Earl and Linda mason were both born and raised near Baltimore. Earl lives just inside the city two blocks from a farm, and four blocks from a business district. After graduating from Baltimore City College's college preparatory program in 1966, Earl attended Harford Community College. This provided a bit of a culture shock, after attending a Baltimore City High School. For example, the woman students still left their purses out in the hall all day, rather than carrying them around to classes. Here Earl became president of the college Chess Club and later president of the Karate Club.

Following this, he spent two years in the army where after attending carious schools, spent 13 months in Germany. Coming home in 1970, he finished his college education at Towson State University where he majored in Sociology. From there he went to Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington D.C. where he received his Master's of Divinity Degree.

After Linda finished Kenwood High School, she also entered Towson State University where she majored in Mathematics. This is where the couple met at Bible Study.

Earl and Linda worked in Earl's home church for a while, Assistant Pastor at Good Shepherd United Methodist Church. Then they went to Curtis Bay where he was a student pastor. While at Curtis Bay, they were blessed with their first daughter, Cheryl Lynn, who is now 31 years old. While at Curtis Bay, Earl was on the Board of Directors of Damascus House, a halfway house for recovering alcoholics. Under the very capable leadership of Rev. Paul Conley who passed away on July 13, 1993, Damascus House had the highest success rate in the state of Maryland.

While at the Monkton-Clynmalira Charge, Earl served on the Board of Directors for the local chapter of the American Cancer Society.

Earl had an opportunity to serve as a pastoral ministry in West Virginia at the Daresville-Payne's Chapel Charge.

Their youngest daughter was born while they were at Kingsley United Methodist Church in Cumberland. Her name is Alicia Marie and she is seventeen years old. They also have two other girls- Debbie, who got married on Jun 14, 1992 to a very fin man named Rick: and Dawn who married Todd on October 24, 1992. Debbie was with them for 6 years and Dawn was with them for about 3 years.

Besides expanding their family considerably while in Cumberland, Earl joined with Rev. Huffaker in restarting the Crop Walk for the Hungry. Earl became the Director of the School of Christian Living, and served in this position for many years until he left Cumberland. Others areas that Earl was involved in while serving in Cumberland were, member of the Board of Directors for the Interfaith Consortium, chairperson of the Board as well a member of the Personnel Policy Writing Committee. He also served as City Police Chaplin for 5 years, chairperson of the Sub District Council on Ministries, Sub District Communications Coordinator and Sub District Youth Coordinator for the 52 United Methodist Churches in that Sub District. Earl and Linda also served on various community service organizations as well. At this time, Linda was district representative to the Baltimore-Washington Conference Boar of Church and Society, and then became secretary to this group. She also was a district representative to the Baltimore Annual Conference for several years.

While at St. Luks's United Methodist Church, Earl had the opportunity to work with Habitat for Humanity's' Finance Committee, and also worked with a subcommittee that recruited community churches for their participation in this work.

His next appointment was the Brookfield-Immanuel Charge; both churches did well with increased attendance and community outreach. He also helped establish the first community Lenten Services on Good Friday, involving an ecumenical effort. Earl worked in establishing and was the president of the three committee food pantries in his area, serving approximately 100-150 families per week. He worked with two area school principals to establish the program "Homework Help" in the two local elementary schools, he was on the area School Advisory Board, he established an annual walk for the hungry, and was the past president of Community Support Systems. He also was a district representative with the Baltimore-Washington Conference Commission on Religion and Race.

Prior to the present appointment at Grace Church we served 10 years at St. Johns United Methodist church. During that time we were able to try lots of things: two huge Sonfest; a coffee house that was open for about a year, various studies, and Earl became one of three ambassadors for Faith Quest in the Baltimore Washington Conference. Earl also worked on the Baltimore-Washington Conference Committee on Africa, putting together several tractor trailers of supplies sent to war torn West Africa reportedly saving many lives.