Out-of-Unit assignment -- HEEEEEEELP!

[craigspencerbelnap]

Folks -

My wife and I are now serving as full-time MLS missionaries in Taiwan. We support a Branch and a Ward.
We are flying blind because we cannot seem to get the out-of-unit assignment into our Branch and Ward. So, we have no info on all the new members that we are trying to help (no calling so no My Covenant Path access). We have now tried twice to get assigned into our Branch and both times there was some sort of system issue.

Sunday it was clearly a LCR total system error--because there were other things the clerk could not do. Yesterday though it seemed to just be an "out-of-unit" issue; It cannot find our membership with our number and the screen is doing some bizarre flickering. Not sure what to do. Since I am not a clerk, all I can do is sit beside them but there's no progress. This is really essential to us moving the work forward here and it is exasperating that it is taking so long (took a while for me to get my home ward clerk to explain the "out-of-unit" function so I could work with them on that.)

Any suggestions or help?

[rmrichesjr]

As a ward membership clerk, I have done out-of-unit assignments for full-time senior couples in my ward. When the local clerk's computer and LCR are working properly, it has been very easy to do. However, I have not ever tried to set up an out-of-unit assignment if another ward/branch already had such an assignment in place. It's possible the Church systems might not allow multiple assignments.

There might be something flaky with the local unit computer or browser profile. Deleting cookies and clearing browser cache might possibly help with that. Trying a different computer or other device might also help with that.

It's conceivable that there might possibly be internet difficulties unique to Taiwan. Based on the number of times you and the clerk have tried to do things, it might be time to call the GSD. Since it's the clerk who will need to do the operations, it should probably be the clerk who calls.

[BrianEdwards]

This seems to be a somewhat common experience for senior missionaries. You might also consider sending this feedback up through the Mission "chain-of-command". From my perspective, if a Mission is going to assign senior missionaries to a unit, the Mission should take the lead on communicating with the Stake to define what the role of the senior couple will be, and what corresponding access is desired. Then the Stake President can work with the Bishop (or Branch President) so he organizes the local leaders to support the missionary couple, and the Stake Clerk can work with the local clerk to set up needed access (out-of-unit records, etc). Perhaps the Mission Tech Support person (which I'm told each Mission has) could also be a resource if needed.

In practice it seems many senior missionary couples are left to work this out themselves.