There is a lot to keep up with: home, work, church, community. Knowing when your temple recommend is going to expire is something way in the back of most peoples mind. During one Bishopric meeting, the discussion turned to recommend renewals. The counselors can do most of the renewals, helping to lighten the bishop's load. However, if a counselor approaches a member about a renewal, there is a possibility the member may feel pressured to renew a recommend when they really need to speak with the bishop. I was asked to look into the possiblity of sending courtesy email notices on expiring recommends.
This creates and sends emails to the current bishop, his counselors, and members using the wards current callings and email addresses in LDS.org. No need to twiddle with settings as people come and go in their callings.
Temple recommend information is on LDS.org, but this uses the (LDS-org)[https://github.com/jidn/LDS-org] module to easily get data from the temple-recommend-status endpoint. The information is all on the LCR report. I use the source of that report to create any of the the following:
- Bishop email with included reports.
- Counselors email with included reports.
- Member emails
Most clerks don't have the programming background that I do, so my goal is to walk you through getting this to work for you. I wanted to create something that can be used with limited knowledge in Python, so I have a configuration file handling most of the options.
There are two ways to run this. Either install the software on your computer or use the cloud. I am going to recommend using the cloud for the following reasons.
- You don't need to use your personal computer with all the associated software maintance.
- You can have the cloud automatically schedule the emails.
Go to the Wiki and I'll walk you through setting up your own temple recommend expiring reminder system.