Money
• In 2008, New Zealand bus driver Nomeneta Tuaitau, a Samoan father of two, found a wallet with over $500 in it. He tracked down the owner and returned the wallet and money, and he declined to accept a reward, saying, “I have my family, and I have enough money. I’ve worked as a bus driver for three years, and I enjoy it because I can serve the public.” The wallet’s owner, an English tourist named David Procter, was happy to receive the wallet and the money, especially since he needed the money to do a good deed of his own while visiting Auckland. Mr. Procter said, “I came here on an emergency trip to help an old friend. He is totally blind and deaf and had hit a few hard times. When I got here, he had been made homeless. But we’ve now found him a place to live — he’s back on his feet, and he can rebuild his life. It has been a successful trip, and without Nomeneta’s help it would have been really difficult for me to do this.” Mr. Procter said about Mr. Nomeneta, “This act is heroic. Nomeneta didn’t just hand the wallet in as lost property. He took the time to make sure I was okay, and [he] didn’t want any reward.” Mr. Procter loves New Zealand and says, “Escaping the English winter is one reason, but I also love the space, the scenery, and the Kiwi attitude to life. If I was 20 years younger, I would have moved here.”
• Rabbi Shimon was once asked to address a gathering of rich men, but he agreed only on condition that he be lent 50,000 rubles the day before his address, to be repaid the day after his address. Because Rabbi Shimon was known to be an honest man, this condition was readily agreed to. When Rabbi Shimon gave his address, he spoke eloquently on the evils of the love of money, and many rich men in the audience felt compelled to improve their ways of doing business. The day after his address, Rabbi Shimon, as he had promised, repaid the 50,000 rubles. The people who had lent him the money noticed that the Rabbi was returning the same bills that he had been lent, and they wondered why he had borrowed the money since he had not used it to buy anything. Rabbi Shimon explained that he had borrowed the money because poor people were often intimidated by rich people, but because of the 50,000 rubles he had borrowed, he did not feel poor and so was able to criticize the sins of the rich people in the audience.
• People sin, but they can repent. For example, someone stole a hammer decades ago from Central Contractors Supply Co. in western Pennsylvania. Eventually, the thief repented and sent an envelope containing money and a note to the owners — the Gramling family — of the supply store. The note stated that the writer had stolen a hammer from the family-owned supply store 25 or 30 years ago. The note also stated, “I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway. Enclosed is $45 to cover the hammer plus a little extra for interest. I’m sorry I stole it, but have changed my ways.” Lots of things have been stolen from the store over the decades, said co-owner Lynne Gramling, but this was the first time that a thief paid for what was stolen. She took the money to her father, also a co-owner of the store. He was ringing a bell for the Salvation Army, and she put the money in his kettle. She said that the money was “really a lot more than a hammer would cost. He was very generous.”
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Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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