The Best Holiday

I was unbelievably proud of my nine-year-old daughter, Emily. _____ to buy a mountain bike, she’d been saving her pocket money all year, as well as doing small jobs to _____ extra money.

By Thanksgiving, she had collected only $ 49. I said, “You can pick one from my bicycle____.” “Thanks, Daddy. But your bikes are so ______ .” She was right. All my bikes for girls were 1950s models, not the kind a kid today would ____ choose.

As Christmas____ near, Emily and I went bike shopping. As we left one store, she ____a Salvation Army volunteer standing next to a big pot. “Can we give something, Daddy?” she asked. “Sorry, Em, I’m out of _____ .”

Throughout December, Emily ______ to work hard. Then one day, she made a surprising   ________. “You know all the money I’ve been saving?” she said, a little hesitantly. “I’m going to give it all to the poor people.” So one cold morning before Christmas, Emily handed her total savings of $69 to a volunteer who was really very thankful.

____by Emily’s selflessness, I decided to   ______ one my old bicycles to a car dealer who was collecting used bikes for poor children. ____ I selected a shiny model from my collection, however, it seemed as if a ______ bike took on a glow(发光). Should I contribute two? No! One would be enough! But I still couldn’t ____the feeling that I should give another bike. When I later_____the bikes, the car dealer said, “You’re making two kids very happy, sir. Here are your tickets. ____ each bicycle we receive from the kind people, we’re giving away one chance to ____ a girls’ mountain bike.”

Why wasn’t I surprised when that second ticket proved to be the winner? I like to think it was a way of ____ a little girl for a sacrifice beyond her years－ while giving her dad a lesson in the ______.

Many of us dream of making all the difference—earning a lot of money. A great scientist has achieved that big success and _______ all the money to help others. Professor Nicola Curtin of the University of Newcastle successfully _______ a new drug for cancer, but when the time came for her big _______, she chose to give some of the profits away to help the _______ people to make their life better.

The drug Rubraca is the _______ of 30 years of research and helps people who have a gene known to lead to an increasing _______of breast cancer. Rubraca helps target the cancerous cells so as to repair their DNA and finally _______ tumour cells (肿瘤细胞).The University of Newcastle _______ rights of the medication (药物)for $40. 8 million to a company, which is a pretty penny. Instead of _______herself, Curtin used her $1.2 million share to ________ The Curtin PARP Fund.

The fund ________ to help the disabled, the homeless, and anyone experiencing a disadvantage. It helps them to develop the skills to ________ difficulties so that they can get education or employment. "Those people’s ________ makes me think about life. I have ________ had everything that I need in life _________ there are many people who are leading a hard life. ________, through The Curtin PARP Fund, I want to leave a（n）________ legacy (遗产)by helping them master the basic skills for life. And I feel ________ of what I have done. ” said Curtin.

What Curtin has done tells that we can help others in many ________ by using our talent to help, and by ________ and offering much assistance, etc.

Recently, David Deutchman, an 82-year-old man, was nicknamed “the ICU Grandpa” at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Hospital. For 12 years or so, he has been _________ babies, children there.

Deutchman said he was coming to the _________ for a recovery after a running injury 12 years ago when he first _________ some of the patients’ mothers. From conversations with them, he _________ that he wanted to make more connection with parents and children being_______ at the hospital. Therefore, he started _________ at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Hospital after he retired from a job in international business marketing.

He _________ babies and sometimes he even gets peed (小便) on, but he is _________ to carry on. “It’s been wonderful because it gives me something to do that has _________ to it. Every day I drive in here, I don’t know which kids and parents I’ll __________ and what the issues will be and how I can help, but I __________ it. You just can’t imagine the kind of________ that I can get from holding a baby and talking with parents”, he said.

In the ICU, there are only two to three new admits every night so the first thing he will do is to __________ the parents who have been admitted the previous night. “Usually they needed a________ after a whole night. And I make sure they can go down for breakfast and I’ll stay with the __________ until they get back,” he said.

MaryBeth Brulette, the mother of baby Logan, has been at the hospital for six weeks. On a recent morning, she returned to the hospital to find Logan in Deutchman’s __________. Seeing this, she said, “All my __________ was gone.”

Elizabeth Mittiga, an ICU nurse at the hospital, said that the staff __________ Deutchman’s calming presence and appreciated Mr. Deutchman’s __________ to his cause. He’s a great help to babies in the ICU care. He’s just a really special person to us, as nurses, and the babies just adore him.

“Right now, I’m still going strong and enjoying it an awful lot,” he said. “So as long as they’ll have me, I’ll be there.” What an outstanding human being! Truly, Mr. Deutchman is the typical example of a __________ man with a sincere desire to make his life worthwhile by helping others.