Kevin Miller-Conley

It seems like 2024 only just started, and here we are having our last Stated meeting. It was a great end to the year with us discussing how to spend our remaining Charity budget, we positively balloted on soon-to-be-Brother Matias’s candidacy, and we discussed moving the January Stated to the 8th, since the 1st is a holiday. It was a great night, followed by some great fellowship!

Last night we had a very busy meeting between the presentation of two lifetime memberships, a visit from our District Deputy, holding elections, and as well we voted for our Budget for the year 2025.  The budget passed after some brief discussion, as well as a motion detailing how we’ll be spending some money fixing up our Clubhouse space in the Kenton Masonic Temple.

As well, Friendship has elected the following Brothers to leadership for the year 2025:
WM: Kevin Miller-Conley
SW: Hunter Bronson
JW: Kyle Diesner
Secretary: Jim Loennig
Treasurer: Patrick Reilly
Investment Committee: Walter Lee
Investment Committee (Kevin’s remaining 1 year term): Hunter Bronson

Another wonderful night of Degree work at Friendship. We’re now out of EAs, after Matt passed to the degree of Fellowcraft. There was a little scramble for which chairs to sit in, but Kevin opened the Lodge again with everyone shifted up a chair, and then Walter conferred with Chris giving his amazing lecture. We were graced with the presence of three Brothers from Beaverton as well! We ended the night in the Clubhouse, enjoying Pizza and fellowship, as is tradition.

Given that October is a wonderful 5 Wednesday month, we had a second round of Fellowship in a row! Hunter’s new candy machine made its debut, and Walter brought his boys by to sell us some pies for their field trip. When looking for a board game, we came across our ancient Ouija board, perfect for the Halloween Season!

This week we had almost as many prospects as members! We once again found utility in our lovely hot dog roller which provided us with some delicious sausages for dinner. After some light fare, we enjoyed a lovely game of Unstable Unicorns, brought by Matias.

This month, our Worshipful Master is in Greece! So Brother Senior Warden Kevin took the east in his stead. We had a short business meeting, ending with some light education, and a lovely poetry reading from Worshipful Brother Walter.

We held our Officer’s Meeting last night to get ready for the October Stated meeting. We decided upon a date for Matt’s FC, and talked more about our plans for the Clubhouse space for next year. For a few people, it was their first time seeing the front room after we moved the space around and displayed the lovely and restored Eagle embroidery, and the Demolay Banner we found in the back closet.

This weekend, a few of us headed out to Lone Fir Cemetery for their last grave cleaning of the season. We chose a few different Masonic graves to clean up, and found the task much more enjoyable than we even expected. At the end of the day, we visited the grave of one of our Past Master’s, Chester Wheeler, who was Master of the Lodge back in the 1930s.

This year we went to the Mountains and had our first retreat over 4000′. We stayed in an AirBnb in Government Camp from three nights enjoying fellowship, some outings, and some time set aside to discuss the future of the Lodge, especially next year. Hunter and Matt kept everyone very well fed with a spread for breakfast and lunch. We went out for BBQ one night, and even enjoyed a dinner at Timberline Lodge in the Cascade room! We had an outing to My Hood where Kevin led everyone on a hike that ended up being a little longer than expected, but the views were fantastic. We came up with a large action plan for next year, and some ideas for what to do about our current Membership crunch.