1 . Gabe and I were taking a road trip from Hamilton to Nelson. At around 5:30 p. m. , we were ________ on a mountain road. I was texting my family. We weren’t ________ there’d recently been flooding in the area.

When I ________ from my phone, I saw a wave of mud (一波泥浆) racing down the mountain. Gabe tried to brake (刹车), but it was too late. The mudslide sent our car ________ down the cliff. It ________ on its side among some trees.

I don’t know how long we were unconscious, but I woke up to the ________ of Gabe moaning (呻吟). We had no phone signal, so all we could do was ________ for help. But my chest hurt too much to even ________. So Gabe started shouting as loud as he could.

Luckily, four men spotted us and went to our ________. On our way up, Gabe was in ________, slipping in and out of consciousness, and I ________ didn’t think he was going to make it.

When the medical team finally reached us, they ________ us into separate ambulances. I was swearing a lot as they took us away — I didn’t think I’d ever see my boyfriend again.

We spent weeks in hospital. Even after ________, I’ll walk with a limp for the rest of my life, and Gabe lost the vision in his left eye.

Before this all happened, we were happy-go-lucky people. We’re even more ________ now. Despite the ________ we suffered, we’re grateful that we’re still living a pretty good life.

2 . A boy walked into a candy store with his father and since he was just 6 years old, he was surprised by so many candies on offer. “It’s amazing. What should I ________?” he asked himself.

“Come on, son, we don’t have much ________. I have to attend an important meeting,” his dad said.

“These are all my ________ and I don’t know what to choose.” He picked up some bags and then put them back . He couldn’t make up his mind. “ Hurry up, son, we have no time. I’m very ________,” his dad said. So the boy ran around the store _______ again. His eyes moved from one bag to another, ________   all of the sweets looked so good and he couldn’t make up his mind. ________, the dad had enough. He caught his son by the hand and they walked out the store empty-handed (两手空空). The boy_________. He wanted them all, but ended up with __________ because he couldn’t choose just one.

Some of us are that boy. The __________ is that candy store. We have a great number of choices available to us, but if we don’t make a(n) _________ about our jobs, education, relationships, marriage or other __________ things, we will end up empty-handed. Sometimes we worry about making the __________choice. What if we _________ the direction that we take and it’s too late to go back? We don’t have to worry about this. How do we know whether it is good or not if we don’t make a choice? The bigger __________ is that we make no decision at all and end up going nowhere and doing nothing.

4 . Draper was the owner of a secondhand bookstore. One day, when he was sorting through a pile of old books, an envelope _______ from one. Inside was an undated letter and a faded photo of a woman holding a little girl on her lap. The letter said if Bethany was _______ it, it meant the author had died.

Tears were welling up in Draper’s eyes. These were a _______ woman’s last words to her child. He had to _______ Bethany. “Whoever it is will keep this.” he thought. “You wouldn’t throw away a letter like that.”

He supposed if the book ended up in his shop then Bethany was likely from around Bishop Auckland. And he thought he would _______ the little girl’s face. Even if she’d since left the area, there might be someone in the town who would recognize the picture.

He started with the local newspaper. The Northern Echo ran the story of the _______ letter.

Meanwhile, Bethany Gash, now 21 and a(n) _______ herself, was on Facebook about 10 miles away when a close friend messaged her to check out the _______. As she read her mother’s _______ which she thought had been lost forever, she said she thought she must be ________.

Bethany was only 4 when her mother ________. Five years later, her family moved to a new home and the letter, put away in the pages of a book for safe keeping, was unintentionally ________.

She remembered unpacking and looking for the letter, and then ________ searching through everything in the hope that it was there. “That’s when I realized it was gone and I’d never see it again,” she said.

Draper ________ the letter in person. He also brought her a children’s book for her son. Bethany was greatly moved to have the letter back, and also touched by the stranger’s ________.

5 . With spring approaching, a foot of snow that had fallen rapidly melt (融化). The runoff from the hills had filled the rivers and formed little ______ of water in the road. Broken tree branches were everywhere. I was ______ home and suddenly saw one of these branches ______ across the rad. It was big enough to damage my car if I didn’t ______ in time so I stepped on the brakes and ______ my emergency flashers. ______ there were no other cars there yet. But I knew that it would only be a matter of ______ before one crashed into that branch, causing a (n) ______ and even death.

I ______ my car and tried to pull the branch to the roadside. It was a lot ______ than I thought but I started to ______ it. Inch by inch I pulled it off the road. When it was finally moved to the side I stood up and felt ______. Just as I did, though, a little red car passed by ______, hit a pool of water in the road and made my pants wet. I wasn’t ______ but laughed at the absurdity (荒谬) of it all.

Sometimes we all do good things in this life only to get dirty water. When this happens just remember that the real reason you do good is because of the ______ inside of you.

6 . After thinking it over for several weeks, I finally decide to say yes to a big life decision. The woman (me) who hasn’t _______ a bicycle even once in the past seven years is going to take on a challenge to _______ from Buckingham Palace to Windsor Castle.

Anyone who knows me will think this is just _______. I don’t enjoy sports challenges. As I am _______ my mid-40s, I am eager to prove my body is still useful and can _______ things. And I want to work towards something bigger _______ the daily travel to and from work.

I have _______ run marathons or done things alike. I just _______ friends on the sidelines when they ran the London Marathon. But in all _______, there has been an element of________ when I see their achievements. What I see on their faces when they cross the finish line are the joy and the sense of ________. They know that they have pushed themselves beyond their limits and done something ________. Now I am 43 and have a(n) ________ to know what that feels like.

Now it is the perfect time to ________ something more than the classes in the local gym, or a jog around the park and show what I can do. So I’m ________ to jump on a bike again as long before and take to the road.

7 . When I was in my final year of college, a good friend of mine was planning to visit a toastmaster(宴会主持人) club and invited me to join her. _______ I loved the idea of public speaking and hoped that the _______ would be where I would see myself someday, I was a self-doubting person filled with pessimism, which never gave me the _______ to take that baby step.

Later, another friend encouraged me to _______ one of the forums. _______, I still never joined in it until I graduated. It was when I started working in a company and moved to a different city, and I was lonely that I _______ myself harder to give this forum a(n)_______. Little did I know that it was this little forum that was really a start to bigger things. Since then I have started to _______ the road to my career as a toastmaster gradually.

That friend doesn’t know what a(n) _______ his little encouragement has made on my life. Today I am a ________ individual; pessimism no longer has the upper hand and I can proudly call myself a public speaker. I still remember when I ________ my first paycheck for my public speaking, tears weren’t enough to ________ my emotions. I have been speaking on ________ occasions to various audiences since then. Whenever I walk up to the platform, holding the microphone, I believe that I am nothing but myself.

I don’t just give a lecture to the crowd. Sometimes, I tell them a story—one that has a dark reflection of my past pessimism, one that is related to my sincere ________ for that friend of mine and one that ________ my hidden passion and talent, which might have been forgotten had it not been for her encouragement.

8 . Sumiel, a 71-year-old, was no stranger to the struggles of kidney (肾) disease. He was on the transplant list (移植名单), but no matches had yet _________. So he continued with his treatments at a medical center 30 miles from home.

One day, he took a taxi home after his _________ with the doctor. As they set out on the 40 minute _________ to Sumiel’s home in Salem, he and the driver, Letts, got to _________. Sumiel mentioned that he’d enjoyed _________ and helped others in his community before. But he was doing less these days because the treatments left him_________ tired. Then Sumiel revealed that he was _________ a kidney giver. Letts said, “I’d like to see if I could be a _________ to give you a kidney.” Sumiel agreed, though he didn’t _________ much of it as they kept driving.

Letts was __________ to his word. He got in touch with Sumiel just a few hours later, and by the next week, Letts had__________ the kidney transplant program. After a month’s long screening __________ — including an interview, sharing medical records, and testing the __________ were: Letts was an ideal donor, and he and Sumiel were a perfect match.

Fourteen months after they ended up in the same taxi by __________, Sumiel and Letts had their surgeries. It was a __________. They kept in touch and looked forward to the day they could reunite.

9 . One day there was a lady and a boy in a plane. It was a very sunny day when the plane ________from the airport. When the plane was in the middle of its journey, thunder, lightning and heavy winds began. Great________ were felt inside the plane. Passengers were afraid and________ . The lady then quickly grabbed her seat. However, the boy was calm and still playing his ________. The lady was surprised why the boy was just________ and wasn’t afraid of what would happen next. The boy suddenly________up and went to the rest room and went back to his games happily jumping and smiling. She asked the boy, “Hey! Aren’t you afraid of what will happen next?” The boy just________ her, “No, I am not.”

The lady was________ . Then the lady asked him, “We are in________. Why aren’t you afraid?” The boy then answered the lady calmly with a________ on his face, “I should not be afraid and will not be afraid, because the one who is flying the plane is my father.”

Sometimes in life we are afraid of what will________ to us and we tend to forget that someone is in control of all the________ that we experience. Sometimes, we don’t believe in the one who can________ all that is happening. We need to be like the boy in the story. We should stop________ because everything is under control. We should not lose faith in the person who can make things________ for us.

10 . Emily Bhatnagar is a shy girl who has always loved reading. She says, “The books sort of became my best friends when I didn’t have one.”

When Bhatnagar was 16, her father was diagnosed (诊断) with cancer. The news was________for the family. Books became an even bigger ________, and she started thinking about families in similar situations. When her father recovered, she ________a plan to help others. “The idea came from not just great thanks that the doctors were able to ________such a miracle (奇迹),”she said, “but also a little of ________ that there were kids who were ________ the same battle.”

Bhatnagar started a ________ in her hometown. The goal was to collect books and give them to kids being ________ for cancer in local hospitals. Since the start of the book drive, which she called For Love & Buttercup, Bhatnagar has ________ more than 10,000 books.

Bhatnagar had no idea how much ________ her work would get. She started by posting on social media, asking people in her area to donate. “I was expecting maybe two or three ________ from neighbors,” she said. But it ended up blowing up, ________ when news stations began reporting it. “The public response has been super great,” her father said.

Bhatnagar continues to run the book drive, with a little help from her parents. She hopes to expand the project to ________ more kids one day. The memory of the first time she visited those children who’d ________ her books sticks with her. “It was the best ________ of my life,” she said. “I realized I wanted to do this type of work forever.”