It seems to me that some areas suffer who are not yet on NFS. When your temple is on NFS, the REGULAR stake assignments have adequate names to pull from as the temple downloads the expected need. When special trips..like youth tours of temples (we see those a few times a year in Newport Beach..ie let's go to Disneyland, the beach and the temple :-) ) are planned, temples may require the names to be provided by the touring group. This is because the names we pull down from NFS have quota and expectation that a certain like percentage will receive endowments as well. There is a magic formula that I've heard our recorder refer to. When our temple first went to NFS, the recorder could pull down whatever amount of names he thought was realistic and could do so frequently if he miscalculated. My understanding is that now they pull down just so many. There are days when we have no male sealings to children in our sealing session because we've "run out" and cannot, according to the formula, pull down more until endowments are completed. I liked the original way better and it made more sense...but the real challenge is the number of male endowments being completed. Michele In a message dated 6/3/2009 10:54:58 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, mscscott28@yahoo.com writes: How do youth receive a testimony if they can't attend the temple due to lack of names, etc.? **************Shop Inspiron, Studio and XPS Laptops at Dell.com (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1222616459x1201464730/aol?redir=http:%2F%2Fad.d oubleclick.net%2Fclk%3B215218145%3B37264238%3Bd)

Michele wrote: "It seems to me that some areas suffer who are not yet on NFS. When your temple is on NFS, the REGULAR stake assignments have adequate names to pull from as the temple downloads the expected need." The reality is that all temples are different, which is partly what I have been trying to communicate in support of David's request for temple cards for a youth temple trip. I live in Provo, and you have to realize that not only do we have a large number of youth growing up here who want to attend the temple, but we also have literally thousands (tens of thousands?) of single BYU and Utah Valley University students who are taught to attend the temple regularly. Until they are endowed, they are going to the baptistry. This is not an nFS issue, and I don't believe nFS will solve the problem. It seems to me that the Provo Temple downloads baptisms based on the number of endowments that can be done, and that is far lower than the number of baptisms that we have a demand for. A number of years ago the missionaries at the MTC were told that they could no longer perform baptisms, in order to save the baptistry names for those who are still unendowed. The baptisms were moving so rapidly that the names were sitting for years before the endowments could be performed. It's just the nature of the demographics in our temple district. The baptistry is now open fewer hours than the rest of the temple, and our regular stake assignments aren't even close to "enough" for our kids to attend the temple. Our assignment is for 10 kids, once a year. Yes, there are five names per proxy each year, but we have many more kids than this who want to attend the temple, and they want to go more regularly than once a year. They definitely want to go more than once in all of their six Mutual years. The youth leaders are trying to meet that need and encourage this positive desire, but it is very difficult to produce the number of names needed. If a group of kids wants to attend the temple outside of their regular assignment, they have to bring the cards. That's the rule. I was interested in the comment that it's hard to get adults to go to the baptistry. Based on the problem we have, adults feel guilty if they go to the baptistry! We feel like we need to give our kids that experience rather than being "selfish" and wanting to do it ourselves. I joined into this conversation, because I think we have a potential to help each other. If you or your ward members are having trouble getting baptisms done, or if you are sending them to the temple file rather than do them yourselves, please consider sending them to someone in Utah to share with their local youth. Personally, I would love to send my kids and their friends to the temple each week throughout the summer. They could help anyone who would like to give and receive that service. I also agree that we are not doing work for names but for people, but changing the word "names" to "people who need their ordinances performed" or something like that to avoid confusion with proxies and other "people" I'm referring to, I find it easier to say "names." :-) Jill Crandell