A fundamental principle and practice of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is preserving a historical record. Scriptural admonitions are found in the Book of Mormon and continued into the modern era in the Doctrine and Covenants. The instructions in D&C 85:1–2 related to record keeping are applicable to historians: “It is the duty of the Lord's clerk, whom he has appointed, to keep a history, and a general church record of all things that transpire in Zion. . . . And also their manner of life, their faith, and works.”1The church evolved in North America and was eventually established in the western United States. The presence of customs and practices emanating from U.S. and western culture are important features in the evolution of the church. Most historians who write about the church are from similar cultural backgrounds. Their research methods and writings are influenced by historical training in the United States’ academic world combined with personal experiences in and/or reactions to the church in the United States. Just as the church is a product of its religious and cultural environment, so is the history written about the church.2Having a history is important for all the regions of the church. The writing of the story of the international church is intriguing, but can also be problematic and challenging. That history will be different because it requires describing and analyzing international culture outside of the U.S. environment and incorporating different historical theories and models.It is desired that local historians will eventually do most of the histories of their regions. However, scholars from the United States will continue to write histories and their cultural background will continue to be influenced by North American roots; notwithstanding, international cultural differences in historiography should influence the way the history is written. Historians must be careful to avoid allowing their personal cultural backgrounds to impact them as they describe variant environments and influences. The product of the historian of the church in Europe must include elements of European historical traditions and principles that will not be the same as the story of the church in Asia. Add into that cultural mix unique and distinctive Indigenous values, particularly from Latin America and Africa, and the challenges writing their history become greater.As growth and maturity of historians of the church in the periphery occurs, the difference between the history of the center United States church and the international church will become more evident. Unfortunately, however, the writing of the story of the periphery lags far behind the organizational changes and evolution of the church in those areas. South America provides a case study of the issues and challenges involved because the writing of its history is in the embryotic stage. Those issues can be shown by examining the three groups involved in the writing of the history, North American academics, local members, and nonmember academics.North American members are the largest group historically studying the church in South America. Most are students using the church as a topic for a master's thesis and did not publish or expand their research. A few continued on and regularly publish about the church. All served missions in Latin America and can research in Spanish and Portuguese. Most are not trained historians but are anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and librarians/archivists. They generally do not do traditional historical research using primary sources; however, when they write history, the quality of their research is excellent. They write almost exclusively in English and publish in U.S. periodicals that have a focus on the church. There have been some publications in nonchurch periodicals or presses, but very few.Topics that interest North American academics are generally related to issues of importance to U.S. scholars. By far the most popular topics relate to race and ethnicity, often focusing on the 1978 revelation on the priesthood. This focus is of limited interest to South American scholars. There is no question the priesthood revelation was an important event for the church in Brazil and the Caribbean nations, but not for the rest of Latin America. It had symbolic meaning suggesting an adjustment in the church's notion of the gospel for all peoples, but had little effect on the growth and expansion of the church in most of South America.A second topic of interest is the challenge of growth. Two approaches are taken, the first a positive description of the growth and its role in the evolution of the church in the twentieth century. Other scholars have looked at Latin America as a way to question the motives of the church, focusing on the high number of convert baptisms compared to the actual number of committed members. Unfortunately, this research becomes a not so hidden racial or social critique of Latin America and/or the church and not a study of the conversion process.3A second group of researchers are local members. Many are employed by the church as professors of seminaries and institutes who have written country histories that are used in their classes. A few have done postgraduate degrees using the church as the subject of their thesis. A couple have expanded beyond their initial study to produce more specific research articles and volumes.These historians are different from North American academics in part because of unique research challenges. Fluency in English is necessary because of the languages used in the sources. This is reflective of two distinct periods in the history of the church in South America. The church began in South America in 1925 and through the 1970s, almost all mission presidents and missionaries were from North America. Most historical sources from this period are in English. When member districts and stakes were organized, the related documents were in the local languages. When locals were called as mission presidents and missionaries, the language of the missions changed to Spanish or Portuguese, even when nonnative speakers presided as mission presidents.A second challenge is accessibility to resources found in the Church History Library or the BYU library in Utah. Most researchers from Latin America do not have the economic means nor time to come to Salt Lake City. There is a similar challenge to U.S. researchers going to Latin America, though obtaining research funding is easier. Most of the documents in Utah are not duplicated in country depositories. A secondary challenge is access to restricted sources. The restriction of many institutional documents is a challenge to researchers in Salt Lake City and in South America. Administrative practices in Salt Lake City have changed in recent years making access less complicated.4In South America, however, there has often been uncertainty by local church authorities and area historians over access to the materials. Researchers have been denied use of documents not because of concern over content, but out of uncertainty by local administrators over who can use church materials. Nonmembers in particular have been frustrated because they have not been allowed to use any resources. As the regional historian's offices become more professional and training occurs, a better understanding by administrators will follow.5Access to materials has been unevenly administered. My own experience is instructive. I have had some challenges viewing documents in the Church History Library in Salt Lake City based on the regulations of the library. My personal experience in Brazil and Argentina however, has been different. I have known many of the church leaders and historians since my days as a missionary in Brazil. I try to understand the local concerns and norms and have been careful to not go beyond what is proper. I always get authorization from church administrators both in the United States and South America before traveling. Finally, my success is also helped by my connections with BYU and the Church History Library. Restrictive guidelines in Salt Lake City have seldom been part of my research experiences in Latin America and, as a result, I have been afforded access to documents I would not have had in Salt Lake City. All of these factors combined has made my research experience more successful than most local historians.A third challenge is the availability of noninstitutional sources. Historically, the Church History Library has not seriously collected South American documents beyond institutional records. Even after the organization of areas, there has been ambiguity towards document collection. Most areas have had some form of collecting activity financed and supervised by the area presidency, but there has also been confusion as to where historical documents should be housed. When the policy was to send local documents to Salt Lake City, many members did not want their personal records sent out of the country. The organization of area depositories is a step in the right direction.The challenges of availability and access to documents significantly alters the type of history that is written. U.S. historians write histories based on institutional records. Local histories are based primarily on oral sources that include memories and stories told by members, often without documentary proof. Their methodology is also different because they are writing for members and not the academic community. They tell stories about how local small units evolved and expanded to become districts and stakes and eventually the building of temples. They approach the history as a story of faith, struggles, and triumphs. Issues of race and rapid growth are minor concerns. For these members the writing of history is often an act of love for the church.6The third group of researchers are nonchurch academics who examine the church as a case study about religion, society, race, or politics. The structure of their histories follows the academic traditions of the country, most using theoretical concepts developed by scholars such as Durkheim, Weber, and Marx. They publish primarily in non-LDS periodicals or presses. Though different from faithful histories, they are often sympathetic to the church. Most become friends with church academics and members who help them understand the church and gain access to sources.An important question is how is the international church treated in recent general histories of the church? A comparison can be made to how the story of international expansion during the nineteenth century is told in these histories. There is no question of the importance of those early missions to Great Britain, Europe, and the Pacific. They were activities that significantly influenced the church's development. In most volumes on church history, these missions are covered in detail as part of the chronological history of the church. They list missionaries, proselyting places, and identify teaching and conversion stories; they are not treated as peripheral events.7To determine the place of the international church of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in recent histories, I examined eighteen books published since 2000 whose purpose was to survey the general church. My examination was not scientific but preliminary impressions. I looked at the table of contents and indexes to identify chapters or sections that should include international content. I identified the pages of the book dedicated to the international church and then examined how it was presented. I determined whether the focus of the international content was on how the church reacted to international growth or actually an examination of the history of the growth.8 What I found was that the volumes had different focuses but most saw the evolution of the international church within the American context. The international church was an appendage to the story of the church. Some treated international growth as an issue to be examined separately much like, for example, women in the church.I looked at nine reference volumes. There were four less-academic books, and three of the four included almost nothing of the international church.9 The five academic reference publications were better, but only one examined the international church beyond limited references. This volume had a separate section that addressed the history of the international church.10The remaining histories all had sections focusing on the expansion of the church during the last half of the twentieth century. Some had separate chapters on expansion while others examined periods where the international church was discussed. The approach of all was to look at growth in general and most barely acknowledged the role of regions such as Latin America in the growth of the church. They recognized that the church had changed because of international growth, but did not try to tell the story. The history of the church for most writers continued to be that of events in the United States and the story of the international church remained peripheral or largely ignored. Latin America was even more peripheral and on the fringe of the evolution of the church.11Yet, the growth and expansion of the church throughout the world—particularly Latin America—is one of the most important historical events in the entire history of the church, and in my mind, of equal importance as the nineteenth-century British missions. The church went from 4,166,854 members in 1978 to 16,118,169 in 2019 making it a legitimate worldwide religion. Significant structural and organizational changes were made as a direct result of the growth. That change was fueled by growth in the Americas.12F. LaMond Tullis's observation is relevant in considering the telling of the story. “It takes time for culturally limiting biases to yield to an expansionist understanding of the Lord's will for His people. With revelatory powers of the priesthood in full force, it nevertheless has taken generations in the Church's intermountain homeland to overcome some of the prejudices and biases that in the past impeded the movement of the faith across hardened lines of race, ethnicity, national identity, language, culture, and politics.”13These omissions frustrate historians who work on the international church. The outcome is an inadequate view of the church that fails to recognize important factors in its evolution. Even for twentieth-century developments such as correlation, there is limited acknowledgment of the role of the international church in its establishment, let alone how correlation affected the church outside of North America.14Changes, however, are beginning to occur within the church's historical community. Most of the change will come from international scholars when they begin writing histories. The establishment of permanent archives in the area offices is also helpful.15 The professionalization of those archives is resulting in the opening up of research in international areas.16Ignacio García in an insightful essay published in 2015, describes the challenge. “Too much of Mormon historical studies still tell the story of the Other as simply a story of the peripheries of Mormonism. This Other is voiceless and mindless, as too often we speak for them and place in their minds and as their concerns the anxieties of white Mormonism. What will or what can happen to the white church is the underlying question of so much of Mormon historical research even when the researchers seek ideologically varying answers.”17The same year, South American historian Néstor Curbelo described both his frustration and hope: I am not interested in minimizing the importance of the fundamental pioneer history of the church or increase visibility for our members. All I want to suggest is the need to add our testimony of faith to the traditional history of the church in North America and contribute to building a brother and sisterhood of faith. It is not enough for us to have written histories in our countries, we need to add our stories of faith to those of all the church, to build a feeling of a united people and know of the faith of members in other parts of the world.18I echo Néstor's concerns. The history of the church in North America is central to our history. The story of the faith of members in the 1840s is important, but not more important than the examples of similar dedication of members in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries throughout the world. What needs to be appreciated is that the history of the church in places such as South America is not a story of race, poverty, or social conflicts; it is a history of faith, perseverance, struggles, and dedication equal to the same stories of the early members in New York, Kirtland, England, or Norway.