TRIP TO THE BIBLE LANDS (6)

The Trip Back Home

I well remember sitting in the departure lounge at the Athens airport awaiting our arrival back to the states.  That’s the time I made an impression on our entire group, but not in the way that I wanted to.   I had told all of my people to make sure they didn’t put their passports in their suitcases.  Everyone heeded that advice except me. 

When I reported this, I was taken into custody by the Greek authorities.  They were standing around me talking excitedly in Greek. They led me out onto the runway.  I thought, “Maybe they’re going to shoot me.”  I could imagine the folks back home reading the headlines in the Kansas City Star, KC PREACHER EXECUTED ON RUNWAY IN ATHENS.  Since I’m writing this 39 years later, that’s obviously not the way things turned out.

Finally, some guy walked up to me and spoke to me in English.  He pointed to a trailer loaded with suitcases and said, “See if you can find yours.”  It was right on the top.  I was able to rejoin the group, but I really took a lot of ribbing after that.  I remember the departure lounge because one week after we left, a terrorist shot up the Athens airport, and I watched the television screen with horror.  The shooting took place right in the area where we had been the previous week.  Athens was nice, but I was glad to leave it behind.

There were a few hitches on the way back.  For one thing, we learned that flights of that nature don’t always go off on schedule.  We waited several hours for our flight.   Overseas charter flights don’t keep tight schedules. Besides that the charter airline company that had scheduled us had subcontracted the flight to someone else.  

We had no cell phones in those days, so Ann had no way of knowing that the flight had been changed or that it had been delayed.  She was waiting for me in Dallas.   She became frantic when she learned the flight had been cancelled.  She called the original airline collect.  They didn’t want to accept the call, but the operator told them they had to because this woman’s husband had been lost.  Finally they gave her the flight information, but she had no idea where we would be deplaning.  She was walking through the airport at Love Field, when I happened to walk around the corner after getting my luggage.  That had to be a God thing.  One of the so-called friends I made on the flight told her that it was not safe for me to be left alone. It was good to plant my feet on American soil.