God cares for our aged parents. I experienced 1st hand that God provides the encouragement and helps us whilst taking care of aged parents. My wife and I encountered two unexpected surprises. This is our story with God.

Surprise #1. Getting a Ticket Refund after Changing Itinerary!

My wife was originally scheduled to go to Sydney to attend a family wedding. An unexpected incident happened where her mum suddenly suffered a stroke, and my wife had to rush to see her earlier. The bitter-sweet emotion of going to the aid of a loved one, and celebrating a wedding the same week was difficult. 

I proceeded to change her departure flight to leave one day earlier. The ticket was a simple lowest cost economy class that was originally booked in April. I requested the change less than 36 hours before departure.

To my amazement, I received a $7.90 refund rather than paying a penalty for making a last minute flight changes! It’s logical that we have to pay admin fee for changes but I got a shock of my life when I received a refund from the airline instead. I had never encountered an instance where I got a refund for changing flights!

It wasn’t so much about the amount, but it was a little reminder from God that He was aware of the circumstances that needed us to travel back to Australia early. That refund encouraged us!

Surprise #2. Getting a Frequent Flyer Seat less than 1 Week before Departure

27/Jul/2015. My wife was now back in Singapore. My wife planned to go back to Sydney to see her mum and family again. Her desire was to go on 3 August. Flights to Sydney were very expensive at this time of the year. I had been monitoring the airfare on Scoot, Qantas, Singapore Airlines over 2 weeks. All expensive. Using my Singapore Airlines frequent flyer points to redeem a seat on the cheapest Economy Saver class at the end of July/early Aug was extremely difficult, to say the least. Frequent flyer seats were available, but they were on a higher class. 

What were the chances of getting an Economy Saver seat to Sydney on 3 August less than 1 week before departure? Very very difficult! Anyways, I proceeded to check by logging into the Singapore Airlines frequent flyer website.

To my amazement, there was one available seat at the 8:15pm flight using the Economy Saver class on the 3 August to Sydney. Just one. This was just one week before departure and God provided that one seat needed. I was very encouraged because it is very difficult to redeem frequent flyer seats in general 1 week before departure! I quickly booked the seat. The flight on the A380 was nearly completely full as I was selecting seats for my wife. Once that was done, I checked the Singapore Airlines website, and there were no more Saver seats. 3 days later, I rechecked and basically all the Saver, Standard seats were gone (see below).

The $7.90 refund and the ability to get a Saver class seat on the exact day we wanted to go, one week before departure helped my faith fly.

Lesson learnt: Pray to God for help and bring your needs to the Lord. God cares for the small things, and He can help you in the most unexpected way.