I am the ward clerk in a military ward (English speaking) in Germany. When I click on "My Ward," I get this:
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My LDS Account is correct and it is tied to my MR. I am able to login to the LUWS and I can also administer the LUWS (the green background). What's going on with the maps? Is this only for units in the States?
If we ever do get the maps up and running, I can tell already that we are going to have a problem. I need some help with how to approach the following situation:
The vast majority of the members in our ward are active duty military or are civilians that work in some capacity supporting the military. We do have a few English-speaking members (mostly Americans, but not all) that are here in Germany working for international companies with no government or military affiliation.
The folks with ties to the military all have two addresses -- their street address in Germany and their APO box. I have been the clerk for three months now and I inherited a system where we are not using the mailing address field built into MLS. Instead, we have the house address filled in as follows:
Line 1: German street and house number
Line 2: CMR xxx Box xxxx APO AE 09xxx
City: German city
State: German state
Zip Code: German zip code (five digits) preceded by "D-"
So, for instance, my zip code is in MLS as "D-65205" The "D-" is probably unnecessary but it provides an easy way to distinguish between the APO zip code and the German zip code (D is for Deutschland). The APO zip codes all start with 09 and the German zip codes in our part of Germany all start with 6 so really there is no worry about confusion. This is just what I inherited.
The reason the system was set up this way is pretty obvious -- we want both addresses to show up on one ward directory. When mailing cards, invitations, etc, almost everybody sends mail to the APO boxes since this doesn't require dealing with the German postal system. But we need the street addresses to go and visit people. Having to distribute two lists would be a nuisance.
I would imagine that in order to make the maps work, I will need to move the CMR addresses to the mailing address field. This is fine, but I still need a way to get both addresses to show up on the ward list. I know MLS has the ability to create custom lists but I'm not sure if what I want can be accomplished.
Any comments?