Prayer for Andrea

Andrea is a 6 years old girl who comes often to the Day Centre in Huzum. She is not going to school yet but she is frequently attending. When you first meet her you might think she is a shy and quiet girl but as you get to know her, you see a girl crying out for attention, love and looking for stability in her young life. Andrea lives with her grandmother, mother, father and an older brother in a small and broken house. The parents do not have a stable job, nearly every day they are drunk, they fight with each other and under the influence of alcohol they do many horrible things (Andrea has been beaten many times and we also heard that she had been tied to a tree with a chain because she didn’t listen to her drunken parents, etc). Andrea is suffering a lot. 

It is clear that at home she doesn’t get a lot of positive attention or any attention at all and she has to look after herself a lot of time. She leaves the house as often as she can and will walk around the village as she waits for the Day Centre (DC) to open. Andrea is crying out for attention and if she can’t get positive attention than negative attention will do too. So she will often start saying all kind of dirty words to other children (she hears these words from her parents when they fight at home). The children will get angry with her and say something back and then Andrea has a reason to beat the other children. So many times she ends up fighting with others and shouting at others.

At the DC Andrea likes to color. When she starts to color, she is very concentrated and forgets everything around her, she doesn’t pay attention to others anymore and she will focus on her paper. As she is looking for affirmation, she will ask the workers every 2 minutes if she is coloring well? and if they like her paper?, etc. Although it can be tiring sometimes to repeat over and over that you like the way she colors, for Andrea a compliments makes her day and it is great to see how she lifts up her head and for a moment she is proud of herself. We pray that she will have many more moments being proud of herself and being confident that she is able to do good things, leaving behind all the negative comments that she is worth nothing and nobody wants her….

Another thing Andrea likes a lot at the DC is the food. Most of the time she eat a lot of food, as at home she is never sure what she will get and what state she will find her parents in.

A change is gonna come up in Andrea’s life as her father beat her mother so badly, he was send to jail and now Andrea and her mother will move soon to another village. We pray that Andrea will not forget all that she heard at the Day Centre about our Heavenly Father and His love for her. He watches over her and may He keep her safe!