Tech Forum

We have a male member who was ordained an Elder in July of 2011. He moved to his current ward just a few months later. Now he cannot find his Ordination certificate and would like us to print out a new one. The certificate requests for the Stake representative and for their signature. Do we need to contact the previous ward / stake clerk to find out this information so that we can have that Stake representative sign this form instead of our current stake information? It would seem so to me. Also, why is this information not stored in MLS?

dfchamplain wrote:We have a male member who was ordained an Elder in July of 2011. He moved to his current ward just a few months later. Now he cannot find his Ordination certificate and would like us to print out a new one. The certificate requests for the Stake representative and for their signature. Do we need to contact the previous ward / stake clerk to find out this information so that we can have that Stake representative sign this form instead of our current stake information? It would seem so to me. Also, why is this information not stored in MLS?

You can give him his Individual Ordinance Summary, which contains all the information that is necessary for him to know -- when he was ordained an elder and who performed the ordinance. And that is all that is stored on the membership record (and thus in MLS) because it's not important to remember over the long term who the stake representative is. The IOS documents just as effectively as a certificate (actually, more effectively) that he is indeed an elder and thus no certificate is actually needed.

But I can certainly understand that a person may not find the IOS as attractive as a certificate. If the member wants a certificate that represents the moment of the ordination, it would seem to me that the responsibility is his to contact the former stake. He can take his IOS to them to show that the event happened and provide information about the date and ordainer. That stake can then generate the certificate using stake MLS and fill in the stake representative information. Stake MLS has the ability to print a certificate by filling in all the information from scratch -- it's not necessary that the person be a current member of the stake.

Another option is for your stake to generate a certificate, with the stake president choosing to be the stake representative; in this case, he's simply relying on the membership record and is attesting that the record that is currently in his stake does say that the ordination occurred as indicated on the record. But such a certificate would be misleading as a record of the actual ordination event, so that option seems odd to me.

In my opinion, you've done your part by providing an IOS, and any effort required to generate a certificate is between that member and his former stake.