Leon was a postman. Every day after Leon woke up, he would feed his 37 cats. Leon didn't really want 37 cats, but one by one they had turned up on his doorstep, and Leon had taken them in.

    Every day, after feeding the cats, Leon would collect the mail from the red postboxes in the village and take it home to sort（分类）. “If only I had 37 helpers instead of 37 cats, my job would be so much easier,” Leon thought. Just then, the cats started meowing for their dinner. That gave Leon an idea. That night, Leon stayed up making 37 cat-sized postal backpacks. Each backpack fitted neatly onto a cat's back. Then, he went around to each postbox, putting signs up that read: Postbox closed. Please use the Postal Cat Service.

    The next day, Leon put a backpack on each cat and dropped off the cats around the village. Leon knew that the cats would be happy lazing around all day. He also knew that they would always come home for dinner. Leon spent the day relaxing, waiting for his helpers to return. Leon was right. The cats did return, but they did not bring home many letters. Somehow, the cats had managed to wriggle（蜿蜒而行） out of their backpacks. Or lose their letters. Or get the letters wet. “Cats are just too unreliable（不可靠的）” Leon thought. Just then, there was a scratching（刮擦声） at Leon's door. A dog was waiting to be invited inside. That gave Leon an idea.

    I'm Marie. I work in a nursing home (养老院) and my job is to look after the old people. Alice is one of them. She's a very nice old woman.

    This year, Alice had a hard time. She went to hospital twice. In November, I finally could get her back to her home.

    Alice hoped that her daughter could come to visit her on Christmas Eve because she wanted to be with her family, like the old days. But her daughter was coming after Christmas, so she was very sad. I also felt sad because she would be alone on the holiday.

    On Christmas Eve, I took her to a candlelight service (烛光礼拜) at a church that night. I didn't take her to my church. Instead, I took her to the church in her old neighborhood. We got there early and I let her sit near the door, so people could see her when they came in. A few minutes later, some of her friends came to the church and they all talked to her and sat with her.

    Alice got a lot of love from her old and new friends there. She said she loved the gift like this. That night, I thought I got the best gift: the smile on Alice's face.

    Once upon a time in a land far away, there was a wonderful old man who loved all kinds of small animals, such as spiders, insects and butterflies and so on.

    One day while walking through the woods, the nice old man found a cocoon（茧） of a butterfly. He took it home.

    A few days later, a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to make its body out of that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared it could go no farther.

    Then the man decided to help the butterfly, so he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then got out of the cocoon easily.

    But it had a swollen（肿胀的） body and small shriveled（枯萎的） wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge to be able to support the body, which would contract（收缩） in time. Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings.

    What the warm-hearted man in his kindness did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were Nature's way of forcing fluid（体液） from the body of the butterfly into its wings, so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.

    Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If we were allowed to go through our life without any difficulties, it would be bad for us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. And we could never fly.

    Mr. and Mrs. Wilson begin their vacation today with their children. And they have to be at the airport (机场) at 11:40 a. m, Yesterday Mr. Wilson said, "It'll take us half an hour to get there in the taxi, so we all have to be ready (准备好的) by eleven o'clock. Nobody should be late.

    Now it's ten minutes to eleven. But they are still all running around doing things, except Mrs. Wilson, who is enjoying the sun in the garden.

    Her husband and children are very surprised (惊讶的) that she isn't in a hurry. Then the taxi arrives and Mrs. Wilson says to them, "Well, I knew that this was going to happen, so before I went to bed last night I moved all our clocks and watches ahead (提前) twenty minutes. So now we can go to the airport without worrying about (担心) being late."