Thank you for your prayers. The death toll in the serial bomb attacks in Sri Lanka is at 253 as of April 25th. By the grace of God, all disciples in our fellowship and their families are safe. The city is functioning quite normally during the day time, but at night, movement of people and vehicles is restricted. The Sri Lankan government has declared holidays for schools and colleges till Sunday.

Many suspects were arrested. Based ontheir confession, some more bombs that were attached to vehicles ready to bedeployed for detonation were found by security forces. In some cases they used controlled explosions to save people. One of the two wheelers found abandoned was around 200 meters from the Colombo church leader’s residence. Police used a controlled explosion to eliminate the threat.

One apartment that was used by terrorists to stay and store explosives is on the same street where church administrator stays with his family. Police raided that flat and found a lot of unassembled explosives.

Church leadership has decided to conduct the scheduled conference and mission team send-off in another retreat centre near the city in the weekend, since the police had advised the earlier venue to not host any events.

The church wanted to reach out to victims of attack who are hospitalized but authorities are not permitting anyone other than relatives to visit them. Similarly, no strangers are allowed to visit those families who lost their loved ones. So we are praying and waiting for the opportunity to reach out to them when these rules are relaxed.

Please continueto pray for the following:

  1. To conduct theconference this weekend safely and have the whole church to be inspiredthrough the conference.
  2. The missionteam to Kandy to have great success by God giving courage to preach the Wordboldly and for God to open the hearts of people there.
  3. The disciplesin Colombo to be fearless in sharing their faith.
  4. The nation tohave peace and harmony.

Join the Global Prayer Chain to pray for these needs and others throughout our fellowship.