General News

The only thing better than making an EA in a year is making a second! We were lucky enough to welcome our second Entered Apprentice of 2025, Brother Steven, into our Order last night. We had an amazing degree with wonderful performances by Brother Kyle, as well as Worshipful Bros Chris and Walter and everyone else. We were also lucky enough to be visited by three Brothers from Beaverton Lodge, Brothers Tom, Jerry, and Brian. Afterwards we enjoyed some Pizza upstairs, while our Clubhouse is under construction. A wonderful evening with a wonderful group of Brothers.

Another delayed post from a very busy month for Friendship! Since our usual meeting place is under construction, we decided to enjoy an outing last week by going bowling at Big Al’s. We invited everyone’s families and had a wonderful time. The kids had a lane to themselves, and the adults enjoyed trying to bowl and eat a massive plate of wings at the same time. Thanks to everyone who came out to enjoy some Fellowship!

Sorry for the delay! Things have been very busy this month at Friendship, with our Clubhouse remodel well underway now.

Before our business meeting, we enjoyed some delicious Chicken and Waffles from Screendoor, thanks to our Junior Warden. This month at Stated we had a busy meeting with votes on Charity, administration, and most importantly, our newest Candidate Steven!

Forgot to celebrate this last week, but Brother Carlos has proved up and passed his proficiency as a Fellowcraft! As is a Friendship #160 tradition, he will still have to give a short talk in Lodge about an educational or philosophical topic, which will likely happen at our March Stated meeting. After that, however, we will be looking to schedule our first (and hopefully not last) Master Mason Degree of 2025! Congratulations Brother Carlos.

Another fantastic month for Friendship. The evening started with a lovely dinner from Pastini provided by our wonderful Junior Warden Kyle. We moved into the Lodge room where we had a short but action packed meeting with a few important votes related to our new year, and the budget for our on-going project to update our Clubhouse space.

It’s been a while since we were blessed to have the Temple and the Clubhouse this packed, because had a delightful number of guests! Almost the entire Officer’s line of Beaverton Masonic Lodge joined us to thank us for a donation we gave them related to some vandalism they encountered the previous month, and we had Brother Chris from the Scottish Rite come to thank us for a donation we made to them related to a Kitchen remodel they are doing.

Last night we had the pleasure of initiating our first new member of 2025! We were all very excited to welcome Matias to our Order, as he was to join. It was a great evening with some wonderful Degree work by Past Master’s Chris and Walter, as well as Brother Kyle’s first time being Senior Deacon for a degree. Afterwards, we enjoyed Pizza as is tradition, and some lively Masonic discussion in our Clubhouse downstairs. We were also blessed to welcome two guests from Gateway Lodge who traveled from Astoria to watch our degree.

Happy January everybody! We have had our first business meeting of the year, and already we’re off to a great start. We started with a delicious dinner from Pollo Bravo, provided by our Junior Warden. For business, the Lodge scheduled Matias’s EA Degree for later this month, and voted to accept the Petition of our long-term prospect Steven. The Worshipful Master ended the meeting by reading Five Masonic Thoughts by Brother William A. Carpenter, a Short Talk Bulletin. We retired to our Clubhouse downstairs, where we had a lively conversation about what makes someone virtuous. All in all, a wonderful kick-off to the year!

We enjoyed our traditional year-end dinner at Fogo de Chao tonight to great effect! As always the food was tremendous and we had a wonderful time sharing Fellowship with each other. Sadly, our Worshipful Master and a few others couldn’t join us do to the flu, and they were missed. Here’s to a wonderful 2024, and hopefully next year will be just as great!

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!