Marsha Lynn Olmsted passed away on December 14, 2025, at 10:25 pm at Ozarks Healthcare in West Plains. Marsha was born June 28, 1964 in West Plains to Rev. Larry Shipley and Beulah Moss Shipley. She graduated from West Plains High School in 1982. On April 26th, 1986, Marsha was married to Barry Olmsted at Needmore Church of God in Dora, MO. They had two daughters, Audriaunna Elizabeth and Shauni Analycia.
Marsha helped with the family business at Twin Bridges Canoe Rental before working several years at Invensys/Eaton Appliance Controls in West Plains. She attended First Baptist Church in West Plains and was raised and baptized as a Methodist. Growing up with two brothers, she traveled with her parents and brothers as a family singing and playing gospel music for several years in her childhood. Shy and quiet, Marsha sang beautifully and could play multiple instruments.
Marsha deeply loved her family, music, and gardening. Through her example, she passed on the values of gentleness and empathy for others, being quick to offer everyone she met a caring smile and warm thoughtfulness. Despite many long years of heavy suffering and sickness, Marsha remained a quick-witted and loving soul with a positive outlook and sharp sense of humor. She was dearly loved by and had an immediate friend in all who got to know her.
Marsha’s testimony in both life and death is the kindness of God shown to her by the sinless life, death, and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus, the Help of the helpless, became a man who lived sinlessly, died and rose again to forgive Marsha’s sins and pour His kindness on her for eternity. We believe Marsha also was raised to eternal life by the Holy Spirit and is right now enjoying the immeasurable riches of God’s grace and fullness of joy in His presence.
Marsha’s life, full of pain yet marked by her Lord’s care and the promise of coming eternal life, was a picture of Ephesians 2:1-10.
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience-among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-by grace you have been saved-and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
Marsha is survived by two daughters, Shauni Olmsted and Audri Coursen and husband Andrew Coursen, three grandsons, Josiah Tate, Michael Eli, and Isaac Lee, one aunt, two brothers, several cousins and nieces and nephews, and many lifelong friends. Preceding her in death are her parents, Larry and Beulah Shipley, and grandparents Ray and Dorothy Moss and Theodore and Mildred Shipley, and several aunts and uncles.
A private memorial will be held at the Coursen home in Willow Springs.
Arrangements by Robertson-Drago Funeral Home.
