Tech Forum

I'm an butt't Stake Clerk for Membership and Tech. Support. There is a member in our stake who was baptised as a child of record at 8 yoa, but that ordinance was not properly recorded. Now the member is in 40's and going to temple to be sealed to spouse, but records show not baptised. We have complied with Ch. Handbook of Instr. requirements to gather evidence and testimonies of witnesses, etc. I find no way to record the baptism in MLS. How do we show this member as having been baptised so they don't have to wait a year after being re-baptised to go to the temple?? Please help, anyone. I've sent message to CHQ, but got back only reference to Ch. Handbook of Instr., I need to know the bureaucratic procedure to follow, not the doctrine of witnesses, forgive the worldly terminology.

E&LDow wrote:I'm an butt't Stake Clerk for Membership and Tech. Support. There is a member in our stake who was baptised as a child of record at 8 yoa, but that ordinance was not properly recorded. Now the member is in 40's and going to temple to be sealed to spouse, but records show not baptised. We have complied with Ch. Handbook of Instr. requirements to gather evidence and testimonies of witnesses, etc. I find no way to record the baptism in MLS. How do we show this member as having been baptised so they don't have to wait a year after being re-baptised to go to the temple?? Please help, anyone. I've sent message to CHQ, but got back only reference to Ch. Handbook of Instr., I need to know the bureaucratic procedure to follow, not the doctrine of witnesses, forgive the worldly terminology.

I'm assuming that this person has a membership record, since you described them as a child of record. If so, you need to start up MLS, then:

• Login to MLS with Edit Membership permissions
• Go to the person's individual record
• Go to the Ordinances section
• In the upper right corner of the Baptism and Confirmation section, there should be a link for "Add Baptism and Confirmation"; click it
• Enter all the required information (dates, who performed ordinances, etc.)
• Save the changes
• Do a Send/Receive to transmit the info to CHQ.

That should do it.

If for some reason this can't be done, you can always send a Special Request. To send a Special Request, access the Membership menu, select Records, then Special Requests. Select the member, and then describe the situation and supply all the information you have.

Thank you so much. I will do this.

You may not be able to record this information on a stake version of MLS. If I remember correctly you can not record or update on the stake version of MLS, with the exception of temple recommends and stake callings. If this is the case then the ward in which the member is located will need to update the information.

flip96 wrote:You may not be able to record this information on a stake version of MLS.

This is correct. Membership records can only be updated by the ward or branch.

Alan_Brown wrote:I'm assuming that this person has a membership record, since you described them as a child of record. If so, you need to start up MLS, then:

• Login to MLS with Edit Membership permissions
• Go to the person's individual record
• Go to the Ordinances section
• In the upper right corner of the Baptism and Confirmation section, there should be a link for "Add Baptism and Confirmation"; click it
• Enter all the required information (dates, who performed ordinances, etc.)
• Save the changes
• Do a Send/Receive to transmit the info to CHQ.

That should do it.

If for some reason this can't be done, you can always send a Special Request. To send a Special Request, access the Membership menu, select Records, then Special Requests. Select the member, and then describe the situation and supply all the information you have.

Just had a similar issue. Child of record was baptized when 10, but it was never recorded. When trying to add it Sunday, it won't let me add the ordinance because the child was older than 8 so I have to add it as a convert baptism. When I do it that way, I have to fill out all the info like there's no record for the person. At the end, it asks if I want to created a duplicate record. I'm assuming no?

Why does this have to be so difficult? Why can't I just add the ordinance to their record? I'm guessing some way the church keeps track of convert baptisms? Or is this something that requires a special request be sent to HQ?

crislapi wrote:Just had a similar issue. Child of record was baptized when 10, but it was never recorded. When trying to add it Sunday, it won't let me add the ordinance because the child was older than 8 so I have to add it as a convert baptism. When I do it that way, I have to fill out all the info like there's no record for the person. At the end, it asks if I want to created a duplicate record. I'm assuming no?

Why does this have to be so difficult? Why can't I just add the ordinance to their record? I'm guessing some way the church keeps track of convert baptisms? Or is this something that requires a special request be sent to HQ?

This is not really that similar, since the previously mentioned case was for someone baptized at age 8, and the case you are mentioning is for someone baptized at age 10.

This is difficult, because what you're doing seems to be contrary to policy. Clearly this part of MLS is designed to make sure that convert baptisms are not casually added by a ward/branch, since that is the responsibility of the mission. It's definitely good to have just one entity responsible for adding a particular ordinance; otherwise there would be duplicate ordinances recorded, and someone would have to sort out which one was correct if there were any differences. That would be a mess.

MLS won't let you simply add a baptism to a member of record who was baptized at age 9 or older because that is indeed officially a convert baptism. When you try to add a convert baptism from a ward or branch, you get the following warning:

Individuals age 9 and older are considered converts. Membership records for converts are normally created by missions. To avoid creating duplicate records, please do not create this record until you have checked with your local mission office. Do you want to continue?

So it seems that the questions you should be asking would be:

• Was this baptism considered a convert baptism?
• Was this ordinance coordinated with the mission?
• Did the mission create a membership record?
• If it was the mission's responsibility, and the mission didn't do it, should you be following up with the mission, rather than taking over the responsibility in the ward/branch?

Alan_Brown wrote:So it seems that the questions you should be asking would be:

• Was this baptism considered a convert baptism?
• Was this ordinance coordinated with the mission?
• Did the mission create a membership record?
• If it was the mission's responsibility, and the mission didn't do it, should you be following up with the mission, rather than taking over the responsibility in the ward/branch?

I guess a major detail I left out is that the child is mentally handicapped. I guess there was a decision that he was not accountable until he reached age 10? That was a decision the bishop and parents made. But along those lines, it was not considered a convert baptism and was not handled by the mission. The parents are active, and he has had a membership record since he was born. The mission has not been involved at all.

I'm guessing the clerk at the time he got baptized tried to add this back when it happened, ran into this issue, and gave up.

crislapi wrote:I guess a major detail I left out is that the child is mentally handicapped. I guess there was a decision that he was not accountable until he reached age 10? That was a decision the bishop and parents made. But along those lines, it was not considered a convert baptism and was not handled by the mission. The parents are active, and he has had a membership record since he was born. The mission has not been involved at all.

With that piece of information, I can see that it's not that clear-cut how it should be handled. The statement I quoted earlier didn't seem to leave any question about the statement "Individuals age 9 and older are considered converts." But then the next statement -- "Membership records for converts are normally created by missions." -- did use the word "normally," implying that there might be exceptions.

In any case, MLS absolutely won't let you record the baptism of a person over 8 without going through the Convert Baptism process. The fact that MLS asks about it being a duplicate record at the end seems to be an acknowledgment that there might be cases where a member of record is processed this way. So then it seems pretty clear that for the situation you are describing, as you finish creating the convert baptism record, you would answer Yes to the question about duplicate records. Otherwise you would still have the old Child of Record membership record as well as the new one created by the Convert Baptism.

crislap wrote:I guess a major detail I left out is that the child is mentally handicapped. I guess there was a decision that he was not accountable until he reached age 10? That was a decision the bishop and parents made. But along those lines, it was not considered a convert baptism and was not handled by the mission. The parents are active, and he has had a membership record since he was born. The mission has not been involved at all.

Mentally handicapped members are sometimes categorized as "Not Accountable." The definition of this classification and the possiblility of eventually being baptized are covered on page 33 of the Church Handbook of Instructions, Book 1. This may be of help to you.