Search for forwarding addresses of lost members by contacting member parents

I have a few members in my unit that have moved out but I have no idea where to find them. However their IOS shows that their parents are members. If I contacted the parents I could find a forwarding address. Is there a way to contact the parents through their membership number?

bro02036 wrote:I have a few members in my unit that have moved out but I have no idea where to find them. However their IOS shows that their parents are members. If I contacted the parents I could find a forwarding address. Is there a way to contact the parents through their membership number?

I doubt that you would be able to get that information. However, your desire to locate the members is admirable. I would advise you to contact Local Unit Support. They can tell you if information is available for contacting the parents, but even if it is not, they can advise you if your suggestion can be passed along to people at CHQ that try to locate lost members.

But there are also a lot of other suggestions for finding lost members in the wiki article Locating members; you might try some of those ideas as well.

My understanding is there's a team at CHQ that does exactly that - uses the information they have to try and contact other family members.

My experience has been that CHQ has much better resources to find people than I do as ward clerk. Once we verify the member has moved out and have exhausted reasonable efforts to determine where, I bring it up in Bishopric meeting for the Bishop to authorize sending to the "Address Unknown" file. We certainly cannot do the members any good by hanging on to their records if we have no clue where they have gone.

I have helped the effort a time or two as well - not too long ago, a member provided the address of their less-active son & family who had just moved (he was not within our stake before or after the move). I used MLS to send a note to Membership support with the address information and received a nice reply back from them that the missing member was now in their correct ward.

RussellHltn wrote:My understanding is there's a team at CHQ that does exactly that - uses the information they have to try and contact other family members.

I believe it's a senior missionary calling for the most part. Sometimes they go one better than calling and move the child's record back to the parents' ward. I won't comment on the appropriateness of that move, but that action certainly motivates a ward clerk to ask the parents for an address.

mfmohlma wrote:I believe it's a senior missionary calling for the most part. Sometimes they go one better than calling and move the child's record back to the parents' ward. I won't comment on the appropriateness of that move, but that action certainly motivates a ward clerk to ask the parents for an address.

We just got one of those Wednesday evening. Sent from a Student Ward in Utah for a YSA. The address listed was:
"Street: To his Parents Ward
City: We don't know where they live."

LOL... He is the son of my Finance Clerk - I'm fairly certain he did NOT move back home, but should find out Sunday where he moved to...

davesudweeks wrote:My experience has been that CHQ has much better resources to find people than I do as ward clerk. Once we verify the member has moved out and have exhausted reasonable efforts to determine where, I bring it up in Bishopric meeting for the Bishop to authorize sending to the "Address Unknown" file. We certainly cannot do the members any good by hanging on to their records if we have no clue where they have gone.

I have helped the effort a time or two as well - not too long ago, a member provided the address of their less-active son & family who had just moved (he was not within our stake before or after the move). I used MLS to send a note to Membership support with the address information and received a nice reply back from them that the missing member was now in their correct ward.

In our ward when we send records to the "address unknown file" they keep coming back to our ward. Any recommendations?

A couple of useful websites are zabasearch.com and whitepages.com

aclawson wrote:A couple of useful websites are zabasearch.com and whitepages.com

Those sites are both included in the Locating members wiki page I linked to earlier; there are many listed there as well.

jtsummie wrote:In our ward when we send records to the "address unknown file" they keep coming back to our ward. Any recommendations?

If you've verified they aren't at the last address known in your ward boundaries nor any other possible addresses as per web searches make mention of the addresses you've checked in person that are confirmed as not there. Send all the known invalid addresses for that person within your ward boundary when you send the record to "address unknown" so SLC can know that they have been attempted already.