Troubleshooting unrecorded Baptism and Confirmation
Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2013 7:59 am
I am working with a ward in our stake with some membership records issues, specifically around youth who are not showing up as members. As an example, a 14-year-old daughter appears to have a membership record in MLS, but you won't find it in the list of individual members. The only way to find the record is to go to a parent's record and pull up the children. There is no baptism/confirmation date, and the young woman does not appear on the Bishop's Action and Interview List (which is why this didn't show up during the membership audit).
Any thoughts on what the root cause might be? It seems to be something with how the clerks are recording/creating membership records. At first I thought they were "recording" baptisms by only filling out the certificate, but in that instance the individuals would still show up on the action and interview list. The only other item I can think of is that when they requested the household into the ward, they did so individual by individual and left off one. But this has occurred with at least 4 different records in 4 different households in the ward, so I'm not expecting that to be the cause.
Additionally, I checked the MLS export, and those individuals aren't exported at all, just like non-member spouses. But this seems really odd for youth.
Any thoughts? Next course of action? Possible root causes?
I'm familiar with the Handbook instructions for how to handle missing ordinances, so I'm ready to pursue that course, as needed.
Any thoughts on what the root cause might be? It seems to be something with how the clerks are recording/creating membership records. At first I thought they were "recording" baptisms by only filling out the certificate, but in that instance the individuals would still show up on the action and interview list. The only other item I can think of is that when they requested the household into the ward, they did so individual by individual and left off one. But this has occurred with at least 4 different records in 4 different households in the ward, so I'm not expecting that to be the cause.
Additionally, I checked the MLS export, and those individuals aren't exported at all, just like non-member spouses. But this seems really odd for youth.
Any thoughts? Next course of action? Possible root causes?
I'm familiar with the Handbook instructions for how to handle missing ordinances, so I'm ready to pursue that course, as needed.