Birthday List for Full-time missionaries from stake

Discussions around using and interfacing with the Church MLS program.
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mmskeen
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Birthday List for Full-time missionaries from stake

#1

Post by mmskeen »

My stake presidency has asked me to prepare birthday cards to send out to all the missionaries who are serving from our stake. I'm hoping to do this in an automated fashion. Any suggestions? I can't seem to find the correct in a custom report to use to select full-time missionaries.
davesudweeks
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Re: Birthday List for Full-time missionaries from stake

#2

Post by davesudweeks »

I don't believe MLS has the ability to discern current from former missionaries. You can generate a custom report that will list all the members who have served a mission (may be incorrect of their membership information is incorrect on that fact). Then manually filter off all those who are not currently serving. The Mission address is not recorded in MLS so you will still need to get that.

I would suggest you have each Ward Clerk provide that information from their Ward and then you could compile it for the Stake. That shouldn't be too much trouble for each ward to do. If you have them provide the information formatted similarly in spreadsheets you can easily compile them and then use a mail-merge to address your envelopes.
davesudweeks
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Re: Birthday List for Full-time missionaries from stake

#3

Post by davesudweeks »

As another suggestion, if you mail the cards to their Mission Home, they can get them to the missionaries. It is likely that some will move between now and when the card shows up.
russellhltn
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Re: Birthday List for Full-time missionaries from stake

#4

Post by russellhltn »

davesudweeks wrote:I would suggest you have each Ward Clerk provide that information from their Ward and then you could compile it for the Stake.
Keep in mind that if you have any YSA wards in your stake, you may have missionaries "from" the stake that won't show up on any report because they are officially "from" their parent's home ward, yet your stake is what they consider "home".

Same could happen with family wards if the parents moved just prior or just after the missionary left.
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aebrown
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Re: Birthday List for Full-time missionaries from stake

#5

Post by aebrown »

I don't know if the MLS database still has access to a member's callings since the move to LCR, but it used to be possible to generate a custom report to do this. You would simply create a criterion based on the Callings field, checking to see if it is "Full-time Missionary" (or whatever the exact text is for that calling). Then include the name and birthday (and ward name and anything else you want) in the Format section.

This of course assumes that all the wards have set that calling for each missionary and that this field is still accessible in MLS. But if it is, then you could run one report for the stake and have all the information right away.
davesudweeks
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Re: Birthday List for Full-time missionaries from stake

#6

Post by davesudweeks »

russellhltn wrote:
davesudweeks wrote:I would suggest you have each Ward Clerk provide that information from their Ward and then you could compile it for the Stake.
Keep in mind that if you have any YSA wards in your stake, you may have missionaries "from" the stake that won't show up on any report because they are officially "from" their parent's home ward, yet your stake is what they consider "home".

Same could happen with family wards if the parents moved just prior or just after the missionary left.
Good point - I have not been involved with YSA wards.

I was mainly considering that this would be an easier list to compile for a Ward Clerk and then the Stake can aggregate the information ("stand close together and lift where we stand...") to send out the cards...
jonesrk
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Re: Birthday List for Full-time missionaries from stake

#7

Post by jonesrk »

aebrown wrote:I don't know if the MLS database still has access to a member's callings since the move to LCR, but it used to be possible to generate a custom report to do this. You would simply create a criterion based on the Callings field, checking to see if it is "Full-time Missionary" (or whatever the exact text is for that calling). Then include the name and birthday (and ward name and anything else you want) in the Format section.

This of course assumes that all the wards have set that calling for each missionary and that this field is still accessible in MLS. But if it is, then you could run one report for the stake and have all the information right away.
I believe the calling of Full-time Missionary went away as LCR is getting the missionary information from the missionary department and now you don't have to rely on the wards to keep it up to date.
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