1 . He really did look like a tourist, with a camera around his neck and a bottle of sunscreen cream sticking out of his bag. The fat man sat on the terrace (平台), sipping lemonade and pretending to look at a tourism brochure. His sunglasses masked his eyes, but I knew he wasn’t looking at the brochure: he hadn’t turned a page for the last ten minutes. As I brought him his dishes, he coughed up a “thank you” and looked at me briefly. I tried not to stare at the tiny scar across his left eyebrow.

I walked back inside with my empty tray, shaking my head. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him. Then it hit me — the car accident. The mysterious stranger who helped me out of my crashed car, just before it exploded. I rushed back to his table. He was gone.

I moved his saucer and found his tip, along with a card: I am deeply grateful to you. The night of your car accident, I was on my way to rob a jewelry store. Saving your life brought things back in a right way. I now live an honest life, thanks to you. Mr. D.

I shivered (震颤). The night of my car accident, I was heading for an interview in an illegal dance club. Seeing human kindness through his heroic gesture turned my life around and bought faith back into my life. I unfolded the tip he left. Among the singles was a grand (一千块) with a pen mark underlining “Thank you.” I said a silent prayer for him and got back to work, smiling.

2 . In March 2022, I was recovering from an operation for breast cancer and going through a terrible time. I spent my days at home ________ everything to myself. Then one of my colleagues suggested ________, “Why don’t you pick a couple of days and go to Ireland and escape?” I ________ the tip.

The trip was fun, but when I got on the ________ to go home, I wasn’t feeling well. My plan was to sleep for the ________ journey, but the guy next to me looked ________, eager for a conversation because he had kind eyes.

“I had an operation,” I said ________. “I had breast cancer.” He paused for a moment and said, “What’s wrong with that? Breast cancer is just a small ________ of your life, like going to college or getting married.”

I could feel my eyes ________ up with tears.

“Don’t think too much of your problem,” he said. “Instead, think about how many people you could help.”

I had tears coming down my face, and said, “I can’t ________ I’m crying in front of you. I don’t ________ know you.”

“Look, you have a ________ in life,” he said. “You can either ________ your things deep in your pockets and take them to your grave (坟墓), or you can help someone.”

I’ve not been a very outgoing person, and except the few people who needed to know, I’d kept my illness ________. I didn’t want to be ________ as a defective (有缺陷的) person.

But this man, whose name was Ken Duane, showed me that my illness gave me ________, because it gave me the ability to ________ someone else’s load. I decided at that moment that I was going to try to help others by sharing my story ________, in the hope of inspiring those who were in the same or similar situation. Later that year, I talked about my illness and my ________ with Ken on air.

I am forever ________ that I never took a nap on the flight over the Atlantic.

It was a few years ago. A friend sent me a restaurant gift card for Christmas and I picked a pretty, sunny Sunday afternoon to use it. It felt good taking my two grown sons and daughter to a nice sit-down restaurant instead of the fast food places we usually ate at. The meal was delicious and we all had a good time. When the waitress brought the check, I looked down at it. The gift card covered almost all of it. I reached into my wallet to get enough cash to cover the rest. I saw two bills in my wallet. The first would cover the rest of the bill and give the waitress a nice tip. The second bill was much larger, so I reached down to pick out the first one.

At that moment, my mind flashed back to 30 years ago. I was working as a waiter in a restaurant much like the one we were in now. It was long hours of hard work for low pay. I went home just only making enough to feed my young family. I also remembered how more than once I saw the waitresses counting their meager tips while worrying about how they were going to pay the rent and buy their kids things they needed. I remembered the pain in their eyes and sadness in their faces at the end of the day.

I blinked (眨眼) and was back in the present again. My fingers touched the smaller bill in my wallet. I smiled, pushed it back down, and picked out the much larger bill. I folded it around the gift card and covered both of them with the check. As we all got up from the table, I handed them to the hard-working waitress. “You keep the change,” I said with a smile and a happy heart.

We are all one family in this world. We live together, laugh together, and suffer together. Do your best to be a good person and love others. Replace the suffering with joy.

4 . The mission of Faces of Santa Ana is to lovingly engage the homeless through art. In July 2015, Brian Peterson and his wife had just moved to Santa Ana, California with a burning desire in their hearts to love their neighbors. Outside the couple’s fourth-floor apartment, a(n)____ man was often yelling on the street corner, sometimes keeping them ______ at night. Peterson, 28, would pass the guy on his way to work as a car designer, but they never _____ .

One day, Peterson was relaxing in his living room, reading the book Love Does, about the power of love in action, when his ____ disturbed by the homeless man. _____ by the book’s compassionate (有同情心的) message, Peterson made a(n)_____ decision: He was going outside to introduce himself.

In that first _____, Peterson learned that the man’s name was Matt Faris. He’d moved to Southern California to pursue a career _____, but he soon fell on hard times and _____ living on the street for more than a decade.

“It was a strange thing to me,” Peterson recalled later. “I saw ______ on the face of a man who hadn’t shaved in probably a year. And the ______ inside of him inspired me. ”______ Peterson, a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art, hadn’t picked up a paintbrush in about eight years, he found himself asking if he could ______ Faris’s portrait. And Faris said yes.

Peterson’s _____ with Faris led him to form Faces of Santa Ana, a nonprofit organization focused on _____ and painting portraits of members of the community who are unhoused. Peterson sells the 30-by-40-inch canvas(画布) — signed by both subject and artist—for a few thousand dollars, and put half into what he calls a “love account” for his _____.

Many of Peterson’s new friends use the donations to secure immediate ____ — medical care, hotel rooms, food. Faris used the funds from his portrait to record an album, realizing his ____ dreams.

Peterson has painted 41 of these portraits himself. He’s discovered that the buyers tend to connect to the story of the person in the painting, finding ______ and often friendship with someone they might have otherwise overlooked. “People often tell me, ‘I was the one that would cross the street. But I see homeless people ____ now,” Peterson says. “I didn’t know that would happen. ”

5 . A Narrow Escape

Shortly after the war, my brother and I were invited to spend a few days’ holiday with an uncle who had just returned from abroad. He had rented a cottage in the country, although he hardly spent much time there. We understood the reason for this after our arrival: the cottage had no comfortable furniture in it. Many of the windows were broken and the roof leaked (漏水), making the whole house wet.

On our first evening, we sat around the fire after supper listening to the stories our uncle told of his many adventures in distant countries. I was so tired after the long train journey that I would have preferred to go to bed; but I could not bear to miss any of my uncle’s exciting stories. He was just in the middle of describing a rather terrifying experience he had once had when there was a loud crash from the bedroom above, the one where my brother and I were going to sleep.

When we got to the top of the stairs and opened the bedroom door, a strange sight met our eyes. A large part of the ceiling had fallen right on to the pillow of my bed.

9 . I learned how to accept life as it is from my father. ________, he didn’t teach me acceptance when he was strong and healthy, but rather when he was ________ and ill.

My father was ________ a strong man who loved being active, but a terrible illness________ all that away. Now he can no longer walk, and he must sit quietly in a chair all day. Even talking is ________. One night, I went to visit him with my sisters. We started ________ about life, and I told them about one of my ________. I said that we must very often give things up ________ we grow — our health, our beauty, our friends — but it always ________ that after we give something up, we gain something new in its place. Then suddenly my father ________ up. He said, “But, Peter, I gave up ________! What did I gain?” I thought and thought, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. ________, he answered his own question, “I________ the love of my family.” I looked at my sisters and saw tears in their eyes, along with hope and thankfulness.

I was also________ by his words. After that, when I began to feel angry at someone, I ________ remember his words and become ________. If he could replace his great pain with a feeling of love for others, then I should be ________ to give up my small anger. In this ________, I learned the power of acceptance from my father.

Sometimes I ________ what other things I could have learned from him if I had listened more carefully when I was a boy. For now, though, I am grateful for this________.

10 . Music is something I could never live without. Without music, I was ______ and would only talk when I was asked to. Music allowed me to ______ myself and be as loud as I wanted to. Singing my ______ out during choir (合唱) class, auditioning for choir concert solos, and ______ the school play, I felt the most like myself. There was nothing that could keep me away from my ______, until high school.

Everyone who wanted to be in show choir auditioned for the ______, including me. In the audition room, there was a piano, notes and different lyrics ______ on the chalkboard. I hit every note, and the ______ was amazing. When my audition was over, I took a breath of ______. Weeks passed and the list of who had made it into show choir was ______. I found my ______. “Angelica H. –– alternate (候补者)”. After I saw this, my ______ disappeared. My outside showed I wasn’t sad, but on the inside, my whole world had ______.

A year passed, I was at a ______ that also held karaoke to the customers. My parents let me go up and ______. Finally, I got enough courage to ______ a song by Sam Smith and started off. While I hit the high notes, people eating   ______ for me. I realized, I did not get into one program but that did not mean that I had to give up all ______. I still had that passion. The lesson learned was that if you are ______ or do not get what you want, and it is something you’re in ______ with, don’t give up.