FamilySearch adds New Family Groups Feature

 New Feature Makes It Easy to Collaborate and Share Ordinances with Family Groups

This new feature from FamilySearch allows members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to share temple ordinances with family members. Our family was chosen to participate in this new feature some time ago before the feature was released, and we have found it to be very helpful. The article linked above has all the details about how this feature works and how to start using it to share ordinance work for the temples with other family members. 

There are several issues addressed by this new feature. The first was the need to print ordinance cards for sharing and to physically share cards with others. It was difficult for members to keep track of the work that was done and to retrieve the physical cards from others once shared. By allowing ordinances to be shared "on demand" where family members can print just the specific cards they need at a particular time, the whole process of physically distributing cards is avoided. In addition, FamilySearch now send each member who has done the research and created the ordinance opportunities with a list of all the ordinance performed. Presently, it is still necessary to take a physical ordinance card to the temples. In addition, some of the temples no longer support printing cards 

With a family group, every member of the family who wants to participate can be added to the group. Those who have ordinances to share can then add those ordinances either from their reserved list or from those names that have already been shared with the temples. This creates a pool of names that any group member can access for temple service. As is probably the case in many families, our family has a few people who are doing research and adding names to their own reserved or shared lists. This new feature lets the family work as a unit to do the ordinance work for those who have been identified.

The whole process is much simpler than it sounds. Please read the entire blog post article for the details. This has been a long-requested feature and avoids the need for last-minute requests for names and other issues. See New Feature Makes It Easy to Collaborate and Share Ordinances with Family Groups.

If you are reading all this and wondering what it is all about, I suggest this article published by the Church. Baptisms for the Dead.