He was a Lutheran pastor from central Iowa, but with an avocation for carpentry, and that's why he was spending a month's vacation on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. His goal that month was to build a new bathroom for the community there. On the last day of his vacation, a small Indian girl approached him and, in her outstretched hand she held a nickel. "Here," she said, "I want you to have this." "No" the pastor said, embarrassed. "I can't take your nickel. You keep it." "Please take it," the girl insisted. "Besides, I have another one!" And she opened her other hand to expose a shiny, new nickel.

Out of respect to that generous little girl — a girl who was wanting to give away half of what she had — the pastor took her nickel and placed it in his pocket. But the story…