Found a missing wallet
Money is very tempting, after all, because of money, everyone is struggling in this crazy world to provide security and stability for their family. Therefore, if you find someone’s wallet, full of money (between 250 and 300 Euros), will you find the owner to give it back to him, or will you keep it because you think God has blessed you?
In the year 2001, I was employed as a cleaner and dishwasher in the company running both a restaurant and a cinema (Cartoons Cinema and Restaurant) in the city of Antwerp. During the cleaning hours in the three cinema halls, I found many items such as mobile phones, umbrellas, jackets, and missing wallets.
Whatever item I find, I keep it for weeks. Sometimes the owners come for the found items, and at times, they don’t come. When such things happen, I will inform the management about it, and the items will be kept. I have three mobile phones to return to their owners. The delights I found in their eyes encouraged me to be more faithful in my work.
Within my three years of service, I found three missing wallets. There was one which contained a specified amount of money (about 150 Euros), credit cards, and the code digits to cash, assuming the wallet went into the hands of a criminal. Because of one of her documents, I knew where she stayed. I went to her house, but she wasn’t there.
After work, I went to her house again, but she wasn’t there. The third time, she wasn’t still in the house, but this time, I saw a police van with two policemen in it right in front of the house. I approached the van, explained, and handed over the wallet to them. I have a lot to do, and being in her house three times without finding her was consuming my precious time.
One of the policemen gave me a thumbs-up, pleased over what I did, and seemed more surprised when he saw the code digits card, which any criminal could have used to cash out the woman’s money from her savings account. I was at work when I had a visitor. Why is this lady looking for Joel Savage? My mind was full of thoughts.
She came to me and stretched out her hand to shake. According to her, she was the one I gave her wallet to the police. “Thanks for bringing back my wallet.
In fact, I have been very busy. You saw the police van parked in front of my house because my neighbour living upstairs has committed suicide, and the police are there to take the body,” she told me. The lady again visited me, but this time with a gift.
I am a lucky man? Why does every wallet I find always have a lot of money inside? The second wallet I found, evil came into my mind to take all the money, close to about four hundred Euros, and throw the wallet away.
Then I asked myself – why should I take this money and throw away the valuable documents in this wallet? Whether a foreigner or a national, applying for documents costs money, and it takes over three weeks or even a month to apply for a new document.
I refused to listen to my devilish instincts and went to the man’s house to give him his wallet in a neighborhood called Kontich. When I knocked on the door and he saw me with his wallet, I understood the meaning of that surprise in his eyes.
I am a black man, and he probably never thought a black man could be that kind. He drove me back to work in his posh car. The following week, he came to see me with an envelope. I knew what was inside. I thanked him without taking the money from him.
I had no idea that the third wallet I would find would be a ‘miraculous wallet.’ Apart from the substantial amount of Euros, it has foreign currencies, including dollars. I couldn’t find the address of the owner, but there was a list of telephone numbers in it.
I began to call the numbers, and the third number hit the jackpot. The woman knows the owner of the wallet. She, therefore, came together with the owner to collect the wallet from me.
Both the owner and the woman became my good friends. We went out several times to drink and eat together, without knowing that the woman would be my saviour in the future. Three years after working in the restaurant and the cinema, I lost my job because of new management and changes at the restaurant and the cinema.
I am a physically strong man, but I wept bitterly on the day I lost my job. Without any knowledge of where to begin or find a new job, I called the woman who came with the man to collect the third wallet and told her what had happened. She assured me not to worry, promising to find me a job very soon at the place where she works.
Just two weeks after losing my job, she fulfilled her promise, and I got a job at the administration where she works, and for fifteen years, I worked in a school until my pension. Kindness is never thrown away; in fact, it brings reward.
What surprises me most is that all these things I did, none appeared in any of the Belgian newspapers, but trust me, readers or Belgians would have known who Joel Savage was if hunger had driven me to the supermarket to steal a loaf of bread to eat. That would have surely appeared in the newspapers.
This is why if you sow a good seed, you’ll reap a good fruit, and if you sow a bad seed, you’ll reap a bad fruit.
