Who's my home teacher? Where's my home teaching assignment?

Discussions around using and interfacing with the Church MLS program.
FlintCrump
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Who's my home teacher? Where's my home teaching assignment?

#1

Post by FlintCrump »

Where's my home teaching assignment?
As an Elder's Quorum Secretary, I see a huge need to provide programming to the MLS for an auto-notification by both email and texting to home teachers and visiting teachers of their assignments at the beginning of each month with a mid-month reminder as well as notifications the day any changes are made to those affected.

Who are my home teachers or visiting teachers?
Conversely, each assigned family member could receive the same type of auto-notifications by email and texting at the beginning of each month as well as the day of any changes, which affect them, sent directly from the MLS.

This idea is offered as an effective method of distribution of necessary information to assist the functions of home and visiting teaching. I submit this idea NOT as a substitute for personal leadership calls, visits and interactions with their organizations members, but rather an electronic assistant to free up more time to spend on PPI's and lifting the hands which hang down.

Providing the assignments through auto-notification directly from MLS will assist the work of the Church to those who are the most busy and difficult to reach, thereby giving them the additional time required to add these responsibilities to their schedules.

In addition, the work of the Church will grow by ensuring that all families assigned will be notified of who they can call for a monthly visit as well as in times of need.

As a result Bishops will receive more information and support from home teachers and visiting teachers; the less-actives will have a great reason to be signed into lds.org with emails and cell phones; and finally, those willing to change, over time, will move closer to Temple activity as more home teaching and visiting teaching is completed.

Flint Crump
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aebrown
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#2

Post by aebrown »

Those are some good suggestions. Similar suggestions have been made numerous times on this forum.

Note that there are some technical challenges to be overcome first. To begin with, MLS has no ability to send email or text messages at this point, and I would think it is highly unlikely that it would ever have that capability. Instead, such messages would be sent from Church servers; there are already servers in place that can send email messages.

Which brings us to the next challenge: home teaching information currently resides only in MLS -- it is not transmitted to Church servers (except for summary statistics, which are of course insufficient for accomplishing the communication tasks you have suggested).

The Church is working on solving these issues, but there is currently no publicly announced time frame when this will happen, or just what features will be available.
Questions that can benefit the larger community should be asked in a public forum, not a private message.
FlintCrump
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#3

Post by FlintCrump »

Thank you.
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gregwanderson
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#4

Post by gregwanderson »

The more I hear ideas that tend to automate the elements of home teaching, the more I wonder if the spirit of the program is being overshadowed by the need to crunch numbers.
</blunt comment>
zulugrid
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#5

Post by zulugrid »

mrrad wrote:The more I hear ideas that tend to automate the elements of home teaching, the more I wonder if the spirit of the program is being overshadowed by the need to crunch numbers.
</blunt comment>

I understand your concern, but the spirit of the program isn't being fulfilled at all if the members don't know who they should be home teaching or who their home teachers are.

In my experience, it is very common for members that don't attend EQ meetings (YM leaders, primary teachers, etc) to have no idea what their route is. Automating this logistical element of the program would make it much easier for everyone to focus on the spiritual elements of the program.
matthewbjudd
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Re: Who's my home teacher? Where's my home teaching assignm

#6

Post by matthewbjudd »

While work is being done to create the back end integration to build this automation, how about just making the MLS home/visiting teaching assignments report available on lds.org? This would allow members to see their assignments as well as their assigned teachers--I'd love to see members have the information to empower themselves to reach out and contact their home and visiting teachers and invite them into their home.
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aebrown
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Re: Who's my home teacher? Where's my home teaching assignm

#7

Post by aebrown »

matthewbjudd wrote:While work is being done to create the back end integration to build this automation, how about just making the MLS home/visiting teaching assignments report available on lds.org? This would allow members to see their assignments as well as their assigned teachers--I'd love to see members have the information to empower themselves to reach out and contact their home and visiting teachers and invite them into their home.
Perhaps it's not obvious to you, but the back end work is a prerequisite to being able to show this home teaching information on LDS.org. There's no way to show home teaching assignments until after that work is done.
Gary_Miller
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Re: Who's my home teacher? Where's my home teaching assignm

#8

Post by Gary_Miller »

matthewbjudd wrote:While work is being done to create the back end integration to build this automation, how about just making the MLS home/visiting teaching assignments report available on lds.org? This would allow members to see their assignments as well as their assigned teachers--I'd love to see members have the information to empower themselves to reach out and contact their home and visiting teachers and invite them into their home.
How about just letting members know who the Home Teacher by direct communication, talk to them, send a letter, send a e-mail, call them on the phone. That way you know they have the information. I know it maybe hard and cause a little bit of leg work on the Leaders of the organizations but it won't hurt them to have some inter action with the members they are responsible for.
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gregwanderson
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Re: Who's my home teacher? Where's my home teaching assignm

#9

Post by gregwanderson »

I'm trying to find the "like" button. It strikes me that the Home Teaching program shouldn't move too much towards automation.
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johnshaw
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Re: Who's my home teacher? Where's my home teaching assignm

#10

Post by johnshaw »

Can we get a sticky thread added everywhere that says HT/VT is a great idea, and as far as we know there isn't a plan to add it. Or it is very far in the future. Really could save some time.

Seems to me a larger problem exists if people don't know their home teaching families. I realize there are some pretty transient YSA wards out there where this may not indicate a larger problem. But seriously, if you are visiting you know who they are, if you are being visited you know who they are - or a quick call to the EQP will tell you which might be a good phone call for the EQP or HPGL or RSP to receive?
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.”
― Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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