Tech Forum

I know this comment has been made ad nauseum on this board, and responded to, but I'd like to further the discussion.

I am currently the Stake Relief Society Secretary. The handbook says re: my calling "They provide training for ward auxiliary secretaries as assigned. This training may include instruction on recording and reporting attendance."

A great deal of the ward RS Secretary's calling involves things found on LCR: assisting in the visiting teaching report and entering visiting teaching assignments, printing off class rosters, and many more such related items. I serve in a YSA Stake where many of the secretaries are fresh out of Young Women and have never served in a ward Relief Society in any capacity. They have never seen LCR before. But all I can do when I train them is bring a laptop with me and ask them to log in, and then try to train them on the fly, since I have no way of looking at LCR on my own and preparing training materials for them ahead of time. I kind of feel foolish every time I do it, and a lot of valuable time is wasted.

I understand the confidentiality issues (though I tend to think stake auxiliary presidencies could be just as trusted as ward ones to be confidential), but I wish there were some way to help me do my calling. In many ways, I feel completely stymied. When I served as ward Relief Society President, it was before all the changes had been made to LCR allowing members of the ward council access, and so I can't even rely on my own memory of when I used LCR.

Even a "dummy" version of LCR with fake people would be helpful for me, just so I could see it, play around with it, and be able to train using it. I saw a comment in another thread saying that it is the ward clerk's responsibility to train auxiliaries on record-keeping, but it seems highly inappropriate to me that a ward clerk (who will never, as long as he lives, be a secretary in the Relief Society) is the best person to train a RS secretary on what is at least 80% of her calling.

On another note, it would be really helpful if there were some way to automatically populate and print a stake roster of all the sisters serving in the ward presidencies. Yes, the information can be accessed through contacting the wards or looking in the ward directories, but creating a roster is a painstaking process, and in a YSA Stake, that information changes constantly. If I could print one off the same way class rosters are printed off on LCR, that would be immensely helpful and save me hours of pulling my hair out.

Thank you!

leigh.stoddard wrote:but I'd like to further the discussion.

This is largely a user-to-user forum, so the discussion is likely to have no effect.

Your best chance is to use the feedback link in LCR to get it in front of the people who can consider the change.

leigh.stoddard wrote: On another note, it would be really helpful if there were some way to automatically populate and print a stake roster of all the sisters serving in the ward presidencies. Yes, the information can be accessed through contacting the wards or looking in the ward directories, but creating a roster is a painstaking process, and in a YSA Stake, that information changes constantly. If I could print one off the same way class rosters are printed off on LCR, that would be immensely helpful and save me hours of pulling my hair out.

Thank you!

Your stake clerk can do that easily. At the stake level in LCR there is a Ward Leadership page (under Organizations). On that page he can filter which organizations to show and if you pick Relief Society it lists all the presidencies across all the wards in the stake.

leigh.stoddard wrote:I saw a comment in another thread saying that it is the ward clerk's responsibility to train auxiliaries on record-keeping, but it seems highly inappropriate to me that a ward clerk (who will never, as long as he lives, be a secretary in the Relief Society) is the best person to train a RS secretary on what is at least 80% of her calling.

It is indeed the ward clerk's responsibility to train auxiliary secretaries in record keeping. That is not just someone's opinion, but is plainly specified in Handbook 1, 13.4.2. I'm not sure why you think that is "highly inappropriate", but the First Presidency clearly thinks that it is very appropriate. Clearly, when a man is training a woman it is important for there to be proper safeguards so that such training is not done one-on-one, but as long as those arrangements are made, the ward clerk is a great resource for record keeping instruction.

After all, the ward clerk should be the ward's expert on Leader and Clerk Resources. That includes gathering information from the reports available there, managing callings, and managing home and visiting teaching. Although he will never be a secretary in the Relief Society, he has access, experience, and skill in record keeping that uniquely qualifies him to train others in the ward in record keeping. I would recommend that you direct the ward RS secretaries to seek their record-keeping training from the ward clerk, as specified in the inspired handbooks.