Tech Forum

I am getting e-mail requests to do temple work for sealing of both to parents and for couples where the previous ordinances have not be done.
The Lord's House is a House of Order, and it is bad enough for people to ignore the correct ordinance order when they do work.
BUT,for Family Search to be sending temple ordinance requests out through e-mail that also ignore the proper ordinance order is horrendous!
I received just such and e-mail today, and only a few of the over 10 requests were in proper ordinance order.
The initiatory and endowment requests were in order.
The sealing to spouse requests are suggesting that I seal couples together before the males had endowments, and some before they even had initiatory ordinances.
The sealing to parents had the same problems, suggesting that I seal people to parents before the parents had initiatory or endowments and before they were sealed.
When you print a card for the temple, it clearly states, in #3, that ordinances need to be done in order, and that couples need to be sealed before their children are sealed to them, and that couples should be endowed before sealing to each other.

This program needs to be updated to follow the rules you expect temple patrons to follow.
Don't tell me we are all human and make mistakes, I KNOW that. FIX IT!

That does sound like a problem, but nobody here can fix it. This is a user-to-user mutual-help discussion forum, _not_ an official help/support request or bug report channel. It's pretty unlikely anyone in a position to fix the problem will ever see your post.

In order to make sure your concerns are brought to the attention of the right people, please use the Feedback button or link near where you see the problem show up. If there are family history consultants in your ward or stake, they might also be able to raise the problem through official channels. Specific examples, including Person IDs, will be very helpful.

(Edited once to fix punctuation.)

rodmans wrote:When you print a card for the temple, it clearly states, in #3, that ordinances need to be done in order, and that couples need to be sealed before their children are sealed to them, and that couples should be endowed before sealing to each other.

Although I understand your concerns, the actual policy is somewhat different from what you are presenting. For example, item 3 on temple cards says: "Whenever possible, a couple should be endowed before being sealed to each other, and parents should be sealed to each other before their children are sealed to them." The wording "whenever possible . . . should" is different from "needs."

The actual policy is found in a Help Center article: Correct order of temple ordinances. The key sentence is this: "Although vicarious ordinances performed out of sequence are valid, they become effective only after the prerequisite ordinances are completed."

There is a lot of complexity when ordinances are being performed by different people in different temples, with different person records on Family Tree for the same person being merged or unmerged, with different ordinances being done for those different records. It's next to impossible to make sure that everything is performed in the traditional order. Although it's nice to perform ordinances in that order, and the default processes will generally lead to that happening, that is not the requirement. If it were the requirement, it would create a lot of work in analyzing what order ordinances are performed in, invalidating ordinances, redoing them, etc.

It requires a change in old-school thinking, but we all need to take comfort in the policy: "Although vicarious ordinances performed out of sequence are valid, they become effective only after the prerequisite ordinances are completed." Fundamentally, those ordinances are valid. Letting go of a rigid requirement to perform ordinances only in a particular order makes accomplishing the work of salvation much more efficient.

Responding to comment #3

That is exactly the way it was explained to me from family search. Notice the words "whenever possible". I was also told that the ordinances are valid and will be effective when the other ordinances have been completed

Yes ordinances are valid when pre-requesites are completed. But having spent many hours in the temple as a patron, ordinance worker and shift co-ordinator, I often feel the presence of those for whom the ordinance is beeing done.
May experience suggests that if the ordinances are done out of order, those for whom the work is being done cannot be present. But, they can experience the ordinance once the previous ones are completed.