⇐ An Early Warning System
This was my first long-haul flight, and I was a little apprehensive for maybe obvious reasons. It was a business trip to South Korea. Actually, the purpose was to deliver a series of lectures in computing and robotics at a major steel works and to a select group of engineering staff. There was nothing particularly difficult in doing so since I had a background in the steel industry and associated control systems. Also, I had written the material myself and delivered it many times before to quite a few different nationalities and professionals like myself. My flight was an early morning one from Heathrow, so I checked into a hotel the previous night hoping to get a good night’s sleep for the early start. I had a lot of luggage comprising lecture material, manuals, hand-outs and some electronic equipment and components in addition to my own personal effects. The electronic elements I decided to hand carry at the expense of that which one would normally take on board, the downside of which was that the clothes I wore when leaving London, I would not be able to change until I booked into my Seoul hotel.
I decided I would check in at the airport early and clear customs and security so that there would be no last-minute problems hand carrying electronic equipment aboard the plane. My flight was with KLM flying via Schipol airport Amsterdam, Anchorage Alaska, down the North Pacific coastline of the Soviet Union, Japan and into Seoul, South Korea. The Cold War was still a reality, and it was a little unnerving to see two Russian MIG fighter planes suddenly appear as we approached Russian airspace. Apparently, this was quite a common occurrence our pilot assured us.
The heat and humidity upon exiting the air-conditioned plane in Seoul was almost unbearable and made doubly so having to wait at a luggage carousel which appeared to break-down every minute or so. After what seemed like an interminably long delay, I became aware that I was the only passenger standing by a stationary and empty carousel. I was all alone, no personal effects and in a very foreign country and far from home. The only identification I had was my passport. My return tickets were ‘lost’ in Heathrow, which is another story, and the airline, not to mention local custom and immigration authorities, found it difficult to understand how I had managed to get as far as I had and complete my journey.
I did manage to leave the airport after some interrogation, given a small complimentary pouch of toiletries, one item being a packet of ‘inter-dental stimulators’ and another a far too small ‘night shirt’, all much to my amusement. I was also advised to check in at the airport the following morning by which time I was assured my luggage would be awaiting me.
An agent of my company was due to pick me up and take me to the hotel at which my company had previously made a reservation. I was a little concerned about this as I had no way of letting them know that I was in fact held up and by now some three hours past my scheduled arrival time. What I didn’t seem to appreciate was that the Lord had it all in hand. I should have realised that, after all, ‘We walk by faith and not by sight’. Don’t we?
Now allow me to digress for a moment. My wife telephoned me very late in the evening before leaving Heathrow to inform me that she had just received a telephone call from a very good friend of ours with the expressed intention of passing on a message that she had ‘received from the Lord’ especially for me. It was a quote from Scripture:
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
Psalm 139: 9-10 NIV
I must confess that I tended to dismiss it on the basis that the lady in question was well versed in Scripture and the Psalms in particular. Her husband would recite them to her in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep. Interestingly he was Oxford classics graduate who had committed the Psalms to memory in Hebrew. He would recall them in Hebrew and recite them to his wife in English. I had visions of her falling to sleep quite quickly while he would continue to recall and translate unable to resume his interrupted sleep. Such are the trials of loving husbands!
Continuing with my story. My agent’s representative, trip companion and interpreter, arrived at the airport for the second time just as I was exiting it and wondering what I should do next. Surely the Lord’s hand was holding me fast, but I still did not realise it! On the way from the airport, I did ask about Paul Yonggi Cho and his Church, the Full Gospel Church in Seoul, reputed to have a congregation in excess of 150,000 members in 1979. I had met some of the church missionaries in Anchorage while waiting for our plane to be refuelled. I thought a Church of this size would be large enough to be reasonably well known in its country of origin, but this attempt at meaningful conversation proved negative. What I did learn however, was that my hotel accommodation had been changed and I was therefore deposited at a different hotel to the one I had previously been booked into. Even this change must have been of the Lord since there was no ‘logical’ reason for the change.