At the time of the crisis in the Episcopal Church over faith and morals, her parish left the Episcopal Church, coming under the orthodox Anglican Province of Uganda, resulting in her leaving the U.S. and beginning her journey to this evangelical African province in 2004.

Barfoot picks up the story. "The current archbishop (Henry Luke Orombi) had been a friend of mine since 1995 when he was the Bishop of Nebbi Diocese. We became friends. My church and his diocese had entered into a partnered relationship and this had strengthened our friendship. I had been visiting Uganda once a year since 1994 and loved the country and people. Over time I felt a call to come here."

When he was elected Archbishop and before his enthronement he visited my parish and asked me to come and work for him. I knew that was God speaking to me and I said yes, said Barfoot who holds a D. Min from the Charlotte, NC campus of Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary based in Massachusetts. Her dissertation was on leadership and evangelism.

She moved to Kampala on her birthday on July 2004, and says she is deliriously happy here in her adopted country, even though electricity can go down for days at a time.

The church of Uganda provided housing and the archbishop offered her an apartment in the complex of buildings that make up the archbishop's palace.

She describes the archbishop, as "very disciplined" who goes off every Monday with his wife Phoebe and uses it as a day of prayer and Bible reading. They have four grown children, with a daughter Helen studying at Eastern University in St. David's, PA. a son Bob who works for Compassion Int., and a son Daniel who is a musician. They maintain a personal residence in their in his former Diocese of Nebbi. At age 56 his retirement is automatic at 65 with his term ending in 2014.

Barfoot says the archbishop's discipline of prayer and bible reading is the life sustaining blood of his ministry. "He watches his weight, exercises every morning at 6am. He has a good sense of humor a great smile with a deep and profound trust in God and God's sovereignty that all is well in God's kingdom." He doesn't worry about things.

The crisis in the northern part of the country with the Lord's Resistance Army has been a deep concern of the archbishop, says Barfoot. "The intervention of the LRA has created a culture where children no longer know what is normal. War is all they know. They say they want to rule by the Ten Commandments, but they abduct children, take girls to be concubines for their commanders and kill the men, maim the women and burn the villages after stealing their food and animals to sustain their fight against the government, she says. The churches in Kampala have sent clothing and food and we are practicing advocacy with the NGOS and government in order to keep the pressure on the government and be an advocate for humanitarian assistance."

Barfoot is grateful for churches like Christ Church in Overland Park, Kansas and the Church of the Good Samaritan in Paoli, PA for their help in making this possible. She as a missionary must raise her own support to work for the archbishop.

She admits she has not had it easy herself. After seminary, she spent five years in parish ministry in Western Pennsylvania, four years as a part-time adjunct faculty member of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, and six years planting a new church in Northern Virginia. Alison served as Associate Rector and then Co-Rector of Christ Church, Overland Park, Kansas, from early 1997 through May, 2004. Barfoot serves on the Board of Directors of SOMA (Sharing of Ministries Abroad), a short-term sending agency that is called to equip the Church for ministry through renewal in the Holy Spirit for the purpose of transforming individuals, churches, and communities. She also serves on the Board of Trustees for Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, and has helped carry the vision of Trinity as a Great Commission Seminary.

When she was rector of the Episcopal Church of the Word in Gainesville, VA for four years, she had a near death experience. "When I got there, there were six families, so we did a replant, and by the time I left, we had 200 on Sunday and we moved out of rented cafeteria, to a commercial building converted into a church."

Undaunted, she carried on knowing that God's plan for her was perfect and would unfold in due course. It did. She was ordained in 1986 and will, in 2006, celebrate 20 years in full time ministry.

Her ministry role with the archbishop in the province of Uganda is unique in Africa. No other archbishop can boast a white Western clergyperson and a woman to boot personally assisting a Primate in the Anglican Communion. Archbishop Orombi had no staff support, only an assistant bishop, until Barfoot came along. With 9.2 million Anglicans, Uganda is the second largest province in Africa after Nigeria which now has 20 million members.

One of her jobs is to foster and broker partnerships with the 19 former American Episcopal parishes now under his ecclesiastical care. The archbishop has carefully nurtured these relationships, turning them over to his diocesan bishops so they may benefit from the relationship, urging mutual periodic visits by both to the U.S. and Uganda. These partnerships with churches in the West, the bishops will tell you, have been a blessing to them, says Barfoot.

One American priest who now has a Ugandan bishop is on record saying that he has never had such pastoral care and support from his new Ugandan bishop.

However, says Barfoot, having a bishop 8000 miles must be a temporary thing. "Offering ecclesiastical refuge is a much-needed ministry, but the hope is to repatriate them back to an orthodox ecclesiastical entity in the U.S." she says.

Barfoot believes that the Ugandan church can be a blessing to the Western church and the Archbishop a blessing to the Anglican Communion. "Ugandans have something to offer the unreached peoples of the world, and even in this region they are not far away...there is a great push by Islam south of the sub-Saharan."

"Southern Sudan and Northern Uganda are the buffer countries between Muslim Africa and Christian Africa and there has been a war in both places. Northern Kenya is mostly Muslim and African traditional religions that are suffering from drought. There is lots of opportunity for the church in Uganda to reclaim its mission sending heritage," she says.

It was Ugandan Evangelicals who went out beyond the central region. It was a Uganda who evangelized central Uganda, she said.

"The sending of missionaries from the Global South to the Global South is the cutting edge of the mission work of the church today. At a conference I attended in June 2003, a well known leader in the mission community reported on a very encouraging trend he sees," says Barfoot.

"The Holy Spirit is moving in great power in Northern Africa. On the border between the Sahara Desert and Christianized Africa is an area known as the Sahel. Muslims in this part of Africa are very responsive to the Gospel. There are encouraging signs from Senegal, to Northern Nigeria, to Mali...the Kingdom is advancing mostly because of the work of African missionaries. These African missionaries have a huge contribution to make in Islamic Evangelism in Africa because of the clash of civilizations between Islam and the West."

"I have also come to believe that many Ugandans and other East Africans are poised to be this century's missionary force to not only help re-evangelize the West and Latin America, but to also help reach the 11,000 unreached people groups who still have never heard the gospel, nor seen what the church of Jesus Christ could look like in a way that resonates within their culture. Africa was once a mission field; now it is a mission force."

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If you would like to support the ministry of Canon Barfoot you may do so by sending your tax deductible donation to:

Global Mobilization Ministries Inc
P.O. Box 608,
Hutchison, KS 67504-0608.

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