What a BEAUTIFUL day!!!

Hi Friends...Claire here. Absolutely gorgeous day here at the Academy! Today was my first full day here and it was spent doing some fun activities with the Academy students. I was leading an activity on "hunting for clouds" a much cooler way of saying "cloud identifying". I always find so much joy teaching the students here! Each group had fun trying to figure out which clouds were cirrocumulus or altostratus but what really struck me wasn't there impressive cloud identifying skills but more the willingness of each of one them to help each other and be involved with the activity. Getting a group of teenagers who have just spent the last 5 hours in classes to get excited about MORE learning AFTER school is a daunting task...to say the least...but they were all engaged and excited to know that they were identifying them correctly. This is my 4th trip to South Africa and my 2nd this year (I was here back in January) and to see how united the students are, more so than I have seen in previous trips has been a great thing to witness. I'm definitely looking forward to see more of how these students have been transformed over the past 6 months as well as how things are going in Sweet Home. We are heading in tomorrow to lead short "camp" for the OVC kids as they are off from school tomorrow for the federal Women's Day holiday. Prayer for safety as we head into the townships and  for healing, we are all succumbing to the much cooler temperatures here with cases of the sniffles and sore throats.

Instructions on cloud hunting from Claire.

Evening worship before devotions led by Emily.

After samp & beans at lunch...Nwabisa, Keira, Emilie, Sive (the boy ...as he writes), & Zintle.

Finishing up a craft in the sunshine.