PORT ANGELES — Jeanne Edwards found a purpose for her pain.
Inspired by a Kenyan priest, Edwards created a series of paintings to honor an 18-year-old stranger who gave her husband, Mike Edwards, a second chance on life.
Mike Edwards, 65, of Port Angeles received a heart transplant on July 1, 2016, at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix. The donor was a young man named Justin who had planned to enlist in the Army before he died.
To honor Justin and his family, Jeanne Edwards painted the Stations of the Cross, 14 images that commemorate the suffering of Jesus.
The paintings are now displayed in a church in Maralal, Kenya, a small town about nine hours north of Nairobi by dirt road.
“They put those up and I guess it was a big hit,” Mike Edwards said.
“They don’t really have much of an altar or anything there. It’s really rural.”
While she was caring for her bedridden husband in Arizona, Jeanne Edwards had been attending early-morning Mass on Sundays in the desert.
The sunrise services were led by “Father Chris,” a Kenyan priest with a wide smile and warm personality, she said.
“I loved listening to his homilies,” Jeanne Edwards said.
“The one thing that he said that stuck in my mind was: ‘There’s a purpose in all the pain and you should do something good that should come out of it.'”
Something positive
When Father Chris announced that he was returning to Kenya, Jeanne Edwards vowed to do something positive and exchanged emails with her priest.
“I started the first two paintings, sent photos of them, and he liked them,” Jeanne Edwards said.
“He liked my style. I just kept going.”
The couple were invited to name the new church in Maralal where the paintings are displayed. They picked St. Teresa of Calcutta — Mother Teresa — for her work with the poor.
Mike Edwards has not yet been medically cleared to visit Kenya because of concerns about his immune system’s response to the live yellow fever vaccine.
“When we’re able, we’ll be visiting,” Jeanne Edwards said.
Jeanne Edwards, who described herself as an impressionistic painter, got the idea to paint the stations of the cross from a basilica she and her husband had visited in Budapest, Hungary.
