Marlene Jonker has been the Financial Manager at Abraham Kriel Children’s Home Nylstroom for the past ten years. Her core mandate is to manage the budget and ensure that provision is made every day for every need of the 170 children in our care. Over time, however, the role has become far more than figures and statements – it has become a calling she lives out each day.

She describes her career as one shaped by different seasons and challenges, but with one constant: the conviction that God is in control. The pressure was at its highest during the COVID period, when uncertainty touched every level of the children’s home’s operations. “There were moments,” she says, “when we honestly did not know how we would pay for everything, or how we would continue to provide sustainably for the children’s needs.”

According to Jonker, help often arrived at precisely the moment it was most needed. People came with unexpected donations, open hearts and remarkable generosity – like “angels”, in her words. The pattern was clear: whenever faith was tested, provision followed – God did not fail.

Jonker is candid about her greatest wish: that there would never be a need for children’s homes; that no child would ever have to be removed from a family environment; and that every child could grow up in safety and love within his or her own family. “But,” she adds, “that is not the reality.”

That is why she is grateful that Abraham Kriel Children’s Home Nylstroom can be a place of refuge where children are protected and can find new hope. To be part of a safe haven where staff care for children, support them and guide them towards a better future remains, for her, a privilege and a blessing she does not take for granted.

Thank you for investing in our children’s future. Your continued support not only changes lives, but helps us write new stories of hope each month.