HELP?! Anyone has any ideas for this?

So this landlord (overseas right now or so he says) in which we rented the apartment from didn't pay for the electricity bills that time and we didnt have electricity in the whole house so we paid for the bills first as he promised us to pay us back the next day. BUT HE NEVER DID and he kept pushing the dates further and further away and giving lots of fake excuses.. So he never paid us back.

Anyone experienced similar case like us in here? What can we do to MAKE him pay us back? It's a huge sum for us.... we don't earn that much..

By the way, the renting of apartment has no contract.. but we have all the messages / voice messages from him saying he will pay but never did.. and we still have the receipt of the bills we paid that time..

What can we do??

He's such a jerk... we been chasing after the money for more than 2 weeks already..........

Please tell us what we can do........