Updates on the drone strike and Ukrainian refugees. URGENT PRAYER UPDATE AT BOTTOM.

1. Zagreb WAS hit by an armed drone the other night.  (Initial reports did not mention a bomb, so I initially said the drone was not armed.)  
   1. The drone appears to have been Russian, not Ukrainian.  It was fired from somewhere in Ukraine, however.  
   2. It flew over the length of Hungary and crashed here when it ran out of fuel.  I think the bomb and the drone’s guidance system both failed.
   3. I doubt this was an intentional attack / provocation.  But in the confusion of the current mess in Ukraine, no one is certain.
   4. The drone crashed in a field near Jarun lake in southwestern Zagreb.  Damage was restricted to a few dozen cars. BUT IF ITS FLIGHT PATH HAD BEEN 100 YARDS TO THE LEFT OR RIGHT, it would have hit crowded apartment buildings and left dozens dead or injured (or worse). And if the bomb had functioned, …
2. The first group of refugees that OUR GROUP (Biblijski institut, Steve Taliaferro and Nešto Više, Kušlanova church) are housing started arriving this past weekend.  
   1. We are also helping Malešnica Baptist Church with transitional housing for refugees, but that help is limited for now to initial equipment.  
   2. Yesterday, two of this initial group were with us at Kušlanova church.

URGENT PRAYER NEED: We are waiting prayerfully (and anxiously, to be honest) for a group from near Kyiv to make it to the West and on to Zagreb. Our group has rented a house for this group. They are mostly children. Please join with us in praying that they can safely leave the place where they are hiding and make it to Zagreb. Please also pray for Steve’s Ukrainian friends and colleagues, who are organizing “refugee caravans”, bringing displaced people from central and eastern Ukraine–areas under Russian control–to the West.

I remember watching the fall of the Berlin Wall. If you had told me then that, thirty years later, I would be praying for innocent people to escape Russian aggression, I don’t think I would have believed you. “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” (“The more it changes, the more it stays the same.”) Or maybe Solomon: “There is nothing new under the sun.”