1 . From my second grade on, there was one event I feared every year: the piano recital(独奏会). A recital _________I had to practice a boring piece of music and perform before strangers. Each year I would ask my father if I could skip the recital “just this once”. And each year he’d shake his head, saying something about building self-confidence and working toward a(n)_________So it was with really great_________that I stood in church one recent Sunday, video camera in hand, and watching my 68-year-old father sweating in his shirt before_________to play the piano in his very first recital

My father has had a(n)_________to play music since childhood, but his family was poor and couldn’t afford lessons. He could have gone on regretting it, as too many of us do. But though he was rooted in his past, he wasn’t _________there. When he retired three years ago, he_________his church music director to take him as a student.

For a moment after my father sat down at the keyboard, he simply stared down at his fingers. Has he forgotten the_________? I worried, remembering those split seconds _________ago when my mind   would go blank (空白的) and my fingers would__________ .But then came the beautiful melody(旋律), from the__________fingers that once baited(装饵于)my fishing lines. And I__________ he had been doing what music teachers always stress:__________the music and pretend the others aren’t there.

“I’m__________of him for starting something new at his age,” I said to my son Jeff. “Yeah, and doing it so __________,” Jeff added.

With his first recital, my father taught me more about courage and determination than all the words he used those 30-plus years ago.

3 . Zhao Yuan, who was a dance teacher, lost one leg in an accident at the age of 24.______she had to use a wheelchair, and leave her______ position and started to make a living in business. She opened a hotel in her hometown and used some of her earnings to help_____for the college cost of 13 poor students.

In 2020, she set up an offline sales platform called Good and Fresh, which mainly sold goods produced by Zhao’s disabled friends. ______ the pandemic (疫情), however, Good and Fresh   _______making money, so Zhao ______ online sales instead.

She became a livestream host on social media platforms, ______ the sales of goods like brown sugar, sweet potato flour and honey that her friends made. Although Zhao Yuan, who only had one____ , had to deal with her own disability, she had made her business succeed in creating a______ in e-commerce (电子商务) and had helped more than 2,000 other_______ people sell agricultural products. Everything she sold came from 55 agricultural centers around the province_______ by the disabled. She had also trained 57 hosts, all of whom were disabled.

With the_______ of her business, Zhao has set up the Good and Fresh Agricultural Science and Technology Development Co., of which she is______ . She is planning to______ another 1,000 hosts, and hopes that they will also be able to achieve their personal and social______ through work, just as the way she is doing.

5 . I was riding my special motorbike this past weekend and stopped at a store. As I was getting my wheelchair off the back, a man watched me from his car and I noticed a wheelchair in his back seat. We spoke for a moment and I asked him about the wheelchair. He answered that it was for his daughter. “Well, do you think she would like to go for a ride on my motorbike with me?” I asked. He seemed amazed that a total stranger would ask him this. He thought about it for a second and said, “OK, as long as I can follow you.”

He introduced me to Amy and he sat her on my back seat. Her father followed me for a few miles and she talked non-stop about what she wanted for Christmas.

As we came back to the store she said, “This ride is the best Christmas present I could ever receive. I have been in a wheelchair my whole life and didn’t know I could do this.” Then she turned to him and said, “Oh Daddy, I’m going to be OK. Mr. Bryant does all kinds of things — and I will, too.” Her father hugged me and said, “I was sitting here praying for a gift for Amy that would encourage her. She often felt that her life was boring compared to other children. God answered my prayer (祷告) just now. Now I pray that God will bless you for your gift to Amy today.” Being kind and thoughtful to others, we can be an answer to prayer.

8 . It was in the eighth grade at the time that we were having a final test. During the test, the girl sitting next to me ________ something, but I didn't understand. So I ________ her way and found out that she was trying to ask me if I had a/an ________ pen. She showed me that hers was out of ________ and would not write. I happened to have one, so I took it out of my pencil box and put it on her desk.

Later, after the test papers had been ________ the teacher asked me to stay in the room when all the other students were ________ As soon as we were alone she began to talk to me about what it meant to ________; she talked about how important it was to stand on your own two feet and be________ for your own acts. For a long time, she talked about honesty and ________ the fact that when people do something dishonest, they are really ________ themselves. She made me promise that I would think ________ about all the things she had said. I walked out of the room wondering why she had________ to talk to me about all those things.

Later on, I found out that she thought I had cheated on the test. I tried to explain about the pen, but all ________ she could say was it seemed very strange to her that I hadn't talked of anything about the pen the day she talked to me________ after the test. Even if I tried to explain that I was just doing the girl ________by letting her use my pen, I am sure she continued to believe that I had cheated on the test.

When I was a teenager my father and I were standing in line to buy tickets for thecircus. Finally there was only one family between us and the ticket counter.

This family made a big impression on me. There were four children, all probably under the age of twelve. You could tell they didn't have a lot of money. Their clothes were not expensive, but they were clean. The children were well-behaved, all of them standing in line, two-by-two behind their parents, holding hands. They were excitedly talking about the clowns, elephants and other acts they would see that night with their brothers or sisters in a low voice. One could sense they had never been to the circus before. The father and mother were at the head of the line, standing proudly as they could be. The mother was holding her husband's hand, looking up at him and smiling. The husband responded to her with a big smile, too.The ticket lady asked the father how many tickets he wanted. He proudly responded, “Please let me buy four children's tickets and two adult tickets so I can take my family to the circus.”

The ticket lady gave the price. The man's wife let go of his hand, lowered her head and her lips began to shake. The father leaned a little closer and asked, “How much did you say?” The ticket lady told him the price again. The man obviously didn't have enough money.

How was he supposed to turn and tell his eight children that he didn't have enough money to take them to the circus? Actually we were not wealthy in one sense, so I understood how the kids would feel. I felt sorry for them.

Seeing what was going on, my dad seemed to have an idea.

Then my father and I went back home. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Boys like to be considered to be brave, but what kind of things can be considered to be brave? It is not a question that can be answered by words, but by the actual deed. A boy with the name Henry gave us a good example. Ronny and Henry were two friends in the same class. They always played together and went home together. One day as Ronny and Henry were going home after school, they saw some people fighting in the street corner. Ronny said excitedly, “Some people are fighting! Let’s go and have a look!” But Henry refused, “It’s none of our business. We’d better go home and don’t get close to them. Also our parents are expecting to have dinner with us together at home and I don’t want them to worry about me.”

“You are a coward, and afraid to go,” said Ronny, and off he ran to the spot with some other boys. Henry had to go home alone and didn't think about it anymore.

But Ronny thought Henry was a coward and told all the boys that. They laughed at him a great deal. From then on, they looked down upon Henry and didn’t want to play with him.

Henry was sad but he wasn’t angry with Ronny for his rude behavior, because he had learned that true courage was shown most in bearing misunderstanding when it was not deserved, and that he ought to be afraid of nothing but doing wrong. Thus, he just ignored the other boys’ laughter and continued to stick to his thought and go to school and study as well. However, Ronny didn’t invite Henry to go home with him anymore. Instead, he had his new friends who also thought Henry was a coward. Every day after school, they didn't go home directly but went to the river or somewhere to play games and had lots of fun.