Where do the unit choices come from when moving a record out?

When you move records out of your unit, you get a drop-down of unit choices of which unit the record should go to. How is this list generated? I believe some of the units on the list come from CDOL. Under my stake's entry, I see Associated Organizations / Participating with. Some of these units are listed on the drop-down. However, that doesn't account for all of the units that appear on the drop-down. How do the other units get there? And, if I think some other units should be there that aren't, how do you get them to appear on the list?

For example, we have people living within our ward boundaries who go to language unit wards or branches in the area, but those units aren't listed on the drop-down, yet we have a language unit listed a long ways away as a "Participating with" unit in CDOL.

I don't know for certain but I've always assumed it's based on boundaries as they show up on maps.lds.org. I assumed that it shows whichever units contain the selected location.

Sometimes language wards only cover a small part of a city, but members who live in the city assume that it covers the entire city, because there aren't other language wards around (there's a regular ward that covers you no matter where you live, but not so with special units). It's possible that the address you're moving the record to is not actually within the boundaries of the language ward; OR, it's possible that the Church has the boundaries wrong in a database. I think maps.lds.org would be the place to check, as eblood66 mentions.

I looked at maps, and I think what I see there is the same list that I see when moving records out.

I think what we see is a combination of overlapping geographic boundaries AND CDOL's Associated Organizations / Participating with list. How do you get the Participating with list updated? What I see is that we're "participating with" a language unit that's about 30 miles away, and a neighboring stake has the same language unit that's about 7 miles away. Some people within our ward boundaries go to the nearby one.

The special language unit nearby was created about 6 years ago. The one that's 30 miles away was created about 30 years ago. I think it might just be a matter of getting someone to update some records somewhere so if people are looking for that language, they find it nearby.

mevans wrote:The special language unit nearby was created about 6 years ago. The one that's 30 miles away was created about 30 years ago. I think it might just be a matter of getting someone to update some records somewhere so if people are looking for that language, they find it nearby.

It will be the Boundary and Realignment Committee. Your stake president could initiate a recommendation for a change. He would have to coordinate with all of the other affected stake presidents.

So yes, the main geographical ward is coming though the database that serves maps, and then the added available units are the associated units in CDOL.

Also if the data in CDOL doesn't match what maps shows for the boundary of the language units I would send feedback in CDOL and they can get those associations cleaned up to match the real boundaries

It looks like the CDOL and maps data match. so I think lajackson's recommendation applies here - the stake president needs to look at boundary realignment for that special language unit. I forwarded the situation to our stake clerk to investigate.

mevans wrote:What I see is that we're "participating with" a language unit that's about 30 miles away, and a neighboring stake has the same language unit that's about 7 miles away. Some people within our ward boundaries go to the nearby one.

You didn't say if the farther one is in your stake. Or what the boundaries of the two units are. It's possible something needs updating, then again, people's assigned unit is not always the closest meetinghouse.

What we have is that in CDOL, we're participating with that other ward, that is many stakes away. If you look at the distant ward's boundaries in maps, you see the boundaries of all the participating stakes in CDOL; it's quite large.

I brought this to the attention of our stake clerk. He can bring it up with the right people to determine if boundaries should be realigned. The closer unit is in a neighboring stake, and we already share a singles ward with them, so it might make sense for the leaders to review the situation to see if we should also share the language unit with the neighboring stake.

mevans wrote:that is many stakes away.

Ok, then what you're saying makes more sense.

I was thinking of a situation where you're on one end of the stake and the participating unit is on the other end (but in the same stake) while this neighbor stake's unit is closer. You don't always get to go to the closest one. But if your participating unit is multiple stakes away, and you've got a unit just one stake away, that does sound like something that needs adjustment.