A certain man owned a bicycle repair shop in a busy city. Business was good because many people in his tropical country couldn’t afford automobiles, so if they had their own vehicles at all, they were bikes. At the same time, expenses were plentiful, limiting his prosperity—he just made his way in life a day at a time like pretty much everyone else.

That said, this man had one thing that made him feel rich: a small, golden statue of an ancient king that had been handed down in his family from father to son for generations stretching across several centuries. He kept it locked in a cabinet in the apartment over his shop where he lived.

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Early each morning, Georg walked to the hardware store and stood on the far side of the parking lot with other potential workers, waiting for a foreman or contractor to hire him for a day’s work and pay. He had made his living this way for years, scraping by as he provided for his family.

Then one morning, he was hired by Mr. Roth.

That didn’t seem extraordinary at first. Mr. Roth had a pleasant manner, and he seemed genuinely kind and happy, but all Georg really cared about was getting a day’s work done and taking the money home to his wife so she could use it to buy the groceries they needed. Mr. Roth led Georg and a couple other men on the drive to a property he owned, where they spent the day clearing rocks and weeds from a large area. Mr. Roth paid Georg and the others at sunset, and as the job wasn’t finished, he said he would be looking for workers again the next day.

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After having spent much of their lives growing a family business, a couple entering their sixties retired. Not about to spend the rest of their days sitting idle, they researched needs in third-world countries and founded a nonprofit organization to help pipe fresh water into towns and villages. Members of many small communities in these countries had to walk miles to rivers or springs and could bring back only what filled vessels they could carry.

Establishing the mission of the nonprofit was the easy part. To take the next step, the couple, as the directors of the organization, selected a country to start with and initiated communication through the embassy with the government. At the same time, they sent representatives into that country to travel, speak with community leaders, and identify needs for piping water.

Strangely, though the directors expected to hear from the representatives shortly after they arrived in the country, they received no communications of any kind. Not a single text message from a single employee. Nor did they respond to calls or messaging.

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Most people Susanna knew had several uncles and aunts. But not Susanna herself. She had one uncle because Nathaniel was her mom’s only brother, and her dad was an only child.

Nathaniel had kids of his own, but he seemed to realize that with Susanna having no sisters or brothers, she felt lonely sometimes. He and Aunt Ellen brought the cousins over to play on a regular basis. He could have left it at that, but Uncle Nathaniel asked her how she was doing, how she was coping in Portuguese class with that cranky teacher, how her collection of plush unicorns was coming along. He even remembered the names of the unicorns.

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Angela, a mid-level manager in a government office, attended a professional management conference on the other side of the country to sharpen her skills. While waiting for the opening session to begin, she struck up a friendship with a woman ten years her senior by the name of Catharina.

The two women spent most of the conference together. Catharina expressed interest in most of the same topics and sessions as Angela did. They met up for lunch and dinner and came to know a lot about each other—what cities they lived in, their careers up to that point, their personal and family circumstances. It had been a long time since Angela felt like she had a close friend, and it seemed Catharina was someone she could trust.

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