London teens finally leave Peru on a flight home

A group of young teenage missionaries from the London, Ont. area who have been stuck in Peru for the last week are finally homeward bound.

A plane carrying the 18 teens and some adult leaders left a military base in Lima at around 3 p.m.Friday. The flight wasexpected to land at Pearson International Airport in Toronto at around 1 a.m. Saturday.

They'll be picked up by buses and "shuttled right back to London without stopping, and practicing all of the social isolating that they need to do when they back with their families," said Rev. Graham Buchanan, a pastor with West London Alliance Church, which supported the team.

Buchanan said everyone appears to be in good health.

"[They're] not showing any signs of any kind of sickness. The advantage our group had was that they had been isolated already. So we felt very comfortable with their health coming through the trip."

The group left on March 11 for a missionary trip toTrujillo, Peru, about eight hours north of the capital, Lima. They were safe but anxious to come home as the COVID-19 crisis worsened.

On March 16, Peru closed its borders and airports because of the pandemic. But Prime Minister Trudeau said Ottawa would work with commercial airlines to make flights available for the young Canadians.

The group got word on Monday of this week that the Peruvian government had arranged for buses to take the teens and their adult leaders from Trujillo to a military base in Lima, where several planes were flying Canadians home.

The group boarded buses on Thursday morning, but what was supposed to be an eight-hour journey took almost 12 hours because of stops to pick up other Canadians along the way, said Buchanan.

The pastor said everyone was very tired but safe and able to get into a hotel and get a good night's sleep.

One of the leaders of the group, Dave DeSmit, told Buchanan he and the others were "very excited about getting on the plane."

Buchanan credited "great work" by the Peruvian embassy and MPs back in Canada for making arrangements for the group to safely return home.