If April Showers bring May Flowers, what do March Showers bring----Easter? A week late? Join us for an Easter Funfest to be celebrated the week after Easter, Sunday April 23, right after church. Details will be coming soon, but save the date for some fun!

Youth Group (grades 6-12) will continue to meet once a month, and for March we will gather on Sunday March 19 from 5 to 8pm! Join us as we continue to gather for fellowship, fun, food, and spiritual growth! This month our theme will be Temptation, which will teach kids how to navigate and overcome the daily temptations - greed, pride, envy, and lust - that we all face. Hope to see you there!

The Youth Group would appreciate if a member of the congregation would be willing to provide dinner that evening. Would you be available to bring a meal for 12 at approximately 6pm?  We would be forever grateful!

Email [email protected] if you would be willing to help out.

The Youth Sunday School class enjoyed participating in the church wide curriculum on Half Truths last month, but we are excited to move onto a study called "Habits". This is a six-week course that helps students grow in their independence in Christ while exploring their habits and spiritual disciplines. All youth in grades 6-12 are welcome!"

Mason United Methodist Women will meet Tuesday, March 14, at 6:30 p.m. in the Conference Room.  All women are invited and encouraged to attend.

     

Please come and be involved in our projects to reinstate Adult Ministry Luncheons, support the Tacoma Community House, planning for our Fall Bazaar and the Girls Days project to help young women in African nations.  Your participation will be welcomed and appreciated.

Muriel M. Masel

Muriel M. Masel was born on Oct. 3, 1916 and passed away on Feb. 10, 2017.

 

Her parents were Edmund and Mary Elizabeth Farrelly. Muriel grew up on the family farm in the Palouse country near Latah, Wa. She attended WSU and EWU. Muriel taught school for 31 years, teaching in Kelso, Seattle, and Tacoma. During her teaching career and in retirement she was active in educational and professional organizations also did graduate work at the U of W and at UPS.

 

Muriel married John Masel in Seattle in June of 1945. They were married 57 years. They both retired from teaching and spent many happy retirement years together at Tahoma Terrace in Tacoma. Muriel has resided at Brookdale for the last 3 years. She had been a member of Mason United Methodist Church. Muriel is survived by her niece, Janet Smith of Omak; her nephew, Tom (Jane) Watson of East Wenatchee, great-nieces: Julie (Kurt) Hensley; Sherri (Michael) Wright; Lisa (Norman) Bontje; great-nephew: Dale (Renee) Smith. She was preceded in death by her husband, John; her parents; sisters: Dorothy Shields and Mabel Watson; brother: Thomas Farrelly.

 

At her request, a service will be held in Spokane at a later date. Arrangements by Tuell-McKee Funeral Home.

Published in News Tribune (Tacoma) on Feb. 19, 2017

By Rosemary Ponnekanti

Fred Oldfield, Western painter, cowboy and Puyallup icon, has died just three weeks before his 99th birthday.

 

The landscape and mural artist who founded the Western art center bearing his name at the Washington State Fair Events Center died Friday in hospice care.

 

Oldfield's daughter Joella, director of the Fred Oldfield Western Heritage and Art Center in Puyallup, said the artist's 99th birthday fundraiser would go ahead as planned March 17 and a memorial would follow in late spring.

"Nothing was more important to him than a place for the kids to learn about art and the Old West," said Joella Oldfield on Facebook. "There are no words, just no words, to express the loss of the most amazing daddy, grandfather, husband, friend, artist and Gramps to hundreds of children.'

 

"I am filled with gratitude for the blessing of so many years, days, hours and moments filled with extraordinary memories. ... he touched so many lives."

 

"Fred Oldfield was a Tacoma institution and an artist to the core," said Faith Brower, Haub curator of Western American art at Tacoma Art Museum. The museum in 2015 exhibited one of Oldfield's works in the Haub wing.

 

"He taught thousands of people to love and appreciate art, both through his own paintings and his classes and demonstrations at the Fred Oldfield Center," Brower said. "Tacoma's art community has lost a unique and wonderful character."

Born March 18, 1918, in Toppenish on the Yakima Indian Reservation, Oldfield grew up in a cowhand family, traveling the West in a horse-drawn wagon. At 17 he discovered his artistic talent when he painted a thistle on a bunkhouse wall, complete with faux frame and nail, and began a side career selling paintings of horses, cowboys and Western landscapes, often done on discarded wood or linoleum.

After serving in the Army in World War II, Oldfield attended art school and began painting full time at age 40. In addition to traditional canvas paintings, Oldfield also painted murals, many of them in Toppenish, including one more than 100 feet long portraying Haller's Defeat, a local battle won by Native Americans. Oldfield kept riding for most of his life.

 

In 2002, Oldfield founded the Western Heritage and Art Center near the Red Gate at the fairgrounds, teaching year-round art classes and painting in Western gear and cowboy hat. Many of his light-filled works were also displayed there. For more than 20 years the artist spent several months ahead of the state fair painting works that would be auctioned off, typically around $4,000-$5,000, to fund college scholarships for local students.

 

"I love it during the fair," he told The News Tribune for a 2015 story. "It's my vacation."

 

Over his life, Oldfield has been the subject of six books, at least one cowboy song and the public television series "Painting the West with Fred Oldfield" (2007).

Oldfield is survived by three children, six grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren, although he touched many more lives by his teaching and love of art.

"Fred Oldfield holds a special place in my heart as he has always encouraged me to continue painting," Northwest artist Kris Ellen Jenott posted on Facebook. "His words of encouragement meant an awful lot to me. He truly is a wonderful individual with a big heart and a God given gift of tremendous artistic talent."

March 4th at 11:00 AM and 3:00 PM

Lakewood Playhouse