When a Good and Faithful Servant Goes Home

I'm sitting with photographs this evening — two images of the same man, separated by decades, yet carrying the same thing in both: those eyes. Still, steady, and blue as a summer sky. Eyes that always seemed to see more than they let on.

At 1h30 this morning, on 26 July, a man who was steady, spiritually safe, and deeply faithful has gone home. Eighty years and two months of faithfulness, ended.

I'm writing this not because it's easy. I'm writing it because some people pour so much into us that silence would be a kind of ingratitude. Because Oom Leon deserves to be remembered rightly. Because the Healing 💔heARTs💖 family needs to know who shaped the woman who founded this ministry — and what his faithfulness cost him, and what it gave me.

The Year That Changed Everything

I was broken in 1999.

I don't say that lightly. I don't say it to be dramatic. I say it because it's the only word large enough for what despair had done to me by then. Depression wasn't a season — it was a way of life. Hope felt like something other people got to keep. The future looked like more of the same grey, heavy, airless existence I'd been surviving.

Then Oom Leon and Tannie Jacobi opened a door.
I don't know what they saw when they looked at me. I certainly couldn't see it myself. But they invited me into their home at Deo Gloria, and something shifted the moment I crossed that threshold. It wasn't instant healing — it was something quieter and more profound than that. It was safety. It was the felt sense of being wanted. It was a man and a woman who looked at a broken young woman and didn't flinch, didn't pity, didn't try to fix me. They simply stayed.
Inside that home, joy began to return. Hope began to return. Faith began to return.

It was there that I gave my life to Jesus. It was there that Oom Leon baptised me with his own hands — I can still feel the weight of that moment, the cold water, his steady presence anchoring me as I went under and came up new.

It was there that I experienced one of my first true deliverances from the heavy darkness that had been my constant companion.

These aren't small things. These are the pillars upon which everything I am today has been built. Oom Leon didn't just offer me a home. He offered me a second chance at life.

What He Showed Me About Fatherhood

Looking back now, with the clarity that only years and healing can bring, I realise how profoundly Oom Leon shaped my understanding of what it means to be a father in the absence of my own. Not because he was perfect — he was human, flawed, as all of us are. But because he was present. Consistently, faithfully, unhurriedly present.

He didn't parent through perfection or performance. He fathered through prayer. Through wisdom. Through a kindness that expected absolutely nothing in return. Through the simple, revolutionary act of staying when leaving would have been easier.

There were seasons later in life when despair whispered loudly again. Seasons where I honestly wondered if anyone would notice if I simply disappeared. Yet somewhere beneath the ache, something kept whispering: Don't give up until you find God as Father.

That wasn't just my own thought. That was the seed Oom Leon had planted.

Even decades later, across continents and countries, hearing his voice carried the same warmth of safety and spiritual covering. One message he sent me not long ago still rests deeply within me. He called me "Patrizia, beloved royal daughter."

I wept when I read those words. Because in that single phrase, he reached into a place that still, even now, sometimes questions whether it belongs — and answered it with grace.

Watching Him Slip Away

Two months ago, on his 80th birthday, the man who had wrapped fatherly love around me was nearing the end of his earthly journey. He was in palliative care. The decline was gentle but unmistakable. Each phone call was precious. Each message was held like something sacred.

I thought those two months would be enough time to prepare. To say what needed saying. To make peace with what was coming.

But grief doesn't work that way, does it?🤔

The anticipatory sorrow of watching someone you love move toward the threshold is its own kind of heartbreak. It's not the shock of sudden loss — it's the slow ache of knowing, day by day, that the time is running out. It's holding onto someone even as you feel them slipping away.

He passed on 26 July, exactly two months after turning 80.

A Legacy That Ripples Forward

The grief is still raw. The absence is still sharp. I keep reaching for the phone to call him, forgetting for a moment that I can't.

But alongside the grief, there's something else. There's the profound gratitude of knowing that a man who lived so faithfully, who planted seeds he may never have fully known he was sowing, has borne more fruit than he could have imagined.

Because Oom Leon didn't just wrap fatherly love around me. His influence didn't stop when I left that home in South Africa. It travelled with me across decades, across countries, across healing journeys and ministry callings I couldn't have foreseen as a broken young woman sitting in his living room.

Every person I've ever encouraged has been touched by the way he taught me to see worth where others overlooked it. Every story I've written carries the fingerprints of a man who showed me that presence matters more than performance. Every gathering we hold through Healing 💔heARTs💖, every broken heart we remind that they are still deeply loved by God, carries echoes of the home he and Tannie Jacobi opened all those years ago. His love became part of my story, and through that story, it continues to touch countless others he will never meet this side of eternity.

What I Want You to Know

If you knew Oom Leon, you're grieving this morning too. You're holding memories of his steady presence, his prayers, his willingness to see Christ in people when they couldn't yet see it in themselves. That grief is real, and it's valid, and you're not alone in it.

If you didn't know him, let his life speak to you. Let it show you what it means to be a father to the fatherless. Let it challenge you to ask: Who needs me to open a door? Who needs to know they're safe? Who needs to see the Father heart of God reflected in someone they can actually touch?🤔

This is the invitation his faithfulness leaves behind.

For Oom Leon

Go well, dear Oom Leon. Heaven is gaining one of its finest.

Thank you for seeing worth where I couldn't see it myself. Thank you for creating safety where fear had made its home. Thank you for modelling the Father heart of God — not from a pulpit, but through presence. Through consistency. Through a love that expected absolutely nothing in return.

Thank you for the seed you planted that whispered, even in the darkest seasons: Don't give up until you find God as Father.

That seed is still growing. It will grow for generations.
The fingerprints you left on my soul are permanent. They're woven into my story, my ministry, my healing, my calling. They're reflected in every broken heart I now encourage to believe they're still deeply loved.

Your race is finished, Oom Leon. You ran it well. The seeds you sowed are still growing, and the Lord — your Father — is deeply, deeply pleased.

> 📖 Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord. — Matthew 25:23 (NKJV)