Encoding New Temple Recommend by Mission presidents

Under the new format to encode new temple recommends it is not allowing me to have access to the missionaries in our mission to encode a new temple recommend upon their departure. How do we gain access?

If you are referring to being able to activate a recommend, then no, since the membership record is not in your mission, you cannot activate the recommend. In the past, the temple has activated them, but our son recently returned from his mission and attended the temple on his way home. They did not activate the recommend either, and neither could we, since the recommend did not come from this stake.

Our temple just kept letting him in until he received a new recommend from our ward and stake, which returned missionaries are supposed to do anyway in a few months after they return home.

I think missions used to be able to activate recommends. I would suggest the mission president contact the Missionary Department for instructions on how to proceed if MLS is not allowing activation.

Thank you for the update. In the past we have been able to activate them but under the new system it does not seem possible.

lajackson wrote:I would suggest the mission president contact the Missionary Department for instructions on how to proceed if MLS is not allowing activation.

Your response sounded very accepting of the situation. Don't forget to follow lajackson's recommendation. It's at least worth asking a question to get some guidance.

dmartino wrote:it is not allowing me to have access to the missionaries in our mission to encode a new temple recommend upon their departure.

I just want to clarify - is it not letting you in at all, or is it just not letting you activate certain individuals? If the missionary in question is has already left the mission (according to the computer) when you go to activate, I can see why that wouldn't work. That would be like the stake trying to activate a recommend of a member who has already moved out.

But if the system isn't letting you in at all, that's a different problem.

russellhltn wrote:If the missionary in question is has already left the mission (according to the computer) when you go to activate, I can see why that wouldn't work. That would be like the stake trying to activate a recommend of a member who has already moved out.

The membership record of a missionary is never in the mission. It remains in the home ward.

In the past, a mission was able to activate a recommend given to a missionary just before his departure from the mission. With the new webpage, the mission is no longer able to activate the recommend. Something has changed in the programming.

lajackson wrote:The membership record of a missionary is never in the mission. It remains in the home ward.

Understood. But it would seem to me that the system must recognize when a member is part of the mission to allow the mission office to assign them to wards so they can see the directory and so forth. Somehow this activation process has to update the membership record, and I'm sure there's something to indicate that a particular Mission Office has the authority to make the change to a particular member.

I'm just saying if the computer shows the missionary as "released" and they try to activate the recommend - I don't think it would work.

An update to the problem. I have found that I can still update a temple recommend of a missionary if I go through the iMOS portal and not through the Leaders/Clerk portal. The iMOS version is the old version which still allows the update. I hope that the iMOS portal is never changed.