My Unreserved List

I am discovering that many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are reserving names on their temple lasts in numbers far beyond their ability to actually do the temple work. In the last couple of years, our ability to find and process names for temple ordinances has increased dramatically as a result of the improvements made to the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. My own list has grown much longer than our family is able to reasonably process. In thinking about the number of entries on my Research List, I came to the conclusion that there are three options:

• Keep the names on the list until their mandatory removal by FamilySearch.org after two years
• Share the names with the temples
• Unreserve the names and return them to the Family Tree as green temple icons

The reality of keeping the names on the list is that other family members are also generating their own names. So they are otherwise occupied in doing their own work for their own family members. Obviously, different families vary in their involvement in temple work as well as their involvement in doing basic research and producing new names for the Family Tree.

In any case, I strongly suggest that a careful and critical evaluation be made of the possibility that the names on the Reserved List will be done in a realistically short period of time. There is a point when adding more names to the Reserve List is simple hoarding. For example, my wife and I live only a few blocks from the Provo, Utah Temple. We have been able to do quite a few names over the past year. However, even with our close proximity to the temple, we are not going to be able to finish all the names on our Research List before we moved to the Washington DC area. This is especially true since the Washington DC Temple will be closed for most of the time we are there.

The next option is that I could share the names with the temples. This is a perfectly acceptable solution and should be considered. However, I would suggest an alternative. Unreserving the names will allow other individuals to find validly documented green temple icons. For this reason, I have been primarily unreserving names. I am then keeping a separate document listing all of the names I have unreserved. In going back through the document, I find that many of the names I have unreserved have been found and ordinance cards printed. In some cases, however, the names of nearly been added to someone else's Reserve List. I hope in these cases that the person actually does the work and is not merely hoarding names.

You might consider reserving your names as a possible alternative.