Nde served her mission in life with a bold, faithful spirit
Patricia Tebogo Dladla BORN: December 13 1947 DIED: February 19 2017 FUNERAL: Our Lady of Africa Catholic Church, Mohlakeng BURIAL: Mohlakeng Cemetery
PATRICIA Tebogo Dladla died during the early hours of Sunday morning. She was 69 years old.
Her passion for the Catholic faith and teaching was immeasurable and could not be matched by many.
Dladla, affectionately known as Nde, was loved by many, and she taught catechism classes at her parish, Our Lady of Africa Catholic Church in Mohlakeng, Randfontein.
For decades she served her parish in various capacities as a catechism teacher and simultaneously as a member of various sodalities and ministries such as the Sacred Heart Sodality, St Vincent De Paul Ministry and the Ministry of Pioneers.
Her unremitting quest to teach and promote the Catholic faith saw her spending most of her adult and productive years serving the church in different ways for seven days a week, voluntarily. This she did because of her love for her church. During all this time that she was highly active in the church, she attended regular Diocesan-arranged courses to broaden and deepen her understating of her faith. She would complement this by reading every journal about the church that she could lay her hands on. This led to some of us referring to her as an encyclopedia of the Catholic faith.
One morning, when she was gravely ill, the family could not convince her to be taken to hospital. Her priest, Father Nkosinathi Nkabinde, tried to convince her but she refused. She asked why everyone was trying to prolong her life through “artificial” means like hospitalisation.
She requested the priest to prepare her spiritually for her end as she felt she had accomplished her mission in life. Only someone with a well-entrenched faith could utter such words.
She was a very bold and strong figure who never consulted a doctor. On the family’s side, she was a mother figure to everyone. She raised and guided all of her siblings’ children. She always kept the home fires burning.
She is leaving a permanent void in our lives. She indeed came, saw and conquered. She was blessed with two children, one was stillborn and the second died as an infant.
May she rest in peace.