Friendship Masonic Lodge

Friendship held our last Stated business meeting of the year last night. We started the night with a delicious meal of Thai food provided by our Brother Junior Warden Kyle as his final dinner for the year before moving onto our business. Much to the Brothers approval, it was the shortest business meeting of 2025 as we look towards transferring into the next Masonic year. We had a somber note during the night when the Brothers held a moment of silence for the passing for Brother Bill Korte, whose funeral we are in the process of planning. For education, we listened to a poem by Montford C. Holley called, "The Work".

Friendship met on a rather rainy Wednesday this month for our November Stated Meeting. We enjoyed a delicious dinner of comfort food from Screen Door which fit very well with the weather. After dinner we retired to the Lodge for one of the longest, but one of the most productive business meetings of the year. We balloted on two candidates to receive the degrees of Masonry, and both ballots came back positive! So we'll be initiating two Brothers, Rob and Jonathan, in the next two months.

We paused in our many votes to confirm Matt's proficiency in the Master Mason degree, before officially appointing him Senior Steward in recognition of the role he's been pro-teming for months now. We were all so excited, noone noticed he wore two aprons for the rest of the meeting! The voting continued with the elections of our 2026 Officers, which all occurred harmoniously. Another wonderful meeting for Friendship!

Friendship continues to have an amazing year of initiations as we welcomed Sandy, our fourth EA of 2025 this week. We welcomed guests from Beaverton Masonic and Multnomah Lodges as we exemplified our ritual and brought our newest Brother into the Fraternity. Afterwards we retired to our Clubhouse and enjoyed Pizza and words of wisdom for our newest Brother.

Just because we're dark for the summer, that doesn't mean the work has finished! Last week we had a privilege of putting on a courtesy Master Mason degree for The Dalles Masonic Lodge, Wasco #15. We had a wonderful evening enjoying the degree and fellowship with Brothers from at least 7 different Lodges from around the Metro area and the Gorge. A huge credit to Dale Palileo without whom the degree couldn't have happened.

We had a lovely time this weekend at Liberty and Hamburgers, our yearly Fourth of July celebration. There were delicious hamburgers, and brats from Gartners and everybody ate their fill! It was a very hot day, but luckily we kept cool and enjoyed some fellowship late into the night. The brethren also surprised our Worshipful Master with a hand made Mjolnir style gavel, which is fast becoming a yearly tradition at our BBQ!