Amy had three sons, Dave, Bill and Bob. Every year her sons sent her expensive gifts on her birthday.

The eldest son Dave, had a lot of money and he wanted his mother to have the most expensive gifts, but he didn't know what to buy. So he put an ad in the newspaper. "Wanted—the greatest gift for my mother.”

About a week before his mother's birthday, a man came to his office. He brought a big bird.

“This bird can speak six languages and sing eight songs.”the man said.

“Really?  I'd like to listen to it," Dave said.

The man made the bird talk in French and tell a joke in Japanese. Then the bird sang a beautiful song. Dave was very happy and paid eight thousand dollars for the bird. The next day Dave sent the bird to his mother with a birthday card.

The day after his mother's birthday he called his mother. “Well, mother”he asked, "What do you think of the bird?”

“Oh, it's very delicious, dear.”said his mother.

    When US teenager Jake Olson isn't playing football or golf for his high school, he's often offering inspiration(灵感)through his new book about his own life.

    These activities might be too much for the average 16-year-old to deal with, but Jake is blind. When people ask him how he can possibly play golf without being able to see the ball, he says he is thankful for his father's guidance.

It seems apparent that his early experience playing sports as a person with sight and muscle(肌肉) memory— repeating behaviors over and over until they become second nature — have also enabled Jake to hit the ball quite well.

    Jake was born with a rare kind of eye cancer that took away the vision from his left eye when he was a baby and eventually his right eye, in 2009, when he was 12 years old. Rather than letting the disease hold him back, Jake used his loss of sight and his faith as sources of motivation(动力).“If I was going to sit on the couch all day, feeling sorry for myself, I wasn't going to do anything. I decided that I was going to go out and persevere (坚持不懈).” he said.

    It was with that mind-set that the student from Orange Lutheran High School in California was able to write his first book, Open Your Eyes: 10 Uncommon Lessons to Discover a Happier Life. “It's about opening the readers' eyes to their true talent in life and making sure that they use all the abilities that they have,” Jake said.

    Jake's father, Brian Olson, said the family is impressed with what he has done with his life, including showing people that they can get through hardships. “Your darkest hour can soon become your brightest, and with every setback, there's a setup,” Jake said. “In every one of us, there's more potential than we can ever imagine, and it really is a choice.”

Gemma Burford

    Gemma was born in' 1978 in a quiet (安静的) village in England. Her mother worked in a library and her father worked in a hospital. When she was a student at Oxford University, she travelled to Tanzania and met her husband, Lesikar for the first time. They got married in 2003 and had their daughter, Lucia, two years later. Now Lucia studies in a small primary school, and Gemma and Lesikar also teach her at home.

"Judy Boehmer

    Adam is Judy's first child. She now has four sons, seven daughters and a pet (宠物) dog, Bosco. Judy and her husband, Larry, live in Atlanta, Georgia, but they also have a motorhome (野营车). The Boehmers are a circus (马戏团) family and all the children are performers (演员) at the circus. The- children don't go to school, but study at home. The family travels more than 40.000 kilometres a year for their work The first show of the Boehmers was at a park in Lowa in 1989, and they now perform all over America.

    Twenty years ago, I drove a taxi for a living. One early morning, I went to pick up a passenger at 2:30 a. m. When I arrived to collect my passenger, I saw a small woman in her eighties standing before me. I took her suitcase to the car and then returned to help the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly towards the car.

    She kept thanking me for my kindness. "It's nothing," I told her. "I just try to treat my passengers the way l would want my mother treated."

    "Oh, you're such a good man," she said. When we got into the taxi, she gave me an address, and then asked, "Could you drive me throughout the downtown (市中心)?"

    "It's not the shortest way," I answered quickly.

    "Oh, I'm in no hurry," she said. "I'm on my way to hospice (末期病人安养所). I don't have any family left. The doctor says I don't have very long time." I quietly shut off the meter (计价器). For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked, and the neighborhood where she had lived. Sometimes she asked me to slow down in front of a special building and she would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

    As the day broke, she suddenly said. "I'm tired. Let's go now."

    We drove in silence to the address she had given me.

    "How much shall I give you?" she asked.

    "Nothing," I answered.

    "You have to make a living," she said.

    "Oh, there are other passengers," I said.

    Almost without thinking, I bent down and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly and said, "You gave an old woman a little moment of happiness."

    One day a woman wrote to a doctor to invite him to have a dinner with her family in the restaurant. The doctor wrote and answered, but he wrote too badly and the woman couldn't read it. "What can I do?" she asked her husband, "I don't know whether he is going to come or not. I don't want to call and say that I don't know what he writes. "

    Her husband thought for a few minutes and he had an idea. "Take it to the chemist, "he said." He will read it for us. "

    "Thank you, "the woman said, "That's a good idea." She went to the chemist's shop and gave the doctor's note to him. The chemist looked at it for a long time.

    "Wait a moment, please." he said, then he went to the back of the shop. After a few minutes he came back, carrying a large bottle to the woman. "Take one spoonful（一匙）every day." he told the woman.