We received the following from Ellen who wanted to share her experience and solution:
In nFS I discovered a relative whose ordinances were ready to do – yet, I knew they had already been done. However, I did not have the specific dates and places information. Instead of having those ordinances redone unnecessarily, I reserved them and set about gathering that information from family sources. It took 6 months, but finally I had enough information to clear this matter up.
As you know, ordinance information cannot be entered by users of the system. In a call to family search support, I learned the only way to solve this was to find the person in the system and combine the 2 or more records, which would have the ordinance data. The theory being that if ordinances were completed then they would be in the nFS system. I spent close to a month, rewording the name, checking other close date possibilities to find the ‘other’ record(s). No luck.
In desperation, I wrote in Feedback and created a case. I submitted very detailed information, so that family search support could ‘see’ and understand my problem. Within 24 hours they replied. They did locate the record with the ordinance information. I never would have found it…he was in the system as LIVING. As they requested, I was then able to send proof of his death and by the 3rd day, his ordinance information was attached to his file in nFS!
Thank you for sharing, Ellen
What this patron describes is pretty typical and she her homework to fix this issue was definitely above and beyond what the average patron would do. As a previous church missionary for new FamilySearch I have two suggestions.
1) As I mentioned this sister went to amazing lengths to solve this issue. It is okay to poke nFS soon with your problem and get them to help you. Sometimes they know tricks or can find things like ancestors that are incorrectly labeled as living.
2) In a sneaky back door sort of way many of the 3rd party affiliates like the one I use, RootsMagic 4 will allow you to upload ordinance data into nFS. However, it doesn’t show with a contributor of the LDS Temple, you show as the contributor.
I personally would do like this sister did and work to make sure the ordinances showed up correctly with the LDS Temple as it’s contributor.