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Every August I take a small group of young people from North America to Ghana, in West Africa, to help with an annual summer camp sponsored by the United Church of God, the publisher of this magazine.
This year our journey was set to begin on Thursday, Aug. 10.
That evening we were all due to fly from various cities across the United States to London's Heathrow Airport. From there we would all be going to Accra, Ghana, on the same plane. There was only one exception, a young lady who was already in Europe visiting family would meet us in Ghana.
On that particular Thursday morning, I began my day by watching the world news on BBC America, a cable channel available throughout the United States.
The first item of news immediately caught my attention. London's Heathrow Airport was in chaos due to a terrorist scare. More than 20 suspected terrorists had been arrested, thought to be part of a plot to blow up 10 to 15 passenger jets headed toward U.S. cities, planes all set to depart from Heathrow.
If successful, the carnage could have been considerably greater than on Sept. 11, with a death toll estimated to be in the thousands.
Historian Niall Ferguson wrote in the London Sunday Telegraph Aug. 27 that, if successful, such an attack could have triggered a civil war in Britain ("Imagine the Bombs Had Gone Off: How Would Britain Have Changed?").
What it did trigger was chaos and confusion that continued for days. Out of our group of five young adults from America who passed through Heathrow, one was delayed for 24 hours while the other four did not see their luggage again for 10 days or more. In the case of one, the luggage was returned to the United States and never made it to Ghana.
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