Temple Recommendation Activation Error

Here's the situation: there was a member of my stake who had a TR interview with the stake president on Sunday. He is marrying a member in a neighbor stake. Sometime Sunday his record was moved to the neighboring stake.
On Wednesday, I got the yellow copy of the recommend and tried to activate it (I'm the stake clerk). That's when I found out his record was no longer in our stake and therefore I have no option for activating the recommend.
I asked the stake clerk of the neighboring stake to try, knowing he'd get an error that the recommend wasn't issued to a unit in his stake. This has happened to me a few times in the past, but whether using MLS or TES I was able to proceed somehow (been so long I've forgotten exactly what I did) and activate the recommends.
The other stake clerk reports he got the expected error in both LCR and TES with no apparent option to proceed with activating the recommend.
Seems we're caught in a Catch-22.
I tried the Help Center under LCR and searched the forums, but found nothing about this situation. Before resorting to contacting LUS, I thought I'd see what the brain trust here might know.

I seem to recall that in the past members were able to have the temple activate it if they got there before the stake did the activation.

However, with a marriage the wings, I'd really want to try and get that fixed before - just in case.

Just as a thought - if MLS hadn't been updated yet to reflect the record move-out, it might still let you activate the recommend. Perhaps the work around was when TES didn't allow, run to MLS?

russellhltn wrote:I seem to recall that in the past members were able to have the temple activate it if they got there before the stake did the activation.

Most temples do not like to do this, and some will not do this. Our temple will not activate the recommend, but will let the member enter if they are able to contact the bishop first.

I suggest that the stake clerk with the yellow copy call Local Unit Support, explain what happened, and ask if they will activate the recommend.

The alternative, and not a good one at all, is to transfer the record back to the original stake, activate the recommend, and then transfer the record out again. But as I said, that is not a good option at all.

I think the phone call will do the trick.

lajackson wrote:I suggest that the stake clerk with the yellow copy call Local Unit Support, explain what happened, and ask if they will activate the recommend.

I agree. I'll make the call on Monday.
Since I had been able to get past the error in the past I was just hoping it was still possible today and someone knew how.
I also briefly thought about getting the membership record back long enough to activate the recommend, but like you, discarded the idea.

Another possibility is have him get a new recommend in the new stake. The new bishop is going to have to call the old one, and yes it's a hassle, but it will work.

Can't you click a "proceed anyway" button to activate a recommend not issued to your stake? We had some wards move to our stake from another stake and it always came up with a notification/error but allowed us to proceed anyway. I don't remember exactly what the message said, but it was something to the effect of the recommend number not belonging to the stake.

sbradshaw wrote:Can't you click a "proceed anyway" button to activate a recommend not issued to your stake? We had some wards move to our stake from another stake and it always came up with a notification/error but allowed us to proceed anyway. I don't remember exactly what the message said, but it was something to the effect of the recommend number not belonging to the stake.

The new stake should be able to do that, but the first post said the new stake clerk was not able to accomplish it. I wonder if the membership record was still in transit at the time.

Or perhaps something has changed. At this point, I would go with the call to LUS to find out.

I talked to LUS this morning and was told to send information from the recommend to the temple department for activation and was provided an email address. So that’s what I did.

Within 10 minutes I had a response that told me there are two options in these situations—and neither was for them to activate the recommend.

1) Follow info found in HB 1 about a member who has not lived in the same unit for at least a year. In essence, have the member go through the interview process in the new ward/stake.

2) The stake clerk in the stake where the member record now resides can use MLS to activate the recommend. He'll get the error noted in my original post, but it will allow the himto continue and activate the recommend.

Thankfully this has not been a common occurrence.

Well, using MLS is the one thing I have not been able to try. I could only use LCR and TES from home. I am not scheduled to visit the stake center again until July 7th, but I suppose I could make a special trip. Someone has to check the mailbox and pay the bills!

This reminds me of the time several years ago when my bishopric issued to me the very first recommend from a new book of recommends. After I obtained the appropriate interviews and signatures, I tried to activate my new recommend, but it failed with the same error. Upon investigation, this new book of recommends had been mailed to my ward in Nebraska, but the recommend numbers had been assigned to another ward with the same name in Utah. Therefore, I was not able to activate the recommend.