Once in a very wide valley there was a shepherd who had a flock of ten sheep. He loved the sheep very much. Each day He would graze them on the green pastures of that wide valley and water them in the wide river that snaked its way through that wide valley. Each sheep had a name and each one look different. To the shepherd they were everything, his nights and his days.

One day, as the shepherd was watching over his flock of ten sheep, a man came running up to him. Between breaths the man begged, “Please can you give me a sheep? My family has nothing left to eat and we are going to starve!”

“Where have you come from?” The shepherd asked the man.

“I have come from the next valley where there is a dreadful famine and many don’t have food to eat.”

The shepherd turned and looked over his flock, then turned back to the man and said, “Take a sheep for your family.”

The shepherd watched the man take away a sheep and was very sad to have lost it but happy that it would help a family life.

Now the shepherd knew what he had to do next so he set out with his flock to the next valley. He went from village to village offering his sheep to those who didn’t have food because of the famine until his whole flock was gone.

Then the shepherd returned to his own valley alone.

When he arrived back to the valley he was surprised to see that all of his friends and family had gathered together to bring him a new flock of ten sheep for him to shepherd. And so he went back to shepherding his new flock.