Giving members access to Preach My Gospel App?

[JamesHeilpern@gmail.com]

Hi all:

I am a Spanish group leader. Yesterday, I was notified that the mission would be closing our area. We have a number of investigators who are praying about a date for baptism. The group leadership has a number of RMs, and our current plan is to assign them to carry on the teaching in the absence of the full-time missionaries.

However, we will not have access to any of the teaching records. Is there any way that an individual member in an area without full-time missionaries can be given access to the Preach My Gospel App, so that we can have access to the missionaries contact list, teaching records, etc.? We tried to find a way to print their records, and it appears that that is impossible by design.

Help?

[JamesHeilpern@gmail.com]

Hi! I'm a Spanish Group Leader in Virginia. I recently learned about the My Covenant Path app. Unfortunately, it does not appear on my Tools app. In fact, I do not have access to any reports. Is there a way that the stake can change this? Our Spanish group covers the geographic area of six wards. As a result, if the Spanish elders are teaching someone in Ward1, their records will show up on the My Covenant Path report of the bishop/EQP/RSP of Ward1, but investigators in Ward2 will show up in Ward2. Meanwhile, the group leadership doesn't have access to ANY of them. Is there a way around this so that the Group leadership can be given access to everything the Spanish elders are doing?

[rmrichesjr]

Please keep in mind that this forum is a user-to-user discussion area. Nobody here has any authority to change anything on official Church systems. One way to request official support is via the Feedback link or button in apps or the Church website. The other is to raise the issue with your stake president and ask him to run the request up his chain of command.

[rmrichesjr]

Moderator note: Because the two new topics being discussed in the first two posts are so similar, I merged the topics.

[BrianEdwards]

Short answer: it's not possible, and my personal thought is that it's unlikely to change.

Long answer: Your situation is likely different than ours in our area, so I'll just speak to what I know. The stakes in our nearby area all have either a stake-wide Spanish-language group or branch. When a Spanish-speaking person is baptized in a stake with a Spanish group, if the new member desires to continue meeting with the Spanish group, their member record would be created in the English ward where the Spanish group resides. The same thing applies where there is a Spanish branch. Regarding friends/investigators, the Spanish-language missionaries are co-located in the Spanish branch or the English ward that has the Spanish group, so everyone being taught in Spanish throughout the stake, would be kept by the local Spanish-language missionaries. Again, this is our unique situation, I'm sure it's done quite differently elsewhere based on distinct needs. A couple of thoughts:

1) If your area is not truly being closed but rather is losing language-specific assigned missionaries, that seems similar to many parts of Utah and elsewhere, where a single missionary companionship covers at times a large number of congregations, possibly even multiple stakes. I would assume that however that situation is handled, might be applicable to your new circumstance where there aren't any language missionaries specifically assigned to your ward.

2) Specific to group leaders, right now the Handbook only gives a group leader authority to organize and conduct group meetings (aka sacrament and second hour). A group leader does not have any traditional leadership role. In practice, group leaders can function from a minimal amount of responsibility, to actively working alongside the existing leadership (EQ/RS/Ward Mission) to support their stewardships. I understand very well how this limits group leaders from things they feel they should be doing. My perspective is that given the current organizational policy, the best approach is for the group leader to not feel the responsibility of managing things like My Covenant Path. Instead, the RS/EQ Presidencies along with the Ward Mission Leader, should be tracking this, and then actively delegating appropriate tasks to the group leader, as a language-specific resource for the work of salvation.