Scott,
I'm a bit embarrassed to be saying 'welcome to the forum' as you've been here for 3 months; I try to be aware of new posters, greet them early on, and my memory for them is usually pretty good. Obviously, I'm slipping.
It's always good to have another Melkite here. We're still a minority but many more in numbers than what it was back when I first joined the forum.
As far as your membership status, I just realized in reading your post that we had such a title as Junior Member and I have no idea what prompts that to change - time, no. of posts, a combination of those, or whether it has to be manually accomplished (as I'm aware of online fora which use each of those to make similar changes happen). Hopefully, John V., the Administrator, can enlighten us on that question.
Meanwhile, I've messaged the appropriate party to get your PM capability implemented and take you off moderated status - that should happen within a day or two. I think the fact that your posts were made within a relatively compressed timeframe caused you to slip under the radar as far as those things happening sooner.
Again, welcome, and you should consider yourself a full-fledged member, regardless of what it says under your name (just dont expect a Christmas membership bonus until it says 'Member'

)
Many years,
Neil