Tech Forum

Hi, I have several records of children that are not showing up in MLS. A couple in particular have even been baptized and still nothing. I went in and added the children to their parents but they do not show up on the rolls for primary. I may be missing something very easy and if so please tell me what it is. Any help would be amazing.

andog23 wrote:I went in and added the children to their parents but they do not show up on the rolls for primary.

There's two different issues here. First, how did you add the children? If you do a lookup of "Individual Records" do you see them there, or only when you pull up a parents record?

Let's get that one resolved first. Then we can look at the Primary Rolls.

They only show up when I pull up the parents. They're not there on their own. I added them by going into the parent record and adding a child. I'm guessing I did that the wrong way?

andog23 wrote:I'm guessing I did that the wrong way?

Sort of. I'm not in front of MLS right now to give details on the right way (I'll be someone will come up with it before I can). But what you've done is place on the parent's records that they have had children. Sort of a genealogical thing. Much the same way you can see who the parents of the parents are without their records being in the ward.

There's a different way of creating a child of record. That's what you want. That affirms that the child is in the ward (as opposed to living somewhere else.)

If you look in the Help file for something like 'Creating a child of record" I think you'll find it.

Once you've done that you may need to go back into the parent's records to make sure you haven't doubled up the children.

andog23 wrote:Hi, I have several records of children that are not showing up in MLS. A couple in particular have even been baptized and still nothing. I went in and added the children to their parents but they do not show up on the rolls for primary.

How old were the children when they were baptized? Children 8 or under have their baptisms recorded by the ward. Children 9 or over are recorded by the mission office. Make sure the baptisms were recorded and indicated on the child's records before going any further with the rolls for primary issue.

Another question - before being baptized were they a child of record? If the answer to this is yes then the baptism should have had no effect on getting the children onto the primary rolls.

andog23 wrote:Hi, I have several records of children that are not showing up in MLS. A couple in particular have even been baptized and still nothing. I went in and added the children to their parents but they do not show up on the rolls for primary. I may be missing something very easy and if so please tell me what it is. Any help would be amazing.

You need to actually create a membership record (rather than simply indicating that a parent has a child). How you do that varies, depending on the age of the child:

• If the child is under 8, then go to Membership and under Create Records choose the option New Child of Record. Fill in the information, making sure that you select the parents' household, and that you select each parent on the Parents tab.
• If the child is 8 and has been baptized, then go to Membership > Record Ordinances, and choose Child Without Record Baptism.
• If the child is 9 or older and has been baptized, then it has to be entered as a Convert Baptism (found in the same section as the Child Without Record Baptism). You'll have to confirm that the ordinance was not recorded by the mission office, since the mission usually handles baptisms of children 9 and older.

The above steps are appropriate if the record truly does not exist. You should make sure that an existing record somehow did not get transferred out of your ward; if that happened, then you just have to request the records.

And if the Child's record is created but they still don't show up on Primary roles, you might have to "Reset" their organization. I have to do that from time to time when the Primary President reports to me that a child disappeared from the roll for some reason. Go to the Child's record and in the Organization box there is a link to "Reset..." That should correct their listing to the proper class.

Before I would create a new record for a child, I would try requesting the record by name and date of birth. It is entirely possible that a record already exists but was not properly grouped with the parents.