Blessing Adults

We have a member of the ward that has a child who is over 9 years old and not baptised. She was given a blessing and her parents wanted her name recorded in the church records. She cannot be baptised at this time due to health reasons. Is there any way to print a certificate and record the blessing? MLS tries to force me to use the convert baptism recording.

Please let me know how I can get this great family a certificate and get the blessing recorded.

Parents are members.

Thanks,
Mike Griffin

Griffweb wrote:We have a member of the ward that has a child who is over 9 years old and not baptised. She was given a blessing and her parents wanted her name recorded in the church records. She cannot be baptised at this time due to health reasons. Is there any way to print a certificate and record the blessing? MLS tries to force me to use the convert baptism recording.

Please let me know how I can get this great family a certificate and get the blessing recorded.

Parents are members.

Thanks,
Mike Griffin

Printing a baby blessing certificate will actually be quite easy, but you need to do it a different route than the one that creates a membership record at the same time (that way is called Record Child Blessing under Record Ordinances). This is done by going to Certificates under Reports/Forms. You fill in all of the fields and print the certificate. A baby blessing is not recorded on a membership record so you will only be printing the certificate for the family's own personal records, while not being saved in the Church's databases.

As for creating a record for someone who is 9 or over, the MLS software restricts ward clerks from creating a record, as it becomes the Mission's responsibility at that point. However, the mission creating a record without a baptism would be an odd solution as well. It appears this question may require a phone call or an MLS message to Church Headquarters' Membership Support personnel.

Good luck.

Griffweb wrote:Please let me know how I can get this great family a certificate and get the blessing recorded.

If I'm understanding correctly, the family is asking for two separate things, 1) the child's name recorded in church records and 2) a blessing certificate.

No. 2) should be no issue. Of course, if the child does not have a record in MLS, this cannot be done through the normal system, but there should be no problem using a blank certificate and filling in the information manually.

However, No. 1) could be difficult. If the blessing took place before her 8th birthday, and it was just an oversight that the record was not created, you should be able to correct the issue and have "a child of record" record created via a special request to CHQ. But as you found out, it is not allowed by church policy to create a record without baptism after the child turns 8.

If the blessing/request to have the name recorded took place after the child turned 8, I see no option other than to wait until she is baptized. I imagine there are provisions to have a record created without baptism for an older child if they are "not accountable," but if this is not the case, I see no alternative.

As a side note, she could be added to the local MLS only database as an "out of unit member." This way she will show up in lists/class roles, but this is not the same thing as having her name recorded in church records.

Greggo wrote:As a side note, she could be added to the local MLS only database as an "out of unit member." This way she will show up in lists/class roles, but this is not the same thing as having her name recorded in church records.

Actually a temporary membership record would make more sense, since an out-of-unit record is meant for something else entirely (it is meant to represent a member living in your ward who is called to serve outside of the boundaries in which they live). A temporary record would be a record for someone who is not a member of your ward and in which you want the name on ward lists.

These are quotes from the Temporary Membership Records wiki article: https://tech.lds.org/wiki/index.php/Tem ... hip_record

mkmurray wrote:Actually a temporary membership record would make more sense, since an out-of-unit record is meant for something else entirely (it is meant to represent a member living in your ward who is called to serve outside of the boundaries in which they live). A temporary record would be a record for someone who is not a member of your ward and in which you want the name on ward lists.

These are quotes from the Temporary Membership Records wiki article: https://tech.lds.org/wiki/index.php/Tem ... hip_record

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears that out-of-unit records, nonmember records and temporary records created for children of record (before they are permanently created at CHQ) are all designated as "temporary records" in MLS - meaning they are only in the local MLS database and do not exist "permanently" at CHQ. I don't see a way to create a different type of "temporary record" than these (at least not in MLS 2.9.4 using the practice database).

I'm aware of the "normal" use of out-of-unit records, but the only other option that I see is to create a nonmember record; however, this option does not allow you to include a birth date - and thus they will not be automatically included in class rolls and such. An out-of-unit record will allow this.

Greggo wrote:Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears that out-of-unit records, nonmember records and temporary records created for children of record (before they are permanently created at CHQ) are all designated as "temporary records" in MLS - meaning they are only in the local MLS database and do not exist "permanently" at CHQ. I don't see a way to create a different type of "temporary record" than these (at least not in MLS 2.9.4 using the practice database).

You're right that these are indeed the only kinds of temporary records and that they are not stored at CHQ as normal records. But they actually are at CHQ in some way, since they are communicated from ward MLS to stake MLS, which can only happen via CHQ servers.

Greggo wrote:I'm aware of the "normal" use of out-of-unit records, but the only other option that I see is to create a nonmember record; however, this option does not allow you to include a birth date - and thus they will not be automatically included in class rolls and such. An out-of-unit record will allow this.

Yes and no. Indeed, a nonmember record contains no birth date and thus will not be automatically included in classes (but a nonmember can be moved manually into most classes). However, the problem with attempting to use an out-of-unit record for the topic of this thread is that in MLS 3.x the Member Record Number is required in order to create an out-of-unit record. For the situation at hand, the person is not a member and thus has no MRN, so there is no way to create an out-of-unit record.

Greggo wrote:I'm aware of the "normal" use of out-of-unit records, but the only other option that I see is to create a nonmember record; however, this option does not allow you to include a birth date - and thus they will not be automatically included in class rolls and such. An out-of-unit record will allow this.

We both just named three types of temporary records (out-of-unit, nonmember, and temporary). How does one create a temporary record? Apparently, it's the records of children who have been blessed but are not baptized yet (which makes sense since they haven't received a Church ordinance yet, especially the one that makes them an official member of the church).

So with that said (and the fact that out-of-unit records are for members of the Church and now require MRN entry), you're right that a nonmember record is the only one left to fit the bill. I agree the birthdate thing seems burdensome, but the wiki article I linked to before (and it's reference to the MLS Help File) say this about working around this issue:

Information on nonmember records will not print on organization lists and rolls, unless the nonmember is explicitly added to the organization, because the organization profiles do not include nonmembers. Nonmembers will print on family type reports such as the directory of members, the telephone directory, and so forth.

mkmurray wrote:We both just named three types of temporary records (out-of-unit, nonmember, and temporary). How does one create a temporary record? Apparently, it's the records of children who have been blessed but are not baptized yet (which makes sense since they haven't received a Church ordinance yet, especially the one that makes them an official member of the church).

There is no way to directly create a temporary record (the kind that is neither nonmember nor out-of-unit). You're close in saying that it's for records of children who have been blessed, but the temporary records are replaced much quicker than you said.

When a child is blessed, the clerk creates a new membership record by doing Record Child Blessing. Alternatively, he can choose the option New Child of Record. In either case, at that instant a Temporary Record is created (with a local MRN that includes the Unit Number), and the request is sent to CHQ on the next Send/Receive.

Once CHQ receives the request, they create a real membership record and assign an actual MRN. On the next Send/Receive after that, the ward receives the actual membership record, and the temporary record is automatically deleted.

Alan_Brown wrote:There is no way to directly create a temporary record (the kind that is neither nonmember nor out-of-unit). You're close in saying that it's for records of children who have been blessed, but the temporary records are replaced much quicker than you said.

When a child is blessed, the clerk creates a new membership record by doing Record Child Blessing. Alternatively, he can choose the option New Child of Record. In either case, at that instant a Temporary Record is created (with a local MRN that includes the Unit Number), and the request is sent to CHQ on the next Send/Receive.

Once CHQ receives the request, they create a real membership record and assign an actual MRN. On the next Send/Receive after that, the ward receives the actual membership record, and the temporary record is automatically deleted.

I see, this may need to be clarified on the wiki then, as that is where I got my information.

mkmurray wrote:I see, this may need to be clarified on the wiki then, as that is where I got my information.

Where on the wiki did you get this? In the Blessing of a child section of Temporary records, it says:

A temporary record is created when a child is blessed and the blessing is recorded in MLS. This is done via Membership Records > Record Child Blessing. After the information is entered and saved, two things will occur:

• A request for a membership record will be queued up to be sent to CHQ on the next Send/Receive.
• A temporary record will be created for the child, so that the child will show up immediately on all appropriate ward lists.

Once the real record has been created by CHQ and transmitted to the ward, the temporary record will be deleted.

That's mighty close to what I said. It says nothing about the real record not being created until baptism, as you suggested earlier in this thread. I don't see anything that needs to be clarified there. Perhaps you were looking somewhere else....

mkmurray wrote:So with that said (and the fact that out-of-unit records are for members of the Church and now require MRN entry), you're right that a nonmember record is the only one left to fit the bill. I agree the birthdate thing seems burdensome, but the wiki article I linked to before (and it's reference to the MLS Help File) say this about working around this issue:

Thanks for the info. It's been some time since I was released from Asst. Clerk, and I was not aware that the newer version of MLS now require MRN's for out-of-unit records.

It may work to manually add nonmembers for classes such as primary and SS, but (unless this has also changed with a later version) a nonmember record cannot be added to rolls such as YM and YW.

We have a number of active YM/YW in our ward who were not blessed and not baptized only because their nonmember fathers will not allow it. I guess without using the out-of-unit record workaround, there is now no way to included them in their respective MLS youth group lists - even manually.

Greggo wrote:It may work to manually add nonmembers for classes such as primary and SS, but (unless this has also changed with a later version) a nonmember record cannot be added to rolls such as YM and YW.

That's close, but not exactly accurate. See the wiki article Classes, where you learn that "... nonmembers can be manually added to Sunday School classes, and to the HP/EQ/RS/SA organizations, but no others (not YSA, YM, YW, or Primary)."

Greggo wrote:We have a number of active YM/YW in our ward who were not blessed and not baptized only because their nonmember fathers will not allow it. I guess without using the out-of-unit record workaround, there is now no way to included them in their respective MLS youth group lists - even manually.

That's true. It's too late now, but they could have been added as a Child of Record prior to turning 8, even if they weren't blessed. Of course, that also requires that you have written permission from the nonmember father, but perhaps he might have granted that permission, even if he would not allow a blessing or baptism.

Alan_Brown wrote: they could have been added as a Child of Record prior to turning 8, even if they weren't blessed. Of course, that also requires that you have written permission from the nonmember father, but perhaps he might have granted that permission, even if he would not allow a blessing or baptism.

Thanks for the clarification Alan - yes, I knew that. In one case, the mother herself did not join the church until after her daughter was older. In another case, there were additions without a blessing for the other children in the family (erroneously done without father's written permission), but it was not discovered that the remaining child did not have a record until after he turned 8.

I think it's a shame that there is no way to include a birth date in nonmember records. I understand that there could be privacy and sometimes legal reasons for not including these in church records, but if permission is given from parents and individuals, I see no problem with it.