Duplicate temple recommend record

[dansmith]

I'm the executive secretary for my ward. Helping a recently-returned sister missionary with her temple recommend renewal, and my bishop and I are seeing different expiration dates. She seems to have two active recommends at once.

First recommend: issued July 2023 (before serving), expires July 2025, shows up as the expiration date on the bishop's Android Tools app

Second recommend: issued Feb 2025 (by mission president when returning home), expires May 2025, shows up as the expiration date in my iOS Tools app

LCR shows the May expiration date; the bishop's app seems to have an "expiring recommends" report that lists both dates.

Clearly some kind of bug here, but I'm wondering if this is a unique experience? Given the common 18-month length of a mission, it seems like similar overlapping dates would happen frequently. Is there something the mission president should have done to avoid this situation?

[BrianEdwards]

I'm the executive secretary for my ward. Helping a recently-returned sister missionary with her temple recommend renewal, and my bishop and I are seeing different expiration dates. She seems to have two active recommends at once.

First recommend: issued July 2023 (before serving), expires July 2025, shows up as the expiration date on the bishop's Android Tools app

Second recommend: issued Feb 2025 (by mission president when returning home), expires May 2025, shows up as the expiration date in my iOS Tools app

LCR shows the May expiration date; the bishop's app seems to have an "expiring recommends" report that lists both dates.

Clearly some kind of bug here, but I'm wondering if this is a unique experience? Given the common 18-month length of a mission, it seems like similar overlapping dates would happen frequently. Is there something the mission president should have done to avoid this situation?

Based on your description, my initial guess is that this is related to the Tools App not always syncing data correctly. Ask your bishop to do a "Refresh Data" operation (found under Settings on Android), and then check if that resolves the issue.

Many Forum members experience these type of data issues with the Tools App. If the Refresh Data operation works for the bishop, you might also encourage him to regularly do that with his app. Sometimes it's relatively easy to notice bad data, but there's times where you don't know what you're missing and as a leader, that can lead to undesired outcomes.

[lajackson]

Is there something the mission president should have done to avoid this situation?

Well, the mission president did not need to give her a recommend since she already had a valid one. But he was just following his instructions to issue a recommend to a returning missionary that expires in three months. This requires the missionary to visit with his or her bishop and stake president after returning home after their mission.

I think it is a bug. The date in LCR is controlling and the new recommend should have caused the old recommend to no longer be valid. My guess is that she needs to get a new recommend from her local leaders this month (May). If she tries to scan her old recommend at the temple, it should not work.

When she gets her new recommend this month, the reports and Member Tools should catch up. It would probably be worth a call to the GSD to let them know about the situation, though. The temple recorder would also be able to verify the correct expiration and current valid recommend number.

I do not have access to LCR, but if the recommend number is there, the clerk could also check this.

[jdlessley]

I do not have access to LCR, but if the recommend number is there, the clerk could also check this.

The clerk does not have information about the recommend number. He can only see issue date, expiration date, and recommend status.

[mv007]

I discovered a similar issue in my ward (Arizona, US, Bishopric 2nd Counselor) and we are using "digital recommends" where it is printed from LCR and physically signed. There are 22 individuals who appear in the Tools App with multiple recommend statuses and refreshing it does not remove it. The individual members can see this discrepancy on their device/account as well. Looking through as much data as I can find, the recommends are all from 2025 (except for one), interviews performed by two different Bishopric members, two different Stake Presidency members, and affects both regular recommends and proxy baptism recommends. Some full recommends are only issued at this point, not completed by the Stake yet. Note: "?" annotates recommends that were completed without identifying the interviewer at both the ward and stake level in LCR and these recommends cannot be re-printed.

As far as I know, only one member has an actual issue entering the temple. Talking to the temple worker, he let me view the screen that shows the member's name and recommend status when a recommend is scanned at the door. It does this for expired recommends as well.

When this member scans their recommend, a single line of text appears instructing the worker to call the temple presidency and they don't seem to know what is going on either.

[mv007]

Called Global Services and apparently the one sister recommend issues apparently has the wrong recommend number on the physical recommend. Re-printing may have solved the issue, but since this is one that cannot be re-printed, a new recommend must be issued.