It was an autumn morning shortly after my husband and I moved into our first house. Our children were upstairs unpacking，and I was looking out of the window at my father moving around mysteriously on the front lawn. “What are you doing out there?” I called to him.

    He looked up, smiling. “I'm making you a surprise.” I thought it could be just about anything. When we were kids, he always created something surprising for us. Today, however, Dad would say no more, and caught up in the busyness of our new life , I eventually forgot about his surprise.

    Until one gloomy day the next March when I glanced out of the window，I saw a dot of blue across the yard. I headed outside for a closer look. They were crocuses (番红花）throughout the front lawn — blue, yellow and my favorite pink，with little faces moving up and down in the cold wind. I remembered the things Dad secretly planted last autumn. He knew how the darkness and dullness of winter always got me down. What could have been more perfectly timely to my needs?

    My father's crocuses bloomed each spring for the next five seasons, always bringing the same assurance: Hard times are almost over. Hold on, keep going, and light is coming soon.

    Then a spring came with the usual blooms but the next spring there were none. I missed the crocuses, so I would ask Dad to come over and plant new bulbs (植物球茎). But I never did. He died suddenly one October day. My family were in deep sorrow, leaning on our faith.

    On a spring afternoon four years later, I was driving back when I felt depressed. It was Dad's birthday, and I found myself thinking about him. This was not unusual — my family often talked about him, remembering how he lived up to his faith. Suddenly I slowed as I turned into our driveway. I stopped and stared at the lawn. There on the muddy grass with small piles of melting snow, bravely waving in the wind, was one pink crocus.

    How could a flower bloom from a bulb more than 18 years ago, one that hadn't bloomed in over a decade? But there was the crocus. Tears filled my eyes as I realized its significance.

    Hold on, keep going, and light is coming soon. The pink crocus bloomed for only a day, but it built my faith for a lifetime.

    Ottawa is the capital of Canada. It is the second largest city in Ontario and the fourth largest city in the country.

    The Centre Block is the main building on Parliament Hill (国会山). There also stand several ceremonial spaces, such as the Hall of Honor and the Memorial Chamber. The present Centre Block is the second copy of the building, after the first was undermined by a big fire in 1916, and it is one of the most recognizable buildings in Canada.

    Downtown Ottawa is the commercial and economic centre of the city. Most of the buildings are office towers. While most of Ottawa's high tech industry is based elsewhere, it has an important presence in the downtown center. The downtown also contains a number of apartments, hotels, and the older single family homes and townhouses along its edges (边缘).

    The National Gallery of Canada is one of Canada's earliest art galleries. The Gallery has a large and varied collection of paintings, drawings, sculpture and photographs. Although its focus is on Canadian art, it also holds works by some well-known American and European artists.

    The Rideau Canal is the oldest continuously operated canal (运河) system in North America. At the very beginning, it was used to provide a safe supply and communication route between Montreal and the British naval (海军的) base in Kingston. It remains in use today mainly for people to boat and enjoy themselves, with most of its original structures undamaged. The locks on the system open for navigation (航海) in mid-May and close in mid-October.

    The city of San Francisco is a wonderful tourist attraction that offers many different things to see and do. The best way for a traveler to get a good look at the city is to take one of the many different tours there

    Walk to Tour the City

    When touring the city by walking, you aren't going to walk much. What's more, there are far more benefits. This kind of tour allows you to see as many buildings of the city as possible. A tour of the city on foot usually focuses on a more localized neighborhood level, which can be very interesting in a number of different ways.

    Hit the Waters of San Francisco Bay

    The waters of San Francisco Bay have played an important role in the city's development over the last century. Touring San Francisco from the water is completely unique way for you to see this wonderful city.

    Take a Bus Tour

    If you want to see a wide variety of attractions from all over the city, one of the best things you could do is to book a tour through our company that offers services here. A bus tour of San Francisco is one of the most complete ways to experience the city

    Tour San Francisco From the Air

    While it is one of the most expensive ways to see San Francisco, touring the city from the air is one of the most unique and exciting ways to see the city. Seeing the city from high above allows you to get a full view of the city as tour guides point out attractions from high above. If you do decide to tour San Francisco by air, you'll be creating memories that you won't forget forever.

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    Devon Gallagher, a college graduate from Philadelphia, wants the world to know exactly here she's been during her worldwide vacation in a special way.

    The traveler, who was born with a bone disease, had her right leg amputated(k)at the age of four. Although the amputation caused setbacks for Gallagher early on, she now sees it as nothing short of inspiration for living her best life.

    To spread that message, Gallagher has taken to social media, where she shares photos of her travels across the globe, but instead of simply using a geo-tag, she writes her location across her artificial leg before taking a picture.

    Now she has been taking pictures across the Continent, which show her cycling over the canal in Amsterdam relaxing on a wall overlooking the city of Barcelona, posing with a waffle in Brussels, taking in the spectacular Parthenon temple in Athens and enjoying a river cruise in Budapest, all with the well-known locations written on her artificial leg “I get a new leg every two years and I can choose the design on it. One day I had a sudden thought to get a chalk-board, "Gallagher said. "My mum and grand-mother weren't too keen on the idea, but my friends thought it was great and told me to go for it, so I did.”

    Gallagher said people often stare when she's writing on her leg, but once she shares the photos she receives only positive feedback. "My leg hasn't stopped me from doing anything I've wanted to do," she said. "I don't know if it's my determination to prove to myself that I can do it, but regardless, I've been able to keep up with my peers and lead a pretty great life, Gallagher shows us that you should never let anything stand in the way of your dreams. And if life gives you an artificial leg, make art

    I was in the Sants Cruz Mountains not long ago, speaking and singing at a women's conference. We were focusing on the theme of loving others in practical ways through our gifts, and something in particular happened during one of the sessions（会议）will remain imprinted in memory.

    A young Syrian woman (Lilith) was invited to the conference at the last minute, and everyone seemed surprised and delighted that she'd actually come. Just a few days earlier, Lilith had fled her country and found refuge with one of the women attending the conference. As an Orthodox Christian in Syria, she and her loved ones had become attacked targets of violent terrorist groups in the country's ongoing civil war.

Lilith had witnessed horrors no one of her young age should ever see. Despite the further danger it presented, she'd decided to leave her home and her family to find safety here in America. Knowing some of her story, and seeing her sitting through the sessions at the retreat（畏缩不前）—head, covered in a scarf, bowed toward the floor—broke my heart.

    Lilith's story touched all of us, including Pam, who was quilt maker. Pam had just finished a beautiful quilt, and had brought it with her. She, along with a few of the leaders, decided to give it to Lilith as a symbol of their comfort and love.

During our last session, Lilith was called forward and prayed over, hugged, and wrapped up in that beautiful quilt. I thought of the many hours Pam undoubtedly spent working on it, and the terrible events that led Lilith to this moment—surrounded by the beauty and love quilt embodied. I wept. When they told her it was for her, she wept.

    Nasr Majid started hunting this fall at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge (保护区)on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in USA, He's one of the relatively few new hunters who officials hope will help stop a nearly four-decade decline nationally in what has become a hobby for fewer than 5 percent of Americans.

    Natural resources and wildlife, officials in Maryland are encouraging hunting of deer, turkeys and some other wild animals, which is believed to be good for the environment. Without hunting, they say, sika deer will overpopulate the wildlife refuge and they'll overeat the bushes and other plants that provide important habitat for birds. On the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, hunting is also important to prevent the spread of diseases such as Lyme.

    In many families, the hunting tradition has been handed down for generations^ But as longtime sportsmen age and children lose interest, the number of hunters in the United States fell by 2 million, from 2011 to 2018, to about 11 million.

    "Everything is changing. Kids are growing up in front of video games and computers instead of going hunting." said Chris Markin, a hunting specialist for the state natural resources department. "Adults usually focus on working and providing for their families. Those pressures are preventing many other potential hunters from going out, and from raising the next generation of hunters."

    To avoid such a decline, a new approach is needed. Government agencies and nonprofit groups are now launching mentoring (指导) programs to train more hunters, which not only helps preserve an industry and a culture but also means more protection for wildlife and their habitats through deer population control and investment.

    Luckily, there are those still eager to learn, like Majid. He was just looking for an outdoor hobby he could share with his children when he came across the mentors-hip program. Now, he feels capable of hunting on his own, but also has someone he can text with questions that pop up. His new pastime has already paid off for him—on his second hunt with his mentor, in the last minutes of daylight, he bagged his first deer.