everyone who wanted and needed prayer. She would stay until the last person had been prayed for.
In the following years, I would work closely with her in the radio studio that we had created in her new offices that she moved into on Jefferson Street. And during that time, we became very close.
I met my wife, Barbara, at one of Vicki’s meetings at Tyler Street Methodist Church. Vicki’s mom, Ruth Lamb, gave me Barbara’s phone number that Monday afternoon after the meeting–just in case I wanted to phone her. (Ruth was always the matchmaker.)
After Barbara and I were married, we had the opportunity to become even closer with Vicki when we moved in with her to be her companions. This was a role that was prayed into existence by Phil Halverson. On several occasions when we were with him, he would pray over us the word “companions.”
When you live with someone you really get to know them, and Vicki proved to be even more gracious, godly and fun-loving that I had thought, if that were at all possible. (And it was.) Not many people get to know a person at as many different levels as we did. She was a spiritual “mother” to us and a mentor as well. She was our boss at work in her office, and she was a fellow minister, as we would actually minister with her on her daily TV program and in meetings throughout the United States and overseas as well.
She taught us how to relate to her on those different levels, and when we were at work she was our boss, when we were at home together we were friends, and when we ministered together, we were equals. She taught us never to let one influence the other. Being able to “switch hats” and to live and work within the confines of that “hat” has been very helpful to us. It was a great lesson that we have used continually since then.
Vicki was a loyal and faithful friend, someone you could always count on to be there to help you in any way she could. She would encourage you to follow and fulfill your dreams. We spent many hours “dreaming” with her when she would get something in her mind: from buying a small monastery and all moving in there to live and use as an office, to buying a 747 and using it to live in and have her office with her everywhere she went.
Oh, yes… Vicki had an imagination that was out ahead of the rest of the world. Those thoughts may not seem so far fetched now, but back then… they were out beyond “cutting edge” thinking.
Fun… Yes, that was Vicki’s middle name. We would have night picnics out under the moon and sing moon songs. Or one time on our evening walk through the neighborhood, we salvaged a gas barbeque grill from the weekly trash at the side of the curb, laughing the whole time we were doing it!
It is no wonder at all that we were with her when the laughter revival started in a small church in Winchester, MA, as she was ministering. This was before anyone had heard of a laughter revival. For weeks, people were filled with the joy of the Lord and their bodies, marriages, minds and spirits were healed as we were filled to overflowing with God’s loving joy and grace.
The most memorable night was when Vicki herself slowly slid off the pulpit and onto the floor as the joy moved on her and touched her. And, of course, Sharon slowly sunk out of sight as she was playing the keyboard until only her hands were visible on the keys–overcome herself by the joy of the Lord. Vicki was not one to hide the fact that many times in her own meetings she was the recipient herself of a touch from the Lord. That is what made Vicki so real to me.
She loved our boys and was so excited to be called “Grandma Vicki”! And her mother was dubbed “Grandmama Ruth.” She loved us, as we were, and she loved our friendship. She never used us for what she could get out of us.
When working for her I noticed the positive way she would correct mistakes. I think of one time when mailing list cards did not make it to a large meeting. When she came back, she did not yell at people and tell them they had better not do that again or they would loose their jobs! Instead, she asked, “What can we do to make sure that the mailing list cards always get to the meetings?”
She would help us expand and grow in ways we would never have done on our own. Many times during a service, with thousands in attendance, she would look at us and call us up to minister with her. For a young couple starting out in the ministry that was pretty intimidating! At times, we would joke about the fact that when we felt this was going to happen we would close our eyes and start praying–that she wouldn’t call us up on the platform!
Many people thought Vicki was a saint who lived on a cloud of Glory and only came down when there was a service. But in reality, she was as real and as much an everyday person as you and I. It was never her ambition to be in this ministry. She simply obeyed God’s leading, and that is where He led her.
Many times in meetings, the anointing would get so strong that it was hard to even stand by her to minister. There were times under the anointing, when she would look at you, it appeared that she was looking into for very depths of your soul–into the real you, not just the surface, external, physical shell of who you were.
Although Vicki was never a mother in the physical sense, she was a mother to many all over the world. As any mother, she always wanted to see the best in a person. And she desired to see them develop all the talents and gifts that God had given them.
I count it a great blessing that God allowed our paths to cross: to have learned from her, worked for her and then with her, and to have been a close friend. I will always be thankful to the Father for our friendship.
