As I am writing this, a few Hajj jemaah have left Malaysia for Mekah to perform their pilgrimage. Can't believe it's been a year since! May Allah accept your ibadah and please make full use of the time you have there, this is once in a lifetime opportunity!
Anyway, by now, you might already know that I've been to Hajj and obviously came back safely because here I am blogging about it. ;) For those of you who sacrificed your busy schedule just to sit down and talk to us personally about our Hajj trip, we appreciate it so much. It's a different level of busy-ness here in Malaysia, so to have the time to get offline and talk face-2-face, that's an honour. But for those of you who have been busy with family and other things, we truly understand! It's not that easy to just get in the car and have a chat, especially if you're married! Errkk. I mean, I REALLY TRULY understand the situation.
Anyway, like I said in my previous post all of OUR plan went haywire when we decided to move back to Malaysia. We were supposed to fly off to Mekah from the UK in September but since our plan changed, we had to think of a way to get extra money to travel from Malaysia-UK-Mekah-UK-Malaysia. In June, we booked and paid for our Hajj package via online as we were already in Malaysia. After confirming our bookings we found out that they needed our passports for the Hajj visa a few months before departure. That wasn't the downfall.....yet!
We were told by the travel agent that we will only get our passport with the Hajj visa 2 days before departure!!! Of course that didn't work for us because we were travelling from Malaysia so we need our passport way earlier to make sure we get to the UK as scheduled.
The next 4 months was a REAL test of FAITH, masha'Allah.
Since there was no turning back, we only had one thing to do..Which really, should have been the first thing we SHOULD do. Make lots of du'a. At that point in time, other than the obligatory prayers, performing solat hajat and tahajud was our second nature. We felt lost when we didn't perform those prayers. Waking up in the middle of the night wasn't a problem because we really wanted to perform Hajj and we know noone else could help us except for Allah. We put our trust in him and tawakal that everything will turn out perfectly as how HE planned. Even if we didn't get the chance to go this time, we didn't feel bad as we turned to HIM for help. Iskandar and I didn't put pressure on each other even though we really wanted this day to come. We hardly even utter about how much we want this opportunity to fall in place. Everything was done in our prayers. We begged ALLAH to give us what HE knows will be the best for us. We even left the travel agents to work on our visa and did not bother them with e-mails asking when we are getting our passports and visas. We left it all to ALLAH.
Nonetheless, the month of September came and we got real anxious as we were scheduled to leave to the UK in the first week of October. On 24th of September, I e-mailed the travel agent to get updates on our passport. And so they replied... asking Iskandar for his UK visa since they can't find it in his passport. Confidently I told him it is in his old passport which my brother have sent it together with the other passports. They replied that the old passport with UK visa wasn't with them. So I contacted my brother and he confirmed he DID NOT send the old passport to the travel agent. Things got even worse and to blame everyone at that time was an option. But I didn't, thanks to NLP and positive thinking. I pulled myself together and think of ways to get his visa to the travel agent as soon as possible.
Alhamdulillah, the postal service in the UK is amazingly efficient so they received the passport in time, which was 5 days before our departure to the UK. Now things are supposedly going rather smoothly but we forgot, how are we going to get our passport within 5 days??? I contacted the post office and they said that if we are posting passports they will hold it at the custom for a month just to make sure that it's legit documentation. Of course we didn't have a month to spare!! So we continued thinking of ways to get our passport to KL. A few days before our passports and visas were approved, we had so many relatives going back and forth the UK and Malaysia but as soon as we got our passport we didn't have anyone.
But, Allah was there all along guiding us. My dad received a msg from his friend saying that they're leaving for Malaysia on the 4th October. So without hesitation, we contacted him and explained our situation. Alhamdulillah we managed to set for an appointment for the travel agent and my dad's friend to meet and pass our passports through him.However, Iskandar had to delay his flight due to some complications whereas I managed to get on the flight back to UK as scheduled. I had about 3 days to spare before our flight to Mekah. As for Iskandar, he arrived the night before our flight to Mekah.... phew! SubhanAllah Alhamdulillah!
Stay tuned for the next episode........ ;)
Anyway, by now, you might already know that I've been to Hajj and obviously came back safely because here I am blogging about it. ;) For those of you who sacrificed your busy schedule just to sit down and talk to us personally about our Hajj trip, we appreciate it so much. It's a different level of busy-ness here in Malaysia, so to have the time to get offline and talk face-2-face, that's an honour. But for those of you who have been busy with family and other things, we truly understand! It's not that easy to just get in the car and have a chat, especially if you're married! Errkk. I mean, I REALLY TRULY understand the situation.
Anyway, like I said in my previous post all of OUR plan went haywire when we decided to move back to Malaysia. We were supposed to fly off to Mekah from the UK in September but since our plan changed, we had to think of a way to get extra money to travel from Malaysia-UK-Mekah-UK-Malaysia. In June, we booked and paid for our Hajj package via online as we were already in Malaysia. After confirming our bookings we found out that they needed our passports for the Hajj visa a few months before departure. That wasn't the downfall.....yet!
We were told by the travel agent that we will only get our passport with the Hajj visa 2 days before departure!!! Of course that didn't work for us because we were travelling from Malaysia so we need our passport way earlier to make sure we get to the UK as scheduled.
The next 4 months was a REAL test of FAITH, masha'Allah.
Since there was no turning back, we only had one thing to do..Which really, should have been the first thing we SHOULD do. Make lots of du'a. At that point in time, other than the obligatory prayers, performing solat hajat and tahajud was our second nature. We felt lost when we didn't perform those prayers. Waking up in the middle of the night wasn't a problem because we really wanted to perform Hajj and we know noone else could help us except for Allah. We put our trust in him and tawakal that everything will turn out perfectly as how HE planned. Even if we didn't get the chance to go this time, we didn't feel bad as we turned to HIM for help. Iskandar and I didn't put pressure on each other even though we really wanted this day to come. We hardly even utter about how much we want this opportunity to fall in place. Everything was done in our prayers. We begged ALLAH to give us what HE knows will be the best for us. We even left the travel agents to work on our visa and did not bother them with e-mails asking when we are getting our passports and visas. We left it all to ALLAH.
Nonetheless, the month of September came and we got real anxious as we were scheduled to leave to the UK in the first week of October. On 24th of September, I e-mailed the travel agent to get updates on our passport. And so they replied... asking Iskandar for his UK visa since they can't find it in his passport. Confidently I told him it is in his old passport which my brother have sent it together with the other passports. They replied that the old passport with UK visa wasn't with them. So I contacted my brother and he confirmed he DID NOT send the old passport to the travel agent. Things got even worse and to blame everyone at that time was an option. But I didn't, thanks to NLP and positive thinking. I pulled myself together and think of ways to get his visa to the travel agent as soon as possible.
Alhamdulillah, the postal service in the UK is amazingly efficient so they received the passport in time, which was 5 days before our departure to the UK. Now things are supposedly going rather smoothly but we forgot, how are we going to get our passport within 5 days??? I contacted the post office and they said that if we are posting passports they will hold it at the custom for a month just to make sure that it's legit documentation. Of course we didn't have a month to spare!! So we continued thinking of ways to get our passport to KL. A few days before our passports and visas were approved, we had so many relatives going back and forth the UK and Malaysia but as soon as we got our passport we didn't have anyone.
But, Allah was there all along guiding us. My dad received a msg from his friend saying that they're leaving for Malaysia on the 4th October. So without hesitation, we contacted him and explained our situation. Alhamdulillah we managed to set for an appointment for the travel agent and my dad's friend to meet and pass our passports through him.However, Iskandar had to delay his flight due to some complications whereas I managed to get on the flight back to UK as scheduled. I had about 3 days to spare before our flight to Mekah. As for Iskandar, he arrived the night before our flight to Mekah.... phew! SubhanAllah Alhamdulillah!
So, you would have thought that everything would go smoothly by now right? I mean, we've got our passports AND visas! What else could go wrong?
Stay tuned for the next episode........ ;)
