I once did a year of voluntary service in a residential(居住的) home for people with learning disabilities. It was set in an English village deep in the countryside, quite different from my home in Sweden. One of my fellow volunteers, a girl from Tanzania, seemed a little unhappy, so I asked what the problem was. She told me she had a friend back home who had financial difficulties and maybe it was impossible for her to complete her university courses.

    So this friend of mine had sent all her money to Tanzania to support her friend! This meant that she didn't have much food to eat and no money to go anywhere outside the village.

    I was so moved and I felt I had to do something. So, during my next trip to one of the nearby towns I walked into a shop. I didn't have much money left myself but I thought I'd buy her an extra box of chocolate we both liked and some rice. I started talking to the woman (also a volunteer) working in the shop and finally told her about my friend.

     The woman looked at me, amazed. "Does she eat pasta?" she asked. "Yes," I replied. She immediately started loading a bag with pasta, cookies, and other things until the bag was full. "Give her this for me. It's my treat!" I couldn't believe it but accepted with happiness. As I left the shop to go home with my unexpected bag of food. I asked the woman her name. "Just Gloria," she said.

    Imagine my friend's face when I arranged the gifts on my kitchen table and attracted her from room to see! I had never seen her so happy! A few weeks later she found Gloria in the shop and thanked her in person.

    These two extraordinary(非凡的) women really showed me what true kindness and compassion(同情) are, and the impression will stay with me for the rest of my life!

    Pat McGee noticed her daughter hadn't returned to the dentist's waiting room just before her surgery (外科手术). She walked to the bathroom and found Jessica McDaniels, 32, in there, crying.

    McGee took her daughter into her arms, "We're going to say 'goodbye' to the old Jessica," she said. "And 'hi' to the new Jessica."

    McDaniels, from St. Louis, US, had been wishing for this day since high school, when the bullying (霸凌) about her teeth started. Now that it was finally happening, she was worried and afraid.

    It was a social media post two months ago that got her there. Someone posted a photo of McDaniels with a comment about her overbite (龅牙). The post was shared many times, with many people making unkind comments on her appearance.

    The bullies didn't know the road McDaniels had traveled. She had nine operations on her ears from age 2 to 12 years old. She was almost deaf in her right ear. Her adult teeth didn't start coming in until she was 11 or 12, and doctors couldn't figure out why they were pushed outward. It got worse as she got older. McDaniels had been trying for years to get her teeth fixed, but it was always too costly.

    When her story got out, dentists wanted to help her. One of them, Maryann Udy, got in contact with McDaniels and offered her a new smile - free of charge. McDaniels wasn't sure at first, so she called her mother. The mother told her that Udy was her angel. "You need to do it," she told her daughter.

    The surgery was long and complicated (复杂的). It took weeks for the swelling (肿块) to go down, and several more months before McDaniels' new smile was ready. Later that year, she looked at her old photos online and smiled. "I loved her," she said. "She's thankful to be in less pain, to be on the way to a new smile. Sometimes, though, it feels like something is missing from who she was." Still, she loves taking selfies and admiring her new appearance. "I looked good before," she said. "I look even better now."

Life is full of unexpected surprises. Paul was 71 years old and came from England. He liked using a 3D printer to make models.

One day, while Paul was searching for something online, he saw a red car on a website. It was his father's favorite car made in the 1950s. He felt so shocked!

The car brought Paul back to the "good old days". When he was a child, his dad always drove him around London. He sat in the back seat of the red car excitedly. When he went abroad to work, this car took him away from home to say goodbye to his father. To his surprise, many years later, the car showed up online!

Paul decided to buy the car. With his son's help, he bought it. It was a really difficult job to repair the car because it was old and broken. But Paul didn't give up. He spent a long time repairing it. After he tried many times, he finally made the car as good as it used to be with the 3D printer. Paul drove it here and there.

Paul said driving the old car reminded him of his father. The car was seen as a connection between his father and him. It was a treasure for him from the past.

It was a cold afternoon. I was training（训练） a football team for first graders. It was the day of our first practice. I seated the kids on a long bench on the grass. Any time I was training a new team, I spent a few minutes getting them to 1 one another, each kid saying his name and the names of all the kids sitting to the left of him.

A few minutes later, I decided to choose Alex to start at the end of the bench, go up to each kid, say that kid's 2 and then shake his right hand.

Alex was doing well and he went down the row（一排）—Dylan, Micah, David and Beau—until he reached Ben. He said Ben's name and reached out his right hand, but Ben just 3 there with his right hand 4 in his jacket. "Ben, why don't you let Alex shake your hand?" I asked. Ben stood up and said, "But I don't have that 5 ." He pulled his jacket away from his right shoulder. Ben's arm ran from his right shoulder but his arm 6 at the elbow（胳膊肘）. No forearm, no hand, no fingers! I got shocked（震惊） and could think of 7 to say, but the little kids were curious（好奇的）.

"What happened to your arm?" Alex asked. "Does it hurt?"

Ben took off his jacket to 8 the kids what they all wanted to see. He explained（解释） to them that he had always been that 9 and that there was nothing special. What he meant was that he wanted to be treated（被对待） like everybody else.

And he was. From that day on, he was 10 Ben, one of the players on the team.

A long time ago, there lived a wise man named Zun-Nun in Egypt. A young man came to visit him and asked, "Teacher, why do you dress in1 a way? Nowadays it's necessary to dress neatly(整洁地), isn't it? Or how will people know you're really a 2 and wise man?"

Zun-Nun smiled, took a ring from his finger and said, "Young friend, I'll answer your question.3 first do one thing for me. Take this ring to the market. Can you sell it for one chip of gold?"

When the young man looked at Zun-Nun's dirty ring, he thought to 4 , "How will I sell it at that price?"

He 5 the ring to the vegetable, meat and fish traders and others in the market. But 6 was willing to pay a chip of gold.

He returned and told this to Zun- Nun. Zun-Nun said, "Now go to the gold shop and show the ring to the owner. Don't give a(n)7 , just see how much he will pay."

One hour8 , the young man was back. "Teacher, people in the market really didn't know the value of this ring. The gold shop owner 9 me 1,000 chips of gold."

Zun- Nun smiled. "That's the answer to your question, my friend, Someone can't be valued only from his 10 . The ring was a gift from the emperor," he said.