Are you registered as a Ward Family History Consultant?

Pursuant to the agreement between FamilySearch and Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com and findmypast.com, some of the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are already receiving notification to join the three other database programs with a free account. Access to the free accounts is being staged over the next few months. Some of those who should receive early invitations included Family History Consultants. Some of the Consultants in my Ward did not yet get an invitation and so I decided to check to see that they were all registered as Consultants.

There are two place that need to be checked. Each Family History Consultant should make sure that their personal settings, located in a pull-down menu from your name when you sign in to FamilySearch.org, reflects that you want to receive email newsletters etc. There is also a click-on menu item that selects your calling. If you are already receiving newsletters from FamilySearch it is likely that this selection has already been made, but it is always a good idea to check if it has.

In addition, the Ward records in the Church's MLS program (Ward records) should reflect that you have been called as a Family History Consultant. I found by looking at the Ward Directory in the LDS Tools App on my iPhone, that most of the Consultants in our Ward were not listed. I contacted the Ward Clerk in charge of maintaining the callings and alerted him to the problem. As of the writing of this post, there is still only one of the six other Consultants listed. If you are not listed in the Directory with your calling, Ward members cannot find you or your phone number.

I am not sure which of these issue may cause a delay in receiving an invitation to the free programs, but it doesn't hurt to check these setting out anyway.