Print a Report with MRNs?

[tonynocchi]

I don't understand why MRNs are needed at the class at all. If they are needed for youth to set up their own FamilySearch account, why not have the parents ensure that is done prior to the class? I have done this several times before with youth in Family History activities and we always set the expectation with the youth and parents that they must have a FamilySearch account set up prior to the class. One might say that some of the parents won't do it (which may be a true statement) but that is the parent's responsibility, not the ward's. For youth under 12, parental intervention is required to set up a FamilySearch account anyway so having the MRN at the class will do no good for those youth if their accounts are not already set up. Youth who fail to get their account set up will have to watch others participate - perhaps that would be a good life lesson for them to learn earlier rather than later in life.

If this activity is planned for this coming 5th Sunday, the bishopric may have delayed too long to get all the youth to set up their FamilySearch accounts. In my mind, though, that still doesn't justify ignoring church policies. Even if the church doesn't always follow their own policies, that doesn't justify me in not following church policies. But this is my opinion, others may disagree. And it is wonderful that we don't have to agree to still worship the Savior in His church!

I agree 100% with your first paragraph, but having been the YM's President just before the calling went away, I can tell you we'll have plenty of youth show up that don't have an account set up and if they end up watching others participate, they'll probably be more of a distraction than anything else.

As for the bishopric delaying too long to get the youth set up, I can tell you that the bishopric has been pushing this specific topic since at least January 12th.

As the Ward Clerk who is married to the Relief Society President of my ward, and having been in various 'Ward Council' callings the last 15 years, I will add that the 'administration' of the church has a negative effect on the 'ministering' efforts of the church. Just about everything I have seen done in Ward Council in the five wards I've attended over the past 15 years (I retired out of the military recently) was driven by non-church systems (e.g. Google Sheets, Google Docs, text groups, external forums, etc...) and LCR (and previously MLS) is a supplement to those systems. If someone feels they are effectively 'ministering' in their ward with only church provided/approved systems, I'd love to see what they are doing because they have accomplished something that numerous other bishoprics are unable to do.

[russellhltn]

the plan was not to give it to the Family History Staff but for me to sit in the class with them and provide MRNs as needed and I wanted to have the MRNs handy before class.

Ah, that detail was missing from the original post. It sounded like it was going to be handed over to a consultant.

Still, I'd be a bit concerned about securing that page and using it in such a way that no one gets to see someone else's MRN.

Printing IOS sounds like a good idea. You can distribute them ahead of time (ideally folded) and you don't become a bottleneck for youth needing the lookups.

Just a FYI, a member can use either a FamilySearch account or a Church account (just click the church logo first). I'm not sure if it's worth creating a FS account if a church account can be used. I haven't heard where there's any difference.

In the past, the two accounts used to be the same, but in 2021 they split. Depending on when they created the church account (before or after September 13, 2021), they may already have a FS account that's the same as the church account at the time the split happened. However, changes to passwords won't sync between the two. (Convoluted enough?) It's not likely to affect youth, but not impossible either. But certainly recent enough to confuse adults who may give wrong advice.

[lajackson]

And none of those ideas are 'good' given the situation. I can almost guarantee wards across the church are either violating church policy or they aren't 'ministering' to their members very effectively because LCR is so limited in its use.

The clerk will have instant access to every needed MRN in Member Tools. No LCR, no WiFi required (assuming Tools is recently refreshed). That would be the easiest method to help those youth and parents who are not as willing to help themselves, although I doubt that much more than temporary gain will result from those efforts.

And as for ministering, we use ministering interviews. They seem to work quite well for us whether or not the Church servers are up on Sundays.

[BrianEdwards]

One approach we've often done for circumstances like this, is to set a pre-date for a Youth activity (preferably) or Sunday class (if needed), where all the Youth had the opportunity to come prepared to validate their account status. So if we had a Family History youth event scheduled, then we would tell all the youth and parents that anyone wanting to participate in that event, should have their accounts active by that pre-date (registration as well as remembering what their username and password are). And on that pre-date, the youth leaders would simply verify with each youth, that the youth can access their accounts. And for the inevitable youth that are unprepared, the leaders determine case-by-case how to help them resolve that. Some will benefit from a stricter approach where the leaders just repeat what was already told to the youth about what they need to do, others may need ongoing encouragement and one-on-one support.

The advantage of this is that it gives time for the Youth to work things out for themselves (they really are quite resourceful if we give them time and guidance). And avoids a crunch-time situation where everything is dumped on the leaders or clerks to try and resolve during the activity itself.

[ambldsorg]

Is there a way to print a report that shows MRNs?

The MRN is printed on their temple recommend. Why not just ask the youth to bring those? Then you need only worry about those who don't hold current recommends.

[tonynocchi]

One approach we've often done for circumstances like this, is to set a pre-date for a Youth activity (preferably) or Sunday class (if needed), where all the Youth had the opportunity to come prepared to validate their account status. So if we had a Family History youth event scheduled, then we would tell all the youth and parents that anyone wanting to participate in that event, should have their accounts active by that pre-date (registration as well as remembering what their username and password are). And on that pre-date, the youth leaders would simply verify with each youth, that the youth can access their accounts. And for the inevitable youth that are unprepared, the leaders determine case-by-case how to help them resolve that. Some will benefit from a stricter approach where the leaders just repeat what was already told to the youth about what they need to do, others may need ongoing encouragement and one-on-one support.

The advantage of this is that it gives time for the Youth to work things out for themselves (they really are quite resourceful if we give them time and guidance). And avoids a crunch-time situation where everything is dumped on the leaders or clerks to try and resolve during the activity itself.

The bishopric has been pushing this since the second Sunday in January but inevitably we're going to have several youth show up who have had plenty of opportunity and encouragement but have not completed the task. It's the youth leaders that are worried about this the most and since they work with the youth way more than I do, I'm sure their concerns are well founded.

[tonynocchi]

Is there a way to print a report that shows MRNs?

The MRN is printed on their temple recommend. Why not just ask the youth to bring those? Then you need only worry about those who don't hold current recommends.

We are, but since we end up re-printing youth temple recommends on a regular basis because they get misplaced and we have youth who show up to the Temple without them...we're going to have more than just those who don't hold current recommends to worry about.