Tech Forum

I've always assumed that full-time missionaries are counted as having attended their meetings (except, of course, sacrament meetings, where you only count actual persons present).

And yet I'm having a hard time finding actual documentation to support that assumption. The instructions for line 17 on the Quarterly Report say: "Record the number of young single adults who attended at least one priesthood or Sunday Relief Society meeting during the last month of the quarter or who attended at least one Sunday Young Men, Young Women, or Primary meeting during the last month of the quarter because of a Church calling involving them in one of those meetings." Lines 14, 15, and 16 have similar wording. The RKATS article Quarterly Report links to a page with all the line-by-line help instructions, but doesn't give any clarification on this particular question.

I had assumed that we should count full-time missionaries as having attended in these cases, as well as stake presidency members or a wide variety of members with out-of-unit callings who might be unable to attend priesthood or Relief Society meetings on Sunday, but who are anxiously engaged in other meetings required for their callings. None of these people attend that narrow set of meetings mentioned in the instructions, so a strict reading of the instructions would say that we don't count them as having attended.

Similar quarterly report questions arise for counting visiting teaching of full-time missionary sisters and home teaching of full-time missionaries who happen to be in their own household. Again, it seems logical to count them as having been taught, but I can't find documentation to justify that practice.

Can anyone help me with documentation that would say one way or the other how to count the attendance and HT/VT of full-time missionaries? In the absence of specific documentation, what do other wards and stakes do? And what about the attendance of members with out-of-unit callings? Does that have the same answer?

I'll bet historically we could find that documentation, but that doesn't answer the question of what's to be done now.

IIRC, the instructions for attendance was on the attendance sheet itself. I didn't see you mentioning that you checked the attendance sheet.

From memory, anyone who didn't attend due to their church calling was given a pass. But from the institutions you quoted, I think it's been narrowed down. For example, a Bishop who is absent because he's holding interviews during Sunday School wouldn't be counted, but if he's attending another block meeting, he would be. The difference is choice. The interviews don't have to be during Sunday School, but because of the block schedule, being absent due to attending a different class is unavoidable.

aebrown wrote:I've always assumed that full-time missionaries are counted as having attended their meetings (except, of course, sacrament meetings, where you only count actual persons present).

And yet I'm having a hard time finding actual documentation to support that assumption. The instructions for line 17 on the Quarterly Report say: "Record the number of young single adults who attended at least one priesthood or Sunday Relief Society meeting during the last month of the quarter or who attended at least one Sunday Young Men, Young Women, or Primary meeting during the last month of the quarter because of a Church calling involving them in one of those meetings." Lines 14, 15, and 16 have similar wording. The RKATS article Quarterly Report links to a page with all the line-by-line help instructions, but doesn't give any clarification on this particular question.

I believe the source of that practice (and I've always done things the same way you describe) is the text at the top of each role which states:

Those who are unable to attend Sunday Relief Society meeting because of a Church assignment are to be recorded as attending (including full-time missionaries from the ward or branch).

I'm not sure if the new description on the quarterly report represents a real change, a clarification, or just different wording that is supposed to be the same policy but only covers the most common situations. In any case, the wording on the rolls is still there so without instruction otherwise I would expect organization secretaries to follow those instructions since they don't have access to the quarterly report instructions.

russellhltn wrote:IIRC, the instructions for attendance was on the attendance sheet itself. I didn't see you mentioning that you checked the attendance sheet.

Good point. The rolls say "Those who are unable to attend priesthood meeting because of a Church assignment are to be recorded as attending (including full-time missionaries from the ward or branch)."

Although it's nice to have that note there, it's strange that it is not included in any Quarterly Report documentation, especially when the line-by-line instructions make a specific mention of attending Young Men/Women or Primary meetings. It would be much better if the official documentation included the more general instructions on the attendance rolls.

russellhltn wrote:From memory, anyone who didn't attend due to their church calling was given a pass. But from the institutions you quoted, I think it's been narrowed down. For example, a Bishop who is absent because he's holding interviews during Sunday School wouldn't be counted, but if he's attending another block meeting, he would be. The difference is choice. The interviews don't have to be during Sunday School, but because of the block schedule, being absent due to attending a different class is unavoidable.

Of course Sunday School attendance is not on the quarterly report, but I see your point. There's certainly some judgment in assessing the relevance of the phrase "unable to attend," but I'm not going to tell my stake president that he will be counted as not attending priesthood meeting because he chose to attend three sacrament meetings on Sunday, hold stake presidency meeting, and conduct a dozen interviews.

I'm a bit uncomfortable that more official documentation doesn't mention these various out-of-unit callings, but the heading to the attendance rolls is good enough for me to answer that question.

What about HT/VT of full-time missionaries? Is there any official guidance on how to count that?

aebrown wrote:Although it's nice to have that note there, it's strange that it is not included in any Quarterly Report documentation, especially when the line-by-line instructions make a specific mention of attending Young Men/Women or Primary meetings. It would be much better if the official documentation included the more general instructions on the attendance rolls.

As I was writing my first response, I had a case of deja vu and remembered the attendance sheet. I think the question has come up before, but it might have been clear back in yahoo group days.

russellhltn wrote:What about HT/VT of full-time missionaries? Is there any official guidance on how to count that?

Anything on the printouts or data entry screen of MLS?

russellhltn wrote:As I was writing my first response, I had a case of deja vu and remembered the attendance sheet. I think the question has come up before, but it might have been clear back in yahoo group days.

It appears that your deja vu sensor works better than mine. It's rather embarrassing to admit it, but I asked this same question about 3 years ago here, and you answered it with a reference to the attendance roll back then. I guess I'm getting old....

russellhltn wrote:

aebrown wrote:What about HT/VT of full-time missionaries? Is there any official guidance on how to count that?

Anything on the printouts or data entry screen of MLS?

No. I've reviewed all the HT/VT reports and the data entry screens in MLS. There are no references at all to the question of how to count full-time missionaries.

At the top of the quarterly report (when logged in to LDS.Org) is instruction for completing the report. Click on the "more" button and it takes you to the full instructions which say the following:

Quorum, Class, and Primary Attendance

For quorum, class, and Primary attendance, count each person who attended at least once during the last month of the quarter. Count only those who appear on the ward rolls, not visitors. Those who are unable to attend priesthood or Sunday Relief Society meetings because of a Church assignment are to be recorded as attending (including full-time missionaries serving from the ward).

rvvance wrote:At the top of the quarterly report (when logged in to LDS.Org) is instruction for completing the report. Click on the "more" button and it takes you to the full instructions which say the following:

Thanks, but class attendance was already mentioned in this discussion. The outstanding question regards how to count HT/VT for full-time missionaries.

When I was Clerk, if they came back from school to leave on their mission, I rolled them back under their parents so they were covered with the family for HT - not sure what the RS President did with VT. We did not have any cases of single members serving missions whose parents were not in our ward so I cannot give any advice on how we would have handled that.