Find a Meetinghouse Help Center, Contact Email, Hotline, Fill in Form, or Chat Service options

It's great that the Church has a map to find Church meetinghouses around the world; however, I've lived in mainland China, Qatar, and Azerbaijan, and visited other countries in which the Church doesn't show any church meetinghouses there. However, Church gatherings still happen in members homes, through virtual meetings, or any other way. How do we suppose to find those? Having a Meetinghouse Help Center, Contact Email, Hotline, Fill in Form, and/or Chat Service in the meetinghouse locator is essential and really life changing for those who end up landing on those countries and cannot find a way to continue their Church activity because they don't know where to find these places. I know the Church cannot always display these locations because of security, cultural sensitivity, or other local laws, but having a channel for members of the Church to get this information, at least privately, would make a difference.

In some countries, the church has to be very careful to follow local law. Sometimes that prohibits a "public presence." When I was deployed to Qatar with the Air National Guard, I reached out to the church Military Relations department for contact information (they have a serviceman's group meeting on the base I was being deployed to).

I know there are a couple of family wards in Doha, Qatar - the stake is in the UAE. One option is to contact your local clerk - they have access to the Church Directory of Leaders (CDOL), which should provide contact information for every bishop, branch president, or Group Leader worldwide. When I was clerk, we used CDOL to get an email address for the local Branch President in Australia when we went there for a son's wedding (this son is not a member of the church) so we didn't have to make a long-distance phone call. He was very gracious in providing information on how to attend their meetings.

I know the Church has to be very careful. That's why having a private channel would be great. It may sound silly, but for some members the idea of asking previous leaders don't even cross their mind. Others don't have a clue of who their leaders are because they haven't been to Church for a while and the first thing they look for is the Internet. Others, like in my case, travel a lot (and on a short notice) and can be found in a new country and the previous ward/branch leader don't reply any messages within a week or they don't even know how to use the directory (I have had leaders and clerks who barely know how to use a computer). A dedicated and private channel would help. These channels don't have to disclose all gathering locations, such as the military base branch, for example, but at least requesting our contact info so we can be contacted by the local bishop or branch president and go from there. These leaders can meet with them individually first before disclosing locations. They can pray and contact previous leaders, etc. but at least we are moving on the right track. Just an opinion anyways. Trying to reach the lost sheep while the other 99 are safe.

jesusrosas wrote:I know the Church has to be very careful. That's why having a private channel would be great.

Note that we can discuss this issue, and it has been in other threads for specific circumstances, but the Tech Forum is primarily user-to-user help and support. The official method to get this issue before those who can do anything about it is through the feedback link found at the bottom of most churchofjesuschrist.org pages. Since the Meetinghouse Locator page does not have a feedback link the feedback link at the bottom of the main Church page. or any other page would suffice. Just make sure the topic of the issue is clearly identified so the message can be correctly and quickly routed to the appropriate department, office, or individual. An added help may be to point them to the thread topic discussion here in this forum.

Keep in mind that until we know and understand the concerns over distributing the information, we're just shooting in the dark as to the solution.

Another thought: contact the global service center (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/hel ... ice-center). I don't know if they'll let a member contact them directly, or if you need to have a clerk or bishopric member initiate contact. For those situations where maps don't have any contact information, I imagine they can get you answers on what to do for where you're traveling.