When You Think You’re Insured…
Ever hear the phrase, “My ship’s come in!”? We had an experience like that. Well, it was more like a long-lost canoe washing ashore but here’s the story.
Three years ago we were renewing all of our insurance policies for our family, the church, and another missionary family. We wrote a check out for around $5,000 which was to cover our various policies for the entire year. What we didn’t know was three of our policies could only be renewed 6 months at a time. The total for those policies would be around $2100. Our Italian insurance agent was a friend and was going to apply the rest of the money at the 6-month mark and renew the policies for us without having to go through the extra paperwork etc.
In October 2003, we received an urgent notice from our insurance company requesting that we pay the $2100 to keep our policies maintained for the second have of 2003. After meeting with the company, we knew something was askew. So, we went back and researched our bank statements (bank statements here are not written with the customer in mind — they are written for budding code-crackers), our check stubs, and our receipts. Sure enough! We had paid the insurance for the entire year. With a folder of copies in hand, it was time to go back to the company, calculate through the whole mess, and ever-so-gently reveal their error to them.
In true European/Italian fashion, we recalculated every policy and reviewed every page. Continuing to form, the agent looks at our check stub and replies, “Oh, you wrote the check out to our agent who is no longer working with us. You still need to pay us for the policy.” Our incredulous but ever-so-gentle response was, “So what!? We still paid out this $2100.” The insurance company said, “Well, we never received the money from the agent so it looks like you still owe us and he pocketed the cash when he left.”
It’s hard to remember my response at that moment because I’ve blacked it out as one of my not-so-finer-moments on the mission field. Well, I called up my friend and brother Roberto and we all met at a local cafe to get to the bottom of the “double-priced insurance.” My friend explained right away that he and his wife had just decided to divorce. He said that his wife’s attorney managed to clean out his bank account and take all the money he was saving for the church with which he was going to buy the new policy at mid-year. We were a bit dumbfounded. We were surprised that they didn’t tell us about the divorce, didn’t tell us about the policies only lasting 6 months, and didn’t tell us that he lost our money hoping we would overlook the mistake. He asked us for mercy. We gave him mercy. We wanted him to see God’s mercy because he is not yet born again in Mercy. But we still asked him to restore the church’s money. He asked us for 9 months to pay it back. We gave him two years. He wrote us a check for $400 right away and then promised to have it back to us soon. We wrote out a gentlemen’s contract and prayed with him.
Nine months went by… no word. So I called my friend only to find out that home and cell phone numbers had been changed (in Italy, there’s not a syruppy woman’s voice that gives you the new numbers either). The insurance company (for devious reasons of their own) was pressing me every time I went in there to join them in a lawsuit against my friend to recover the money. They said, “Don’t you want justice?” to which I thought, “You people gotta’ stop lobbing me softballs like this — you have no idea what you mean when you say justice.” The other problem would have been that the church would have had a black eye in the local papers and a giant paper trail that ended at a mountain of legal fees.
Fast-forwarding through 15 months, we’re thinking we’re left with a bag of empty promises so we’re just living as if the money is lost for good and the “nice guys get walked-on again”. Still no word from our friend, contract expiring on the 19th, & consistently thinking about how to “find” our friend we decided to try one more time after the New Year. We had also hit brick walls on about 8 other projects we were working on this last month too. Lo and behold, this morning and out-of-nowhere a new cell number appears on our phone, our friend materializes in an hour, a check materializes 30 mins. later, and a gentlemen’s contract went up in flames right after that. We walked through the difficulties of the past couple years (which were pretty dark) and our friend said, “Every month when I got paid, I would think - Rob & the Church - and I’d put a little money away. Even though we didn’t get to talk much over these past couple years, you’re a real friend and good person.”
I’m happy for the Church. I’m blown away that two years of wondering what-to-do ends in an hour. I’m thankful to God for the blessing & encouragement & being so good. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the lessons to learn from this. Maybe I’ll see some more when I take my friend to lunch on Tuesday.
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