Emailing Member Information

I am ward clerk. Recently, I received an email from a person who identified himself as a ward clerk in another part of the country. He asked that I contact a mother in my ward and secure the address of her son who was living in his ward, but could not be located. I felt there were too many variables here so I refused to cooperate. I did not feel comfortable even admitting that the mother was in my ward. I consider membership records extremely sensitive. Is there a way to help clerks in other wards in this situations?

The usual way that's done is the ward does the best they can do within their boundaries and then send the record to address unknown. CHQ would then either send the request to you or contact the member directly. It's not necessary for a ward clerk to reach out that far to try and locate someone.

beharris wrote:I am ward clerk. Recently, I received an email from a person who identified himself as a ward clerk in another part of the country. He asked that I contact a mother in my ward and secure the address of her son who was living in his ward, but could not be located. I felt there were too many variables here so I refused to cooperate. I did not feel comfortable even admitting that the mother was in my ward. I consider membership records extremely sensitive. Is there a way to help clerks in other wards in this situations?

That may have been me! I routinely send such emails to bishops and ward clerks when trying to locate lost sheep. I provide enough identifying information about myself so they may find me in the CDOL to confirm my position and contact information. Sometimes I receive replies, and sometimes I don't.
I am very thankful that LCR provides contact information for the bishops of the parents of members whom I am trying to locate.

I am no longer the Clerk, but I don't recall there ever being parent address information on an adult child's records (it has been a few years since I had access to regular membership records so I could be incorrect in this point). If you are looking at the "prior ward" on the membership record, that may or may not have anything to do with the parent's location.

However, I do understand the dilemma - it is a bit frustrating as the Clerk to go through all the steps required to send a record to the address unknown file, only to have the church send it back and essentially say, "I don't believe you - you must be lying. Please try again."

davesudweeks wrote:However, I do understand the dilemma - it is a bit frustrating as the Clerk to go through all the steps required to send a record to the address unknown file, only to have the church send it back and essentially say, "I don't believe you - you must be lying. Please try again."

I'm not any fan of how it's being done, because that's exactly what it feels like. I'd much prefer a report listing past moves sent to the bishop with a notation "please discuss this in ward council to see if anything new has come to light". That would be much nicer.

Or perhaps a list in LCR of all the move outs to address unknown so when new information does come to light the clerk can send a note to CHQ.

davesudweeks wrote:I am no longer the Clerk, but I don't recall there ever being parent address information on an adult child's records (it has been a few years since I had access to regular membership records so I could be incorrect in this point).

This is something new in LCR (possibly just in the last release). On the screen that shows the member's parents it also shows the unit number where the parent's records are located. It's a link which shows the information on the ward when you click on it (ward name and address, bishops name and contact information and button to take you to CDOL). So you can't get the parents address or contact information but you can contact their ward.

davesudweeks wrote:I am no longer the Clerk, but I don't recall there ever being parent address information on an adult child's records (it has been a few years since I had access to regular membership records so I could be incorrect in this point). If you are looking at the "prior ward" on the membership record, that may or may not have anything to do with the parent's location.

I discussed this new feature here:

drepouille wrote:I think it would be nice if someone updated the Wiki article to include a reference to the new feature of LCR that allows leaders to see the unit number of the parents of a member, including the contact information for the bishop of those parents. This is extremely helpful in obtaining current contact information of children who have gone missing.

https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... ts#p141731

If you can verify that the person is a clerk in the other ward, I think asking the parents for an address is a reasonable request. It's better than them being lost forever.