2 . My wife and I moved into our home two years ago. We had a yard with a lot of ________. Very often when we have flowers, Denise or I would plant some between the rocks, just to add some ________ to the area.

Last summer, I found a tiny little plant in the yard that I could not immediately identify. I knew I didn’t plant it and Denise said she didn’t either.

We decided to let it ________ growing until we could find out what it was.

Weeks passed and as I made my way back to the ________ plant, it appeared to be a sunflower. I decided to ________ the weeds (杂草) around it. As I pulled rocks from the area to get to the weeds, I noticed something ________.The sunflower had not ________ where I saw it begin. It actually had begun under a big rock and grown under and around it to reach the ________.

That’s when I ________ that if a tiny little sunflower didn’t let a big rock stand in its way of developing, we too have the ability of doing the same thing. If we ________ ourselves like that little sunflower, we can reach where we ________ to go and get what we need for growth.

We need to believe in ourselves knowing we have the ________ to achieve our goals. Like the sunflower, it knew it had the ability to get over the rocks because it had ________ in itself that it would succeed. Stand tall like the sunflower and be ________ of who and what we are, and then the environment will begin to ________ us. We will find a way to go under or around any “rocks” in order to reach our goals.

3 . I was walking home from school one day and it happened to be a particularly cold and windy day. It was _____and I was crazy enough to forget my hats and scarf. You can imagine my cheeks were rosy _____ and my hands were as numb as they can be.

All of a sudden, an old lady _____ up beside me and asked if I would like a ride _____. At first, I said it was OK and her _____smile melted(融化) away the thought that I should never talk to _____! We had an amazing chat and she was just _____ a good woman. She told me her ________and she dropped me off.

I didn’t see her or talk to her for about a month and one night as I_____ her kind gesture, I decided to return the favor. So, I made a lot of _____ and walked down to her house with my friend. At first I was a bit _____she wouldn’t remember me or think that I was a bad man who poisoned cookies but luckily, I was _____ wrong. She was so happy, and she hugged me and kissed me and seemed so _____ that someone would do something like that!

When I got home my mom told me that she _____and told my mom on the phone that she _______because she was so touched. She said she would never _____ the kindness that was given to her! That filled me with such _____! There really is nothing else joyful like helping _____and making someone’s day _____!

Let us never forget the joy we get ______ giving others a hand!

6 . We come by business naturally in our family. Each of the seven children in our family worked in our father‟s store. _________ we worked and watched, we learned that work was about more than _________ and making a sale.

One lesson stands out in my mind. It was shortly before Christmas. I was working evenings, cleaning up the toy section. A little boy, five or six years old, came in. He was wearing a brown worn coat with dirty sleeves. His shoes were scuffed(磨损)and his one shoelace was worn. The little boy looked poor to me — too poor to _________ to buy anything. He looked around the toy section, picked up this item and _________, and carefully put them back in their place.

Dad came down the stairs and walked over to the boy. His steel blue eyes _________ and the dimple(酒窝) in his cheek stood out as he asked the boy what he could do for him. The boy said he was looking for a Christmas present for his brother. I was impressed that Dad treated him with the same respect as any adult. Dad told him to take his _________ and look around. He did.

After about 20 minutes, the little boy carefully picked up a toy, walked up to my dad and said, “How much for this, Mister?”

“How much you got?” Dad asked.

The little boy held out his hand and _________ it. His hand was creased (起皱) with _________ lines of dirt from holding his money too tightly. In his hand _________ only two pennies and 27 cents. The price on the toy plane he’d __________ was $3.98.

“That’ll just __________ it,” Dad said as he __________ the sale. Dad‟s reply still __________ in my ears. When the little boy walked out of the store, I didn’t notice the dirty, worn coat or the __________ torn shoelace. What I saw was a happy child with a __________.

7 . Twelve years ago, Danny called me from a dark, damp subway station. “A baby!” he shouted. “Get down here, and flag down a police car or something.” By nature, Danny is a very calm person, so when I could almost feel his heartbeat through the phone line, I ran.

When I got to the subway station, Danny was holding a light-brown-skinned baby, about a day old. The baby had been wrapped (被包裹) in an oversize black sweatshirt and left on the ground in a corner behind the gate.

What neither of us knew, or could have assumed, was that Danny had not just saved an abandoned infant; he had found our son.

Three months later, Danny appeared in family court to tell the story of finding the baby. Suddenly, the judge asked, “Would you be interested in adopting this baby?” The question surprised everyone in the courtroom, except Danny, who answered, simply, “Yes.”

“But I know it’s not that easy,” he said.

“Well, it can be,” said the judge before giving orders to allow me to be a parent-to-be.

My first reaction, when I heard, went something like, “Are you crazy? How could you say yes without asking me?

In three years as a couple, we had never discussed adopting a child: I was an devoted playwright (剧作家) working as a part-time word clerk. Danny was a respected yet wildly under-paid social worker. We had a roommate, who slept in our living room, to help pay the rent.

We knew how many challenges couples usually faced when they want to have a baby. And while Danny had patience and selflessness, I didn’t know how to change a diaper (尿布), let alone nurse a child. I didn’t trust the social system and was sure there would be difficulties. Also, I couldn’t handle parenthood. So I promised myself I wouldn’t devote to it.

The caretaker held the baby and then placed him in my arms. But when the baby stared up at me, with all the innocence and hope he showed to me, I, like Danny, completely fell for him.

8 . In a village lived a milkman, who owned a few cows. Though his family wasn’t very _______ , they had a self-sufficient life (自给自足). One day, his son asked him what the secret of his life was. He used the opportunity _______ his son. “The secret of my life this: The cow doesn’t give milk,” said the father. The boy asked his father in     _______ , “What are you saying?” “As you hear it, son, you must know the cow doesn’t give milk _______ , and you have to milk it. If you don’t milk it every day, it will _______ giving milk. And I won’t be able to support our _______ . When you search for _______, remember what I said,” said the father.

The milkman continued, “I have to get up at 4 o’clock every day. First, I need to clean the waste on the farm. Then I need to _______ the legs of the cows and start to milk them. After that, I have to try my best to _______ the milk.” Hearing this, the son was ________ , and he decided to go to the ________ to help his dad.

Yes, what one ________ is from what one does. Happiness is the result of efforts. A cow doesn’t give milk on its own, and neither do all the things that one ________ to have. Thus one has to work hard to get whatever he needs, and it can lead to new ________ in life, and one may be ________ one day.

9 . It was the first time I had noticed him properly. Before this, Jack had just been a friendly young man provided by the hotel to accompany me on trips to the wildlife park nearby. But then he caught my attention by asking me to shut up.

“It’s just a garden spider. Don’t cry!” he said, looking at the creature with more love than I could gather for most humans. I had indeed cried-I was in the front seat of a jeep and the spider was on my leg.

“I don’t care what it is. Make it go away!” I said. I wanted him to pick the thing up and throw it out of the jeep right at that moment. He did something quite else.

He pushed his leg towards mine and held out the cloth of his trousers to gently let the spider go onto his own leg. He then drove on, as if nothing had happened. The spider climbed a little bit and then just stopped on his knee. I sat there staring at the spider for any sudden movement.

I was frightened that the man was completely at ease with a spider dangerously quiet on his knee. About 15 minutes later, he pushed his knee forward to the dashboard and the spider immediately climbed off his knee and on to the jeep. “The poor thing had been trying to get off me,” he said. “I only noticed now that it was trying to reach the dashboard, so I helped it along.”

I wondered then about this man, who thought about the spider with such kindness... Where and when did I lose my empathy towards the unfamiliar? Now, when faced with a row of ants on the staircase, my first reaction is no longer to attack them. The ants were already wise, but thanks to Jack, I learnt to live with the not so beautiful bits of nature.