What should we CALL that woman?

Last updated on: August 14, 2016 at 2:40 pm by Dan Peterson

What should we CALL that woman? 2016-08-14T14:40:18-06:00 Dan Peterson

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The Oslo Opera House (Wikimedia CC)

When I began my service as the bishop of a large singles ward adjacent to Utah Valley University, a friend with a great deal of ecclesiastical experience gave me some interesting advice. “You’ll be so busy with counseling and similar things that can’t be delegated,” he effectively told me, “that you should just divide everything else 50/50 and have your two counselors take care of those matters.”

He was right. Interviews of various kinds and counseling of all sorts kept me pretty much pinned in my office. Sometimes, looking out into the hallway and seeing twenty people waiting for interviews, I would keep a mental tally of the people with whom I spoke. After twenty or so, I would look outside my door again . . . and see twenty more people. I was lucky to be able to attend sacrament meeting. Even when I was conducting, I was typically almost late. And, although I had really intended to try, I rarely if ever managed to sit in on Relief Society or priesthood meetings, or to attend Sunday school.

Fortunately, I was blessed with superb counselors.

But I’m also blessed with a superb wife. And she, too, was of great help. We hosted regular gatherings at our home, of course, and things of that sort. She was always willing and ready to be supportive. But one of the things that I most valued about her during that time was her ability to sit in Sunday school and in Relief Society, and to mingle with ward members with whom I scarcely ever met, and to give me feedback and even, yes!, advice on matters that I was unable to track myself.

When a man is called to serve as a bishop, his wife, too, receives something of a call.

Sometimes, of course, that wife is a mother with young children. It would be very difficult for her, in such a case, to take on many additional duties. Sometimes, though – this was so in our case – the children are grown.

I think it would not be inappropriate to extend a formal calling to such a wife. Mine still had callings in our home ward, so there were times when she couldn’t attend the ward over which I presided. I would love, though, to have had her there every week.

But I don’t know what name to give to the “office” held by a bishop’s wife.

And the problem is especially acute, or so it seems to me, with the wives of mission presidents.

We have a name – I’m not overly fond of it (in fact, I rather dislike it), but it works – for the wife of a temple president. She’s the “temple matron.” And the wives of the counselors of temple presidents are “assistant temple matrons.”

I’ve sometimes heard an analogous title informally given to the wives of mission presidents: “mission mother.”

What do you think? I don’t like it much, but, again, it works and would work. Do you have any alternative – better — suggestions?

Mission president’s wives, especially when they’re not having to attend to a young family, perform a wide variety of functions. They can be, and often are, extraordinarily able and quite valuable – mine (Janath Russell Cannon) certainly was. And not merely with sister missionaries (who, by the way, represent a larger proposition of the overall missionary force than was true in my day, back in the Early Pleistocene).

Anyhow, I’m seriously soliciting proposals. Do you have a good title for the “office” of mission president’s wife?

The question has been on my mind of late. For one thing, we were picked up at the airport by good friends – neighbors for thirty years – who are currently serving as president and “mission mother” (?) of the Norway Oslo Mission and, before my fireside this evening, had dinner with them at their residence.

I’ve recently heard the half-serious suggestion — from a speaker at FairMormon, I think, but also from a friend who presided over a mission in the South Pacific and who feels fairly passionate about the question — of presidentess. Only half serious.

Suggestions welcome.

And again, while we’re at it, what about a bishop’s wife?

Posted from Oslo, Norway

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