We had only been in the country a few days when I went to the bank to change all of the travellers cheques we had brought with us into Indonesian Rupiah. I went to the bank first and changed the money then I went to the central markets to get some food items for Tania, following which I headed home by public mikrolet. I went to the transport terminal and got on a mikrolet heading to our area. I sat there for a while but the driver wasn’t moving. I realised he wasn’t leaving yet and so got out and into another one that was about to leave, so I made the last passenger. On the way home I stopped at the Kodak shop on the big intersection to pick up the photos I had left to be developed the day before. In the Kodak shop I reached for my wallet and realised it was not in my pocket. But a worse realisation was to come – I had the chicken and some veges but I didn’t have the pouch with the bank exchange money in it. I panicked. I had no money to pay for the photos. All I could do was walk the mikrolet route to the terminal which was close to the house where we were staying.
I set off walking in the direction of home looking intently at every mikrolet that came toward me. I but hadn’t gone further than 500 or 600 metres when the one I had travelled in to the Kodak shop pulled up beside me. I was elated when the driver got out and gave me my wallet. It had fallen out of my pocket behind the low bench seat and a fellow passenger had seen it. But that wasn’t my main concern, which was the money pouch with the money from the bank exchange. That contained all the cash money we had in Indonesia with no chance to get any more money until we could open up a bank account. All my wallet contained was some small money I had got as change from the central market. But of course I was pleased to get my wallet back with photo ID’s etc. I asked to check in the vehicle to see where my pouch was. It wasn’t there; there was no sign of it. It was well and truely gone and I had no idea where I had lost it.
I rode that same mikrolet back home and told Tania the sad news that I had lost all our money from the exchange of the travellers cheques and we had no way to get anymore money until we could set up a bank account AND PUT MONEY IN IT. So we did the only thing we knew to do. WE PRAYED and asked the LORD to return our money to us somehow. Tania then suggested that I go up to road to the house of the Dean of the Faculty I was to lecture in at the University and report our loss to him and ask him how to get in touch with the police. When I told him my sad story he commiserated with me but told me, “Ian, this is Indonesia. Losing money in the way you have described, there is no way you will get it back. It’s impossible. You can report it if you wish but you don’t even know where you lost it if it wasn’t in the mikrolet you got out of at the Kodak shop.”
I said, “Well I believe I will get it back. Tania and I have prayed and I believe God will return our money to us.” His response was to scoff at my statement and say “Ian this is Indonesia not New Zealand.”
I went back home and told Tania what the Dean had said. Tania said, “Let’s pray again and ask God’s help.”
We were sitting in the front room of the house about an hour later when a mikrolet came down our narrow little road and went slowly passed without stopping. We already knew the public transport vehicles didn’t take the smaller streets. The drivers stuck to the main arterial routes and passengers had to walk to their houses. Suddenly that same mikrolet was coming around again, only this time it stopped outside our house. The driver came in to our property carrying my black pouch. He was the guy who operated the first mikrolet I have got in at the market. It seems when I picked up my shopping bags, the pouch had slid down between the bags and was lying on the floor at the back. I checked the contents of the bag and indeed everything was intact. The only way the driver could have known where to find us was by opening up the pouch, unwrapping the money and reading the bank form wrapped around the money which had the address of the house where I was living together with the total amount of money in rupiah. It was in millions. I gave the driver a LARGE reward.
I then went up to Dean to report to him what had just happened. He was stunned. He stood for a moment without saying anything and then he said, “That never happens in Indonesia. That is astounding. Allah was looking after you.” From that day onward when we were together with Dean at a university gathering with a new group of people he would say, “Ian tell your story!”