Reservations limited to 300: WHY? More participation: HOW?
Will non-genealogists start submitting temple names now?
Will temple attendance increase? Will more members obtain a recommend?
. . . . . because genealogists are now limited to reserving 300 names???
This restriction certainly creates a "glass ceiling" to reduce the amount of research and name submission by genealogists in the church.
HOW does this restriction create MORE PARTICIPATION???
My deceased ancestors that have been found are certainly happy for themselves (being able to expect their name will be called out of the temple file in the near future. They are sad for their undiscovered family because this restriction will SLOW THE WORK of submitting temple names. I am just thankful that a majority of my ancestor's work has been submitted.
Answers
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There is not going to be any restriction on submissions. You can discover just as many of your family as you possibly can and reserve their names for ordinances.
The only restriction is on how many names (where did you hear the number?) can remain on your personal reservation list. All the rest of your submissions need to be shared with the temple. There will no limit on your shared with temple list.
The reasoning behind it seems pretty straight forward. To many people apparently have more people in their personal reservations lists than they can complete the ordinances for in their lifetimes. By requiring people to share names with the temple, so that relatives of those people can complete those ordinances by finding them through Ordinances Ready, those ordinances will actually get completed rather than sit on someone's reservation list for decades.
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Dan
I am just another 'lowly' User/Patron ...
[ And, I happen to be a Member of the Church ... ]
FYI
Regardless, of how you (and, I; and, MANY others, may feel) ...
The WHY, is plain as day ...
To encourage more participation from relatives
It certainly DOES NOT mean, that we have to like it ...
But ...
That Said ...
Regardless of what we like, we just have to work with it.
Here is the Article in the 'FamilySearch' "Blog":
Update for Temple Ordinance Reservation Lists—New 300 Count
The HOW, is another matter ...
Brett
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Just found the blog article which reads: "Starting in November 2021, personal temple reservation lists will have a new maximum of 300 rows per FamilySearch user. This update is intended to encourage members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to use all the resources available to complete their ancestors’ temple work in a timely manner."
There is no limit to names shared with the temple.
So keep the closest three hundred family names that you want to do personally on your personal list and share everything else so that your relatives, and the general church membership, can help get the work done.
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If a person attends the temple just once a week and participates in just one ordinance, 300 endowments (only) on a person's reservation list will take them 300 weeks. With regular temple closures, they would be able to possibly complete that work in 6 years! There are many people with lists in the thousands or tens of thousands. In effect, keeping a large list of ordinances on your own personal reservation lists, locks those individuals away from quickly receiving temple ordinances. You can share unlimited ordinances to the shared temple file which will allow others, who are also related to those same people, to help you complete the work quicker. And it will give that other member an opportunity to participate in an ordinance for one of their relatives. This may be a heart turning experience for that person who may want to be more involved in family history and temple work.
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How will that work? When I reserve a name (even if I intend to immediately share with temple), it's on my personal reservation list until I go and share it. Or is there going to be a change so I can just "reserve and share with temple" all at once?
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As I understand it, we will need to reduce our personal lists either by completing ordinance work or sharing names with the temple to under three hundred before we can reserve any more names. Neither my wife nor I have lists longer than that, so I can't test that out, however.
Keep in mind that names that we have gotten ready for reserving, and so have green icons, and those we have shared with the temple, which have green clock icons, will both be found by Ordinances Ready for relatives of those individuals to find and complete. I'm not sure which of these to situations pop up first in Ordinances Ready at this point.
Since the general temple list is going to be turned into one list for all temples, and names will be pulled by the temple in a first in, first out sequence, I suspect there is a good chance that either type of green icon will be found by a relative using Ordinances Ready and the work completed sooner than a name that needs to work its way to the top of the general temple list and be printed out by a temple.
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Here is the updated blog article:
And here is the blog article that contains the FAQs for the new limit:
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This policy is aimed at getting our names off our personal lists and onto the temple list so they can get done faster. That seems fine in theory, but I have heard many times from temple workers and temple presidents that at the current rate of church temple attendance, there is already a backlog of many years to complete the names that are already on the temple list. I'm sure that Covid temple closures have made this backlog grow faster than ever. Because of this, I have never shared a name with the temple system because it seemed unlikely that it would get done any faster than if it sat on my list and I shared names manually with family when I could.
Does anyone know if this temple list backlog situation is true? If it isn't then this new policy makes more sense. If it is true, I can't see myself adding to the problem by submitting names to this list.
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Using Ordinances Ready, any of your 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th cousins of any remove will be given names from your shared with the temple list. The family members that you know that you currently manually share names with can also pluck them off your temple-shared listed using Ordinances Ready.
If you have 2000 names on your temple list, you might complete name #2000 in about twenty years. If you share all of those with the temple, a distant relative using Ordinances Ready might complete that name tomorrow.
If you are really active at the temple and get to name #2000 in five years and it is still sitting on your shared with the temple list, just unshare it then and do it yourself.
View your temple-shared list as just another place to store reservations until you are able to complete the work and then be pleasantly surprised when the work is completed long before you were ever able to get around to it.
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When the temple department announced phase 3 (one year ago), I realized that my local temple would be months before we were in phase 3. At that time, I shared my entire reservation list to the shared temple list - instead of keeping them "locked" on my list. It was so thrilling for me to receive notifications that my distant-to-me cousins on my convert father's line were completing temple work all over the USA in temples that had moved to phase 3 before my temple. I was sold! I leave everything in the shared with temple list now and only pull back the ordinance for each appointment I have. My husband and children do the same with their lists. It is a weekly, if not daily conversation in our home about the notifications we are receiving of temple work being done all the time. Much more than we could do ourselves.
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I have shared a long list of endowments with the temple, but only very rarely is one of those endowments actually completed.
I have the best success by talking personally with family members, friends, and ward members, and then handing them name cards to take to the temple. Even then, the work I share with others progresses slowly because so many people do not attend the temple very often.
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So really, there should be no concern on anyone's part at all with this new limit since our Shared-with-the-temple list has no size limitation at all. Everyone can just continue to do as much research as they want, reserve all the ordinances of as many individuals that they are authorized to do so as they want, and just proceed as they always have.
The only effect of the change is that some ordinances will get taken care of by others. Which is a good thing if someone has tens of thousands of names reserved.
It's too bad the explanation of this was too vague and has caused such unneeded panic. There should have been more stress on the fact that there is still no limit to our total (personal+shared) reservation lists. If names are shared with the temple and don't get completed before we can do them, then there is no difference between sharing and not sharing them. When we can get to them, we just pull them back off the shared list.
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The recent addition of Family Groups may also help those with more names to share them with close family members and reduce their 300 limit list at faster rate since they would not only be doing names themselves but anyone in the shared list can also do names. Sharing with a Family Group will not affect the 300 on the list as the count is those on your personal list plus any share with a Family Group but there is a greater likelihood of completion if available to more people.
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It is true. However, when a name is shared with the temple, it still shows up as green on FamilySearch, but with an icon in the center. That means that someone can request the work. So, you can share it with the temple and will still get notified when it gets done, and you will also get notified when a relative requests to do the work on their own. I've been on both ends of that and it works fabulously!
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I was in a meeting not long ago. Someone made a tongue-in-cheek comment to another brother who was bragging about the number of names he had on his temple reservation list. The comment was, "so, you like running your own personal spirit prison." The intent of that comment was to say that if names are bound in an individual's temple reservation list, then those spirits are also bound and cannot progress. If the owner of the list cannot perform the ordinances in a timely fashion, and will not share the names, and if that list is quite long, those spirits will languish for years or decades. If the owner of the list shares those names with the temple inventory, those spirits will likely have their ordinances performed much sooner.
I do not want anyone to feel judged, but as others have previously shared there needs to be common sense with the number of names shared and number of names reserved on a personal list. I have personally worked with a sister who had more than 7,600 names reserved. I did not comment one way or another to this sister about the number of names on her list. I have heard second hand from people who have in excess of 20,000 names reserved. I wonder are these names truly related to the submitter. The First Presidency stated in a letter on February 29, 2012: "Our preeminent obligation is to seek out and identify our own ancestors. Those whose names are submitted for proxy temple ordinances should be related to the submitter." Then again on October 8, 2012, the First Presidency encouraged those with large numbers of reserved family names to “release these names in a timely manner so the necessary ordinances can be performed.” So this is not a terribly new policy. Indeed these letters were sent almost nine years ago. To my mind, we as Latter-day Saints have not implimented this instruction. So now the cap on the number of names to be reserved has been placed.
I fear there is a tendancy to think some are better than others because they have submitted hundreds and thousands of names for temple work, or that they will have greater blessings because their reserved temple list is so huge.
The goal of family history work is not to see who can compile the longest list of names in a personal temple reservations file, the goal is to see that the ordinances are completed.
Final thought: May the Lord bless you as you pursue your family history work. May the Lord comfort your mind and heart. With the Lord in charge, all will be well.
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@MPS1 WELL SAID! Thank you. I really like your response. It is perfect. Yes, the ultimate goal is to get the work done for those waiting, and there may be some close relatives you want to do yourselves, for sure, but since we are all brothers and sisters, let's all get everyone's work done together. Thank you for your post.
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I have over 32,000 names that I want to SHARE with the temple. Under the new 300 name reservation limit I cannot because in order to "Share" a name with the temple I first need to "Reserve" it. If I have reached to 300 name limit I am restricted. It seems to me that this is a programing glitch that needs to be corrected. How about a click button that says "Reserve for temple"? That way we're not limited in sharing. Please!
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Where are these 32,000 names now? You can always move everything to your shared with temple list, reserve 300 more, move all of them to your shared with temple list, and do this repeatedly until you have transferred all 32,000 to your shared with temple list. Then pull back the 50 you are going to personally complete over the next two years. Then, since the majority of names on your shared with temple list will be sitting there for a few years, as you need names for yourself again, just pull them off of that list back onto your personal list for you and your family to complete.
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Are the temples running out of names? It is my understanding that there are more ordinances added/reserved than are completed each year. If that's true, the only way the work can go faster is if people go to the temple more often. Do people go to the temple and get turned away because there were no names available?
Some of the smaller temples where I live now are only open a few days a week or by appointment (pre-Covid). With Covid, I imagine the backlog of names is huge. The limiting factor is patron access and attendance.
Ordinances expire automatically in 2 years if they're not getting done. So I don't understand how someone can 'lock up' thousands of names indefinitely. If the reservation holder isn't making progress on them they will automatically be pulled off of their reservation list. So the example of taking 6 years or 20 years to do names doesn't seem like a real situation.
I personally know several people that go to the temple every single day and do 15-20 endowments per week. So there are some rock stars out there doing hundreds of endowments per year.
I am surprised to hear that shared names are being done quickly and regularly for some people. I have shared names in 2018 that haven't been done yet and I see some shared ordinances that have been sitting since 2013.
For me I feel a strong responsibility to make progress for people that I have reserved. The shorter the list, the less work I feel I need to do. So having a shorter list doesn't help the work go faster in my case. Unless someone ever picked up my shared names (which is rare). But even then, more patrons have to go to the temple if work is to be done faster. I don't see how reducing the size of a few people's list will make that happen, but maybe I am missing something.
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The more comments I read on this new policy of 300 lines of personal temple reservations the more I see its greats benefits not only in its stated purpose of getting temple work done but also in teaching a few things about how Family Tree works and how it is suppose to get us to work together.
First off, I have to say I think a lot of people are misunderstanding a critical point. This new policy does not limit the number of reservations we can make at all.
- 2000 names on my personal list and 0 on my shared list is 2000 reservations that I have full control over.
- 300 names on my personal list and 1700 on my shared list is 2000 reservations that I have full control over.
- 0 names on my personal list and 2000 on my shared list is 2000 reservations that I have full control over.
There is no functional difference between these three situations aside from the fact that someone else, by going to the temple and getting a name, or using Ordinances Ready to get a name, will complete some of the ordinance for me.
I also think that 300 is a pretty reasonable number. It is more than adequate to cover five generations of direct ancestors and their children. Beyond that, there are so many other people that can claim equal "ownership" of relatives due to the same or closer relationship to them that we have, that there is no reason not to let them have equal opportunity to complete their temple work even though we did the research to find them.
Next, from multiple posts, it is becoming evident that during the time of temple closures, some people have been removing hundreds or thousands of 90-day reservations from the general temple lists by putting that many names on their personal lists, preventing Ordinances Ready from providing those names to relatives where temples are open and preventing the ordinances from being completed just through the general temple process the way that the people who originally researched and shared those name wanted to have done. This new policy will put a stop to that.
The two main complaints with the new policy that seem to be arising are:
1) If I share all my reserved names with temple, the work will never get done. So what? When you have the chance to complete the work yourself or directly give it to someone else to complete, just pull it off your shared with temple list where you have been storing it and take care of the work.
2) If I share all my reserved names with the temple, someone else will do the work. So what? Keep your grandfather on your personal list but let the grandchildren of your 10th cousin four times removed find him on your shared with the temple list either in Family Tree via the green temple with clock icon or via Ordinances Ready and take care of the work.
Consider this situations:
Cousin John and Cousin Henry don't know one another and haven't figured out how to contact each other.
Cousin John is a great researcher and has 5000 names on his personal reservation list. Every morning he spends a hour un-reserving and re-reserving names that are near their two year expiration date so he doesn't lose them. He lives too far from a temple to get there more than once or twice a year. At most he can get 10 endowments done per year.
Cousin Henry starts every morning, Tuesday through Saturday, attending a 6 am endowment session, some days two or more sessions. He completes about 300 endowments per year. He would love to take some family names, but isn't much of a researcher. When he does look through eight generations of his family tree and all the collateral lines, he can see thousands of blue "In Progress" icons that some guy named Henry has reserved.
In contrast to this situation:
Cousin John and Cousin Henry don't know one another and haven't figured out how to contact each other.
Cousin John is a great researcher and has 5000 names on his shared with the temple list. He lives too far from a temple to get there more than once or twice a year. At most he can get 10 endowments done per year. But that doesn't matter. Since all of his names are shared with the temple, none of them ever expire. When he goes on a temple trip, he pulls five names to his personal list, prints the cards and completes them.
Cousin Henry starts every morning, Tuesday through Saturday, attending a 6 am endowment session, some days two. He completes about 300 endowments per year. Every evening he looks through eight generations of his family tree and all the collateral lines where he can see thousands of green 90 day reservation icons that this guy Henry has shared with the temple. He picks a name, prints a card, and completes it the next day.
Which of these do you think is better?
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That's actually a really good strategy to avoid having to go maintain your reservations every 2 years. One question, though. If I share with temple and, say, a year later, it hasn't been done and I put it back in my reserved list to do, will the share date just resume from how long it had when I shared it, or will it reset to 2 years?
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Additionally, it will help those beyond the veil receive ordinances in a more timely manner.
There certainly can be benefits with the new system, but I don't understand how it makes the work go faster unless people are going to the temple and being sent home because there are no temple names to do.
If I go to the temple and do one ordinance, whether it is from my list, a shared list, grabbed via Ordinance Ready, or a name provided by the temple when I get there, only one ordinance has been completed.
The new system will result in some people's work being done sooner or later than it would have without the new system. But for any person's work that is done sooner, that means another person's work will be done later.
I could be misunderstanding though. Which is not uncommon :)
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@cmillionaire I just pulled one from the shared with the temple and it had my original reservation date on it. It's because, even when you share it with the temple, you are the one who reserved it, so that reservation date stays the same whether you share it with the temple, or put it back in your list. The benefit of sharing them with the temple is the reservation doesn't expire, so you should only pull the ones out that you know you can do in the 90-day window it gives you.
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@JeffLuke that is a valid comment, for sure. It is true, for the most part. What I see that would be different is on a personal level. If someone has so many reservations that are not shared that reach the 2-year window, then they will be moved off that person's reservation list. So, on a personal level, if you are sharing them, and other relatives (distant and close) see the green with the icon in the center, they can go in and request the reservation and therefore your work can get done faster. Yes, everyone's work is always getting done, but on a personal level, it can be streamlined a lot more if they are shared and therefore more accessible to other relatives.
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@cmillionaire, good question. I have no idea. But if one only pulls a reservation off one's shared with the temple list the day one is going to print that card and take it to the temple, it really shouldn't matter.
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Thanks for looking at that. So, just to confirm, it gives you 90 days from when you unshared it?
No, it doesn't matter then. I just wanted to make sure it wouldn't release the name because it's over the time limit just as I unshare it.
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Hello. Another member of my ward and I both noticed that when we shared some of our reservation list with the temple system this week, that the number in our reservation list went down, but the number in our shared list did not change. The majority of names in our temple files were already shared with the temple, but we wanted to support this new change and get our reserved list under 300. We are wondering why these are no longer showing up in our list.
He then tried sharing one name at a time and then searching that person's name in his temple file after he shared the ordinances. When he did so, they no longer showed up in his file. However,when he went to their person page, his name was displayed with their shared ordinances. Is the fact they have disappeared from the temple file a glitch? Or is there a limit to how many shared names are displayed in our temple files? We are hoping to still be able to be notified when the ordinances have been completed among those names we have shared with the temple. We'd love to know your thoughts as to why this is occurring.
Thank you,
Melissa Knapp
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@cmillionaire that is correct. When you unshare it, a note should pop up that if you do it, you have 90 days to complete the ordinance work. It's been working smashingly well for me to share them with the temple (and I love seeing people claim the reservation from there, and a few are getting done by temple printing) and when I need other cards, I go on and unshare and wa-laa! Super simple!
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It sounds like your view of the list is out-of-sync. This happens from time to time when many changes are happening all at once on FamilySearch. In order to fix this, you need to reset the FamilySearch cookies on your device. https://www.familysearch.org/cookies
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If you go back 4 gens you will have most of your relatives in the 300 and still never get through doing ordinances for them in years. This mostly affects converts who are the only members. I think it should have been 100 reserved but too many would complain. If you share with the temple and they are still there in a year, take them back and do them. This will hasten the work and get them done. Thank you!
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