A Johannesburg woman didn’t even realize that her purse was missing until she received a message on social media from someone called Teacher, a man who has not only restored her faith in humanity but done so for many following the story.
Caroline Green didn’t even know that her purse was missing the entire weekend until she checked her Facebook inbox on Monday morning and saw this message from a good samaritan called Teacher.
“Hi Ms Green, I’m Teacher from North Cliff. I strongly believe that the brown wallet I found late Friday night belongs to you. I can be contacted on the following landline…”
Green sprung up to grab her bag and search for her purse. Of course it wasn’t there.
“By God’s Grace I hadn’t even noticed my purse was missing as I hadn’t needed it the entire weekend and was consequently spared all that unnecessary stress. Wayne and I bought take-away fish and chips on Friday night. My purse must have fallen out of my bag!”
Ten minutes later Green made her way back to Fish Aways/Steers and asked for ‘Teacher’.
“It didn’t feel real. I stared, open-mouthed no doubt, at the regular human being who approached me.”
She asked if they could sit down for a moment. Green needed to understand what motivated his actions. He was eager to explain the whole story.
“When we were closing up on Friday night I saw a brown purse lying open on one of the chairs outside. It still had money inside it. I’m sorry, but I had to look through your purse to find a number to contact you, but couldn’t find it anywhere. Luckily your ID book was there …”
Green hadn’t even realized that she had left her ID book was in her purse…
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” … so I tried searching for your name on Facebook and it came up first.”
Green was quite confused and surprised believing that there must be thousands of Caroline Greens on Facebook, and questioning as to how he had specifically found her.
“It uses your location,” Teacher explained,
“You must be the closest Caroline Green in the area. My only wish was to return it to you. It is exactly as you left it. It looks like everything is still there, money, everything! The power of Facebook.”
The Reality of the situation had now sunk in as Green’s eyes began to water. She was filled with a mixture of self-chastisement, immense gratitude and awe.
“Are you just like this – a good person? You must be a man of God.”
Teacher explained that it is just who he is, although he admitted to being a born-again Christian, he was just happy that he was able to give her the purse back.
All Green wanted to do was repay him for his act of kindness… not many people would have given a purse full of money back to it’s rightful owner, let alone used social media to try track them down.
Teacher sat back in his chair shaking his head.
“I don’t need anything for you. I just wanted to return it to you.”
“God is good.” Green responded.
They sat for a while in each others presence, when Teacher interrupted the peaceful silence which now surrounded them like a cozy cloud, Green recalls that it was as if the words were meant for just for her.
“There is this card in your purse that I read…”
Green removed the card to give it to him. It was an abbreviated version of the well-known allegory, ‘Footprints in the sand’ which she had recently bought from a gift shop. She turned it over and asked to borrow a pen.
‘To: Teacher, a dear man of God.’
‘Thank you.”
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