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Hey Everyone! I got a question that I hope someone can help me with. Just a little background, I’m a convert that hates the ward directory. People in my ward like to stop by unannounced so they can tell me what I am not doing correctly. Usually they stop by to tell me I need to be more active, aka give more free service to the church. I hate this! It’s an invasion of my privacy. I don’t need to deal with rude people ambushing me in the privacy of my own home after a hard days work. My two questions are
1. Don’t Mormons know this is rude/ bizarre behavior?
2. Can I get my address and phone number off the ward directory?
I feel like the church only uses my personal info to harass me. Why does every stranger in the ward need my adress and phone number? I don’t have a problem giving my number or adress to people at church who I become friends with, but why does every random person need my personal info?
Sorry for the rant. It’s just as a convert I can’t understand a great deal of Mormon behavior.
Quote:Why does every stranger in the ward need my adress and phone number?
Well, so they can “love” you back into full fellowship of course!😈 Not sure if you can have it changed or not. You could always talk to your bishop about it…:lolno: Their “love” does more to drive me away than it does to keep me around. I’m at church for 3 and 1/2 hours every Sunday, I see these people too much as it is. Unfortunately I don’t think there is any way to get your name off the list. I hope I’m wrong, but I believe it is simply pulled from your membership record. The list is supposed to be confidential, and not available or used for anything “other” than official church use. Unfortunately the visits you describe would be interpreted as valid church use. Honestly I had never thought about the possibility before. Now I realize how different things can look when you do not grow up in the church culture. Most members see the ward as their extended family — I realize some people would also prefer to keep their personal contact info private from some family members, but in practice that can be a difficult request to maintain.
You should speak to your ward membership clerk and have your address and phone number removed from MLS (the church software system). Then when they pull the information for the ward list, yours won’t appear. Be prepared for some pushback, as they want to know where you live and how to get in touch with you. Maybe you can give the bishop that information to appease them a bit. Good luck!
There’s a couple of things: – Leadership (Elder quorum and Ward mission leader) will be able to print your contact details from the ward directory on the computer. They will assign a home teaching team to you and give them your address. You can opt out of having a home teacher if you want to.
– Ward directory is no longer printed, it’s now on the lds.org. The members of your ward can see your contact details (name, address, phone number). But you have the option of restricting that to the leaders only (Branch pres, Elders quorum and WML). To do this, go to LDS.org, log into the website (you’ll need to register first using your membership number which you can get from the branch clerk). Then click on My Household then click on ‘Edit’ then click again on Edit next to ‘Visibility’ – you can then choose whether your Leaders only, your Ward or your Stake can see your contact details.
Finally, the only way to have your name on no list whatsoever is to resign your membership of the church and your name will be completely removed.
AngryMormon wrote:Why does every stranger in the ward need my adress and phone number?
Buuuuttttt, they’re not strangers, they’re your brothers and sisters. Why wouldn’t you want to be visited by family?
😈 … sorry, but I had someone tell me that once and I almost vomited.
:sick: Thanks everyone for the great advice. I’m going to start by going to Lds.org and see what I can do. Sorry if my question seemed like a rant. I greatly appreciate the responses. I was going to say what others said. You can restrict who can see that info, and you can ask (humbly and politely) that you not be contacted at your house. The only new advice:
You might want to leave your phone number on the viewable list if you are asking that nobody visit you at home. Explain that you want people to be able to contact you, but you don’t want unplanned visits. It’s a compromise position, and it comes across as more positive than removing all contact methods.
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