By Angel | Subscribe: | Record your story @ or our iPhone app for a chance to get animated. Comment, like, share this story. Angel was born in Sri Lanka, but has lived in Malawi since she was four years old. Still, she loves Sri Lanka, which she thinks of as her country, with all her heart, the land and culture, and all of her relatives who live there - it was her favorite country to visit and she and her family went often. Even though she is far away, she tries to embrace her culture as much as she can. She is, after all, Sri Lankan.
On Easter Sunday she woke up to find her dad watching al jazeera, and bbc news, looking really troubled and upset, anxious and worried. Still sleepy, she asked what was wrong, and he told her - Angel, your aunt was in one of the churches where the terrorism, the bombings and explosions happened.
She had no idea what was going on, and he explained how terrorists had bombed several churches in Sri Lanka during Easter Sunday services. Sri Lanka explosions, in a Sri Lankan church?
She couldn't believe it, was so shocked and surprised. To her Sri Lanka was always one of the most peaceful places she could imagine and she never would have expected such terrible violent things to go on there. She had never been scared of terrorism in her country before, but now.... She had believed it was a place filled only with love, and with no place for hate - but she was wrong.
Still shocked, she went online, searching social media and al jazeera for any news she could find. At first the news said that 20 people had died and that there were several injured. It had her so anxious and worried, and upset, because one of the churches was right by where all of her relatives lived, was the church that she and her family would go to when they visited. It was the saddest day, Sri Lanka's saddest day, and it just seemed to get worse and worse.
Angel was worried about her relatives, and she was worried for everyone who lived in Sri Lanka, and the number of people who died or were injured kept on rising on the news. In the morning it was 52, and then just hours later it was 290. She so wished she could do more than just sit and watch the news, and post about it on social media to try to raise awareness.
She was haunted by the faces of the people who had just lost a loved one, and images of the churches in ruins. And, when she feels a little bit happier, she immediately then feels sad and guilty, because of how the people in Sri Lanka are suffering still.
If she was able to she would fly there, donate blood, and if she could she would donate money for medical expenses and counselling, but she's only 14 and she can't do all of that. So she prays that things will get better, though it seems sometimes like that's impossible. She hopes that everyone else prays too, and that everyone stays safe!
I seemed to Angel, right away, that nobody around her - other than her family - seemed to care too much because it didn't effect them directly. It was the saddest day, for her, and for Sri Lanka, and it saddened her even more to watch the children from around the world celebrating Easter Sunday, and all she could see in her head were the terrible images from those attacks.
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