2 . During Thanksgiving dinner, my grandmother would ask us to share a story of a person we were grateful to during the past year. And then she would ask, “Did you ________ that person?” She encouraged us to show our gratitude by our ________.

I will always remember the warm and happy ________ I had as a child, the miracle of being at my grandmother’s Thanksgiving table, eating her food, and listening to those I ________ tell what they were thankful for. I believe it made a big ________ in my life. It helped all of us shift from being ________ focused to being externally focused.

When I got married and Jesselie and I started our own Thanksgiving ________, a few memories ________. We used to live in Piedmont, California when our children were still young. To give Jesselie time to ________ the dinner without ________, I took the children over to San Francisco to look at the beautiful holiday windows. Our children have always remembered that ________, and Jesselie has never ________ that Thanksgiving dinner because as we sat down to a cornucopia (丰富) of ________, including Williamsburg sweet potato pudding and sausage stuffing, our children said, “Can we just go to get a hamburger instead?”

I hope all of us can start a new tradition — a tradition of assessing our lives and actions, ________ our unconscious biases (偏见), and committing to be more ________ and better appreciate our differences.

3 . That morning in September, at a five-kilometer race, I waited for my 11-year-old son at the finish line. He’d run 30:34 at another 5k in late spring, so I ________ he could run a 5k in about 30 minutes. When I didn’t see him at the 35-minute mark, I began to ________.

It’d already been an ________ morning. About an hour earlier, when we drove into town, my son noticed a lovely tiny green tree cricket in my car. It jumped onto my son’s hand where it stayed so long that we eventually gave it a name: Little Friend.

Minutes before the race, it jumped onto the sidewalk. Maybe it wanted to seek freedom, but this wasn’t a safe place due to the ________ pedestrian traffic. So my son knelt and ________ his hand. Little Friend came back. But I told him he would ________ it during the race.

I ran well and felt thrilled at the finish line. However, that ________ gave way to anxiety when my son didn’t show up. I ________ asking people if they’d seen him. No one had. So I returned to the race headquarters. In my confusion, I didn’t even see him ________ the finish line. But there he was, just ahead of the 45-minute mark, with Little Friend ________ on his right thumb.

My ________ were wrong. My son didn’t run fast, and he didn’t lose Little Friend. These two ________ seemed somehow related. He ________ a cold he was getting over, but I knew it was more than that.

Sometimes life gives you something beautiful, but fragile. There’s no need to ________ ahead. Treat it ________ and hold on when you can.

4 . Anyone who has ever witnessed the miracle in which infants progress from mewling to “Mama” to “Mine!” knows how critical it is for youngsters to hear normally before they speak their first words. _______, many children who don’t talk by age two turn out to be deaf. The sooner their disability is discovered and _______, the less likely they are to fall behind in the development of important language and social skills. That is why a growing number of hearing specialists (audiologists) and parents are campaigning for _______ screening of newborns for hearing loss.

Their _______ has registered in some powerful ears. To date, 22 states have passed legislation requiring at least partial screening programs. Part of the push stems from _______ in technology that, among other things, allow children as young as two months to be _______ hearing aids. But there are limits to the technology. One thing parents should realize before they start is that the screening tests are far from _______. A bad result doesn’t necessarily indicate a problem.

Audiologists estimate that 3 out of every 1,000 babies are born with some kind of hearing loss. Of those three infants, one is profoundly deaf. About half the time, doctors can identify a possible cause, such as a birth weight less than 5 pounds, or a family history of _______. The rest of the time there is simply no _______ as to why a newborn’s hearing may have been affected.

The screening tests work by introducing a sound into a baby’s ear and then measuring either the ________ of the ear’s internal mechanisms or the electrical activity of the auditory portion of the brain (the auditory brain-stem response test). Just because a baby fails either test, ________, does not mean that there is a hearing problem. A temporary buildup of fluid in the ear canal or excessive noise in the nursery can ________ the results. For this reason, experts say, hospitals should ________ the screening tests for any baby who doesn’t pass the first time before telling the parents to consult an audiologist for more thorough testing.

It is at this stage that things get a bit ________. Though 20 of every 1,000 babies fail the two-step screen, most prove on further examination to be just fine. Is it worth ________ 17 families of perfectly normal children - not to mention asking them to spend several hundred dollars on advanced tests — to identify three infants with hearing loss?

5 . An Oregon teenager Marcos Ugartes is being praised as a hero after he saved a young boy from a house fire.

The fire broke out just after 10 p. m. Monday. Marcos Ugartes and his dad were sitting on the couch in their home when they heard ________ down the street. As soon as they realized the screaming was coming from the house down the street, they ________ some residents were just arguing. But Marcos Ugartes noticed the flames (火焰). Then Marcos and his dad took off running for their neighbor’s house.

After learning that an 8-year-old Cody Ma was still ________ inside the home, Marcos Ugartes didn’t think ________ about running down the street with his father to ________ the boy from the flames that broke out on the second story of the home.

Marcos Ugartes grabbed a ladder (梯子) and ________ to the second floor to the boy’s room. He ________ the window and finally rescued the ________ trapped inside.

The Ugartes had never met the Ma family before the ________. All that has changed, and now they are forever ________. Cody’s father said of the Ugartes, “I may never forget their ________ because they’re my heroes. They’re my son’s heroes forever.”

The Ma family expressed their ________ to Marcos on Tuesday, thanking him for his ________ by giving him a card and flowers.

Marcos told ABC News he got a lot of ________ from fellow students. The Gresham Fire Department plans to ________ Marcos later this year.

6 . Bill Sumiel, 71-year-old, was dealing with kidney failure and had been on dialysis (透析) 30 miles from home.

He had _______ diabetes over 20 years before, which led to his kidney problems. He was on the transplant list, but no matches had yet appeared. So he _______ his current treatment.

Timothy Letts, a Uber driver of 31, was _______ north when his phone rang. Uber _______ Sumiel’s ride-hailing order to him. Letts could see that the older man was weary-looking but in good _______.

“Sumiel really _______ the trip with positive energy.” says Letts. Over the 40-minute drive, Letts shared that he was an Army veteran. Sumiel mentioned that he’d _______ volunteering at his church and in his community. But he was doing less these days, because the dialysis treatments left him _______.

Sumiel revealed that he was _______ a kidney donor. Letts joked that he’d be a good donor candidate, given that he didn’t drink or smoke. Sumiel agreed, though he didn’t think much of it as they kept driving. Letts, ________ , couldn’t stop thinking about it.

About a quarter-mile away from Sumiel’s house, Letts said, “I’d like to see if I could be a ________ to give you a ________.”

After the initial excitement, Sumiel started feeling a bit less ________.

Sumiel was touched by Letts’s ________ , though he wondered if it had just been an emotional moment. Letts was ________ to his word, and he got in touch with Sumiel a few hours later. After a months’ screening ________, the results were ________: Letts was an ideal donor, and they were a perfect match.

On Dec. 7, 2021, 14 months after the ride, they had their ________ successfully. Being ________ today, Sumiel is volunteering full time remotely. Letts has moved to Germany to work with the Army’s family. They look forward to the day they can ________.

7 . Biar Kon, a 17-year-old student, whose parents were working in neighboring Sudan, moved to Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, to attend school. Once he _______, he needed to get some documents from the Sudanese embassy(大使馆). But when he went to look for the embassy, he couldn’t find it. He asked a few people for _______, and no one knew where it was. Then an older woman tapped him on the back.

The woman told Kon that she had seen him asking questions of multiple people as they _______, and she wondered if he needed money for food, or a place to stay. Then Kon realized that the woman thought he was _______.

They cleared up the _______, and the woman was able to offer her help. The woman’s _______ left a deep impression on Kon. And it inspired him to _______ five years later, when he moved to Boston, Massachusetts. One day, outside a coffee shop, he _______ a man who was begging for change. Kon _______ that moment five years earlier, when the woman in Nairobi had ________ him for a homeless person. So he went up to the man to see what he could do. “He told me why he was on the street—because he made a（n） ________ mistake when he was in high school, and he couldn’t get a ________ now,” Kon recalled. Kon bought the man some breakfast, and gave him a little bit of money.

Today, it’s an encounter he ________. For him, it is a ________ that you never know what people are going through unless you talk to them ________ — the way the woman in Nairobi made an effort to talk to him.

8 . My wife and I parked by a rough path the same time as a young man covered in tattoos (纹身). I ______ he was unfriendly，so we tried to ______ ourselves from him. But he struggled hard to ______ and wanted to talk some. We slowed down. He said he was recovering from a bad time in his life. We ______ left him in the dust，heading up the river.

Hours later we turned back ______ a flash flood had taken out the bridge. There he was again, following to ______ us. He shared a little more of his ______. He lost his mother and sister in a car accident and he was permanently ______ too. We slowed down to the pace he could ______ for the whole way back.

He continued, “During much surgery and ______ I came to hate life...” Then he pulled up his shirt to show us a ______ life size tattoo from neck to waist. It was two ladies in a ______ light waving to him. “This is my mom and this is my sister,” he pointed, “They told me to stop hating everything. They loved me just as they always had and ______ me to live in love too!” He explained the brightly colored tattoo was the exact dream he had that day.

My ______ went away. It had painted a wrong picture of this wonderful person with a beautiful ______ . I learned more than he hoped to tell.