God is good and He is good all the time. He answers prayers
so long as we are in a close relationship with him. Last month when my sister was to join me for a
visit to Taipeh, two things happened.
She lives in Kuala Lumpur while I
live across the South China Sea. Just as I was going to fetch her from the
airport, she texted that she had missed her flight! My heart sank! We were to fly out to Taipeh
very early the next morning. Would she be able to get here in time?
Apparently, the airlines had changed the boarding gate.
She wasn’t aware of this and she said she never heard any announcement either.
Anyway, her luggage had been off loaded. She asked for the next
flight but all flights were fully booked! She could wait on standby but because
that was a long weekend ( Labor Day weekend ), chances of anyone getting off a
flight were dim.
She prayed to God to give her a flight to my place. I also
prayed for her to come in so that we could go together to Taipeh. Eventually,
she found a flight which had only ONE seat left, so she grabbed that seat.
Then she looked for her luggage and made her way to the
other terminal from where the flight would take off. Praise the Lord my sister
got in after 11 p.m. that night. By the time we got home it was past midnight.
Our flight was at 6:10 a.m. so we had to be at the airport
by 4 a.m. It was a sleepless night for us as we were afraid that we would not
be able to wake up in time.
The next morning, we arrived at the airport, checked in our
luggage and proceeded to clear Immigration so that we could board our flight.
Horror of horrors!! The immigration officer declared that my
sister could not leave the state. Why?
We were shocked! She had forgotten to
bring along the slip of paper given by Immigration when she entered the state.
All non-residents were given a slip of paper upon entry and had to relinquish
it on departure.
So we asked what we had to do in order to board our flight?
The immigration officer said we had to make a police report. I panicked! We
would never get to a police station in time to make a report as the flight was
due to take off within half an hour.
Where’s the police station, we asked? He said there was a
police base at the other end of the building. So, we took to our heels and ran
all the way to the other end of the building, praying all the while to our
Lord.
When we reached the end of the building, it was dark! The
Customs office was locked and in darkness.
It was 5:30 a.m. so they wouldn’t be on duty. Then I saw the office
which had the word “Police” above the door! But the office was in darkness!!
Desperate, I banged on the door and shook the handles.
“Anyone in there? Hello, hello, anyone in there?”
Then, praise the Lord, a sleepy policeman came to the door
and opened it. We rushed in and said we
needed to make a police report so that we could catch our flight.
He calmly asked us, “What time is your flight?”
We told him. We prayed to God to let us have the police
report in time so that we could catch our flight.
The police officer was very kind and he rushed the report
for us. We thanked him and ran all the way back to the Immigration counter.
My sister
submitted the report and was allowed to go through. We found all the ladies in our group waiting
for us. They told us that they were waiting for us to arrive before boarding.
They were confident we would be able to make the flight. Indeed, we did, by the
skin of our teeth as everyone else had already boarded.
God is so good! He had answered our prayers.
So long as we have a close relationship with
God, so long as we have Him in our lives and communicate with Him regularly
through prayer, He will never fail us. Without His Hand in waking up the police
officer, getting him to quickly write the report for us, we would never have
made the flight!
Thank you Lord, thank you, for making our trip possible. This
was a very precious week for my sister and I as we live so far away from each
other and this trip was meant for us to have time together.
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My sister and I |
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Entrance of Jui Fen Old Street |
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Waiting for the train to Hua Lian |
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Waiting for our coach to take us back to the hotel |
Both of us will never forget this trip and how eventful it
was for my sister, first missing her plane and then, nearly couldn’t board for
our flight to Taipeh.