I think that I know the answer to this, but is resigning the only way to have your name removed from the attendance sheets?

Seems quite ridiculous that you can't ask to have your name taken off and put back on in the future if you choose to.

If we move and don't leave a forwarding address do you think that they will find us? If they don't do our records just stay in our current ward?

They will attempt to locate your new ward. If they can not, the record goes to SLC, where senior missionaries will continue to search for your new ward.

I have a cousin that saw no reason to resign, but every time he moved the church tracked him down. He found out later they were calling his TBM mother to get the updated info. He finally resigned just to end it all.

You can be excommunicated.

If you resign you can be re-baptized, you just have to wait a year and then take the missionary discussions.

If they don't know your address they will send your records to Salt Lake. They will then contact any family members that they have on record for you and ask for your address.

You can also ask to be on the "do not contact" list in the ward you are in. There is no official do not contact list but many/most bishops will honor your request and tell the ward to leave you alone. Of course once the bishop changes all bets are off.

The Mormons are interested in keeping their hooks in you for economic reasons, and they are more persistent than the FBI, CIA, or IRS in doing so.

They will pester your relatives and friends.

They assign batteries of "missionaries" to search Peoplefinder, Spock, Facebook, NETRonline, Zabasearch, etc., and track you down.

If they mail you something and it doesn't get returned to them, they will visit your address under the presumption you live there.

If you move and leave a change-of-address notice at your local U.S. Post Office, the USPS will forward your mail for one year, after which they return to sender with a yellow sticker noting your newest known address printed on it. The cult then proceeds to track you at the latest address again.

There is no such thing as "name removal" because your name will always be on some list somewhere in the COB. The only thing resigning does is effectively take you off the contact list so they won't look for you anymore and the locals won't pester you.

Within each member's data record in Salt Lake is an assigned ward; that assigned ward gets a data download of the member information to its computer. Paper records don't move with people.

So.. if you get "lost," the local people notify HQ (via computer) that you are no longer in the ward, your data in Salt Lake is changed indicating there is no assigned ward, (and as others have mentioned above) people (probably in the Salt Lake area) will start looking for you. When you're found, your new contact information is entered into your record in Salt Lake, and voila, after the next download to your new ward's computer, your information appears. Home teachers will soon be on their way!

And of course.. the data never changes or needs to move; if you get exed or resign, the existing data simply gets flagged so it won't get downloaded anywhere so as to show up on local reports. But it's all still there.

Best wishes.