Hey Sean, 

Thanks for all of the help. You answer was very thorough and informative. I tried 
running those four steps that you have listed but   when I tried to run the newly 
updated jar file, it simply tells me that "A Java Exception has occurred." 

This does not happen with the jar file that exists initially in the mason folder, so I 
was wondering if there was something missing in the fourth step you listed. Do I 
need to include the external libraries you mentioned that were not added in order 
to get around this exception? Is it a potential problem with using Mason version 
16? I can't quite figure out what is wrong.

Thank you again,
Steve