Bishop ordained by is blank

When I go to the "Ordinances" page of the membership record for a brother in my ward, the "Details" column is blank for his ordination to a bishop, an ordination that happened back in 1979. I have a copy of his certificate that has all the information. How do I add the name of the person who performed the ordinance? There is not an "edit" button for that row, as other rows have.

I'd either use the "send a message" function (I think that can be connected to a membership record), or contact support.

Although, first, I'd look at other bishops or ex-bishops to see what their records look like. I'm not entirely sure that the linage of "bishop" is maintained the way it is for Elder or High Priest.

The ordained by information shows up in LCR for both our current bishop and a former bishop ordained in 2011. So I think that information is being retained now.

I'd check and see if the stake can edit the information. The ward can't edit Melchizedek Priesthood information but the stake can. The same might be true for ordination to Bishop. If not, then you'll need to contact the global service center.

I don't have edit rights for that at the stake level either, but it is definitely being recorded now, so sending it to support/GSC would be helpful.

What I find odd is that I don't think 1979 was the era when that information wasn't recorded. It might have been a victim of the "great simplification" of membership records, but I thought they were able to recover all that - it was just that time period between the great simplification and the realization of the mistake when it wasn't recorded.

So, I'm thinking something else accounts for it - such as an incomplete or illegible record. 1979 was before wards and stakes had computers, so all work was done via documents sent in the postal mail.

russellhltn wrote:What I find odd is that I don't think 1979 was the era when that information wasn't recorded. It might have been a victim of the "great simplification" of membership records, but I thought they were able to recover all that - it was just that time period between the great simplification and the realization of the mistake when it wasn't recorded.

So, I'm thinking something else accounts for it - such as an incomplete or illegible record. 1979 was before wards and stakes had computers, so all work was done via documents sent in the postal mail.

Currently Bishop and Patriarch ordinations are stored in CDOL while all the other priesthood ordinations are stored in CMIS. So what was kept track of when had a different time period for the different systems. I do know that they have been trying to fill in some of that historical data.

jonesrk wrote:Currently Bishop and Patriarch ordinations are stored in CDOL while all the other priesthood ordinations are stored in CMIS. So what was kept track of when had a different time period for the different systems. I do know that they have been trying to fill in some of that historical data.

Keep in mind the first IBM PC (dual floppy) wasn't sold until 1981. The CDOL I knew about was a 1/2" thick booklet printed once a year.

There was a "hole" sometime back in the 80's, when the "by whom" information wasn't recorded and I'm sure they're still trying to play catch-up. But as I indicated, this seems to fall outside of that era. Given that the ordination was long before the current incarnation of CMIS or CDOL, if the data was lost, that would have to be a migration issue that wasn't discovered until all backup was lost, or never recorded at all. Given the communication between CHQ and local units was paper and snail-mail, my guess is that the information was incomplete or illegible so the data-entry person did the best the they could. Assuming a request was sent out asking for the information, the unit failed to follow up on it.