Mission

Mission, city (1990 pop. 28,653), Hidalgo co., extreme S Tex.; inc. 1910. It is a processing and canning center for citrus fruits (especially grapefruit) and vegetables grown in the irrigated lower Rio Grande valley. Consumer goods and concrete are manufactured, and oil wells are also in Mission. The city was founded on property that had belonged to the Oblate Fathers; their chapel still stands by the Rio Grande.

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mission

Organized effort to spread the Christian faith. St. Paul evangelized much of Asia Minor and Greece, and the new religion spread rapidly along the trade routes of the Roman Empire. The advance of Christianity slowed with the disintegration of the Roman Empire after AD 500 and the growth of Arab power in the 7th–8th century, but Irish and Anglo-Saxon missionaries continued to spread the faith in western and northern Europe, while missionaries of the Greek church in Constantinople worked in eastern Europe and Russia. Missions to Islamic areas and Asia began in the medieval period, and when Spain, Portugal, and France established overseas empires in the 16th century, the Roman Catholic church sent missionaries to the Americas and the Philippines. A renewed wave of Roman Catholic missionary work in the 19th century focused on Africa and Asia. Protestant churches were slower to undertake foreign missions, but in the 19th and early 20th century there was a great upsurge in Protestant missionary activity. Missionary work continues today, though it is often discouraged by the governments of former European colonies that have won independence.

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mission

1. a group of persons representing or working for a particular country, business, etc., in a foreign country

2. 

a. a special embassy sent to a foreign country for a specific purpose

b. US a permanent legation

3. 

a. a group of people sent by a religious body, esp a Christian church, to a foreign country to do religious and social work

b. the campaign undertaken by such a group

4. 

a. the work or calling of a missionary

b. a building or group of buildings in which missionary work is performed

c. the area assigned to a particular missionary

5. the dispatch of aircraft or spacecraft to achieve a particular task

6. a church or chapel that has no incumbent of its own

7. a charitable centre that offers shelter, aid, or advice to the destitute or underprivileged

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mission

In Spanish Colonial architecture, a church and complex of buildings usually dependent for support on a monastic order or a larger church.

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Mission 

(1) A state’s delegation to an international meeting or conference. The rights and obligations of heads of missions as well as members are defined by the Convention on Special Missions of 1971.

(2) In diplomacy, a delegation headed by an envoy or charge d’affaires. The regular functioning of such a mission is governed under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.