Mission President: Each mission in the world has a mission president assigned who also serves with his wife as missionaries. They serve for three years, and many times have their families living with them. They are in charge of taking care of the temporal affairs of the missionaries in there mission, guide the missionaries in their spiritual well-being, and lead the missionary efforts all while keeping the mission organized and operating efficiently. They interview each missionary personally on a regular basis as well as require each missionary to write them a letter each week on a personal basis. Presidents and their wives counsel often with the 150-250 missionaries in their mission.
Companionships: Each missionary has an assigned companion to be with 24/7 with few exceptions to this rule. Need something at the store or want to do something? You don't do much of anything without your companion right there...bathrooms are the exception of course:) Being a missionary teaches you how to learn how to deal with a wide variety of people and personalities!
Senior Companion: The mission president assigns a companion in each companionship to be ultimately in charge of the companionship and has the responsibility to work together with the junior companion. Generally speaking the missionary with the most time in mission in a companionship is the senior companion, but this is not always the case.
Translados(Transfers): Each month, or sometimes sooner the mission president switches up missionary companionships. Usually one stays in the area while another goes to another area. A missionary can stay in an area anywhere from 1 - 6 months at a time, with more than that in any one area is very rare.
Greeny: Greenies are simply new missionaries. It's one thing to be a greeny in a mission where you speak the language, but to be a trainer of a greeny who is also learning a new language requires some good teaching skills and is a lot of work as the greeny can't do much teaching without a focused effort on the trainer's part to include her. Greenies tend to want to work really hard, but get very frustrated because the tongue can't keep up with the brain. Most of the time a greeny can understand what's going on, but can't quite contribute in terms of speaking so much. After a couple of months in the country though, greenies tend to turn to a normal color though:)
Trainer: Just what the word means...you are training a greeny. Not only are you a senior companion, but you have the pleasure of helping your new greeny companion to learn the language and learn what a typical missionary day/week should look like.
Trunky: This term refers to missionaries who are counting down the days in the mission and their minds are focused on going home rather than doing missionary work. It is hoped that a missionary can resist the urge to be trunky until the last couple of weeks, but sometimes as the date to go home from your mission nears, it's very hard not to get trunky!
P-Day: Short for Preparation Day. It's the one day a week that missionaries have to write letters, do laundry, do some sightseeing, and have a little time to do something other than missionary work. The magical day for missionaries does end at 6PM though when they are expected to continue their true love: teaching the gospel to others.
MTC: Missionary Training Center. There are 15 of them around the world, but 80% of the missionaries are trained in the Provo, Utah one where they stay 2 weeks for English Speaking missions and 6-9 weeks if they're learning a foreign language.
Hermana/Sister/Elder: All missionary titles. Hermana is the Spanish word for Sister. Each female missionary is known in the mission field by their title of Sister LAST NAME and each male missionary is known as Elder LAST NAME. Reinna often abbreviates so her name is Hna Quick for 18 months.
Getting Set Apart: Each missionary before leaving for their mission has their Stake President give them a priesthood blessing by placing his hands on their head and gives them the authority to, via a priesthood blessing, to preach the gospel as well as blesses them with other things he is inspired to bless them with such as health, inspiration, and other things he is inspired to bestow upon them.
Stake President: This is the priesthood leader who presides (in charge of) over a region that contains "wards" (individual congregations of the church. The Oroville "ward" belongs to the Ephrata Stake, which is comprised of 8 other wards in Ephrata(3), Quincy(2), Omak, and Grand Coulee.
Districts/Zones: Within each mission area, it is divided into smaller areas. Usually there are 2-4 districts within a zone and in a mission about 5-6 zones. Each area has missionaries who are assigned for a time to be district or zone leaders who help keep the missionaries organized and supported as well as to collect data to report back to their mission president each week such as the number of lessons everybody taught, new contacts, etc. These leaders also have to complete their regular proselyting activities just like all the other missionaries. In the MTC there are also districts as Reinna mentions, but generally they are just smaller groups that come to the MTC at the same time and will leave at about the same time. They do share classes together and attend the same church meetings on Sundays.
Golden Contact: This refers to a person who has been contacted by the missionaries who is eager ready to hear the missionaries and is usually highly interested in being baptized into the church.
Charla: This is the Spanish word for "discussion". As a missionary, formal and sometimes informal discussions are referred to as "discussions." Missionaries typically keep track of the number of official "discussions" they have with investigators and attempt to cover a wide range of gospel topics through these discussions.
Need more definitions???Just send a comment or an email to squick18@gmail.com and I will post it. DON'T hold back! Odds are if you don't know what it means, others don't either:)
Golden contact
ReplyDeleteGood one to add! Thanks!
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