Phantom Member

Last week, another ward in our stake sent over a membership record to our ward. The only reason I know this is because I was using lds.org, looking up recent move-ins and was surprised by the new name. I've been on MLS at the building a few times this past week and yesterday, but her record still has not been moved there into our ward. So apparently I have a member trapped in limbo...

Since I have access to the necessary information from lds.org (I have access to her full membership record there), I'll probably just put in my own request for record to try and move it in on our end. But I was curious if anyone else has ever seen one of these "phantom members" and if there is any possible cause other than a tech glitch?

We also had a similar problem in our Ward, last week. I requested the record of a member, from Portugal. The record appeared in lds.org within 24 hours, but didn't appear in MLS until the end of the week. The request was carried out on the Sunday.

The only strange thing that I have noticed about this members record, is that on lds.org, there is now an Out of Stake calling showing, but in MLS no sign of said calling. At the moment my conclusion is that the member may not have been released by the previous Ward, before his records were sent and may be a contributing factor for the delay, in the record arriving.

I haven't had the opportunity to talk to the member about this yet.

This of course leads to the question of how to release the calling, if the members records no longer reside in the previous Ward?

I had a similar incident when a member moved here from Utah. He showed up in the reports on lds.org as having a stake calling from his previous stake, but that didn't get carried over into MLS. However, the calling disappeared from lds.org within a week or so.

I would guess that what is happening is that the member move request when up (either from the old ward or the new ward). That request is processed at CHQ and the membership record at CHQ is moved to the new unit. Then lds.org includes them in the new ward and fetches all the callings for each member (including the callings still in CDOL from the old ward/stake). When the old ward next does a send/receive they get the confirmed move request and remove the callings (they are then marked to send the release to CDOL). The next send/receive then sends the release to CDOL.

I'm not 100% sure if that is how the MLS piece works, but it seems to explain it. Since there are likely multiple send/receives required, it is easy to see how the callings may stay around for a week or two.

JonesRK wrote: When the old ward next does a send/receive they get the confirmed move request and remove the callings (they are then marked to send the release to CDOL). The next send/receive then sends the release to CDOL.

I'm not 100% sure if that is how the MLS piece works, but it seems to explain it.

I think most of the time this works, especially at the ward level. I also know that I held two callings in different stakes until the former stake went into their MLS and actually released me. That, however, was not due to a membership record move. It was due to a stake division, and keeping me in the former stake kept me in CDOL, and allowed me to administer things in the new stake during the transition period.

I saw this happen with a newly baptized convert in our ward. The Mission Office had the record created and I could look it up in the Leader Portal online for at least two weeks without it ever coming to our ward's MLS. I eventually used the MRN from the Leader Portal to request the record in MLS. That worked.