Thirty years ago, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reached a significant milestone — on Feb. 28, 1996, there were officially more members of the Church living outside the United States than within.
That number has only continued to grow. And the Church has adjusted accordingly to meet the needs of members around the world.
The Deseret News Church Almanac reported that on Feb. 28, 1996, 4,720,000 members of the Church lived outside the U.S., compared to 4,719,000 within. On Dec. 31, 2024 — the most recent numbers available — there were 10.58 million living outside the U.S., compared to 6.93 million within.
Elder Hugo E. Martínez, General Authority Seventy, sees this as the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy in Daniel 2:44-45 of a worldwide kingdom that will stand for ever and never be destroyed and fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant when God declared, “Thou shalt be a blessing: … and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 12:2-3).
He explained: “The Restoration of the gospel started in the U.S. as a land of promise from which all blessings of God would pour out to the rest of the world.”
Elder Martínez said he and his wife, Sister Nuria Alvarez de Martínez, were blessed to be taught the restored gospel of Jesus Christ in 1982 and then to teach it to their children and grandchildren and others.
“To see the growth of the Church in our Caribbean area, in Central America and in West Africa as assigned is beyond anything we could have imagined,” he said. “All over the world, the Church is growing and blessing all that come unto Christ one by one and family by family.”
When President Hector David Hernandez and Sister Emma Hernandez, the mission leaders of the Dominican Republic Santo Domingo West Mission, were planning to get married 20 years ago, they had to take a 14-hour journey from their native Honduras to Guatemala to be sealed in the house of the Lord.
Now Honduras has two dedicated temples, and Guatemala has six that are dedicated, announced or under construction.
“It is amazing to see the hand of the Lord,” Sister Hernandez told the Church News.
Besides more temples, they see the hastening of the work in their mission, which split in two recently and has seen even more missionaries serving and more people joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Dominican Republic.
Said President Hernandez, “We have seen a special spirit of conversion.”
‘The Lord knows how to run His kingdom’
“Saints, Volume 4: Sounded in Every Ear” chronicles the history of the Church from 1955 to 2020 — not just the milestone in 1996 but what led up to it and what has come since then.
In 1955, most Latter-day Saint converts came from white, Anglo-European backgrounds. By 2020, most came from Latin America and Africa, said Jed Woodworth, the Church’s managing historian for “Saints.”
Temples are “coming to wherever the Saints are and meeting them on that ground, helping them to build Zion in whatever country they’re living in,” Woodworth said.
The growing work of the Church’s Correlation Department also is a major part of this growth, he said. Until the 1960s, Church curriculum had been written mostly by academics for a largely literate and even university-trained audience. But with the help of Correlation, the writing became more straightforward and defined the gospel more clearly around basic imperatives.
And this accelerated in the 1990s, Woodworth said. “It performed the invaluable function of bringing knowledge and testimony to Saints across the world.”
Also in 1996, the Church went live with its first internet address, LDS.org, which later became ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
“The Lord knows how to run His kingdom, and so at the very moment that we pass this tipping point, we also are able to communicate on a grand scale,” Woodworth said.
The internationalization of Church membership “sharpened the Church’s sense of fairness,” he said. Better meetinghouses, increased translation efforts, employment centers, more local leaders and area authorities, the introduction of ministering and two-hour Sunday meeting blocks, increased humanitarian work and FamilySearch have all come about since 1996 as well.
Education in the international Church
In the last 30 years, more accessible education and the Church’s emphasis on improving self-reliance have continued to shrink differences among Church members around the world, Woodworth said.
The Relief Society made literacy a major initiative in the 1990s and continues to do so today. The Church Educational System grew to include BYU–Pathway Worldwide, which reached nearly 89,000 students in 180 countries in 2025.
Roughly 60% of the 2025 Ensign College graduates were from outside the United States, representing 80 countries.
Isaiah Walker, the vice president of academics at BYU–Hawaii, said the university’s 3,000 students represent 60 countries — in a way they are a microcosm of the larger Church and have a strong feeling of unity on the campus “of being brothers and sisters in the gospel.”
The examples of early Church leaders in Hawaii, he said, catapulted their vision of what the Church could become in the world.
President and Sister Hernandez are an example of two Latter-day Saints whose lives were changed by the Perpetual Education Fund, which turns 25 years old this year. Their story is told in “Saints, Volume 4."
Through the financial support of the Perpetual Education Fund, the young couple both had achieved their educational goals while building a family and always serving in the Church, Chapter 38 details.
Now they see their own missionaries’ lives being changed by EnglishConnect and BYU–Pathway.
Nurturing, strengthening and converting each other
In 2024, when Woodworth’s son, Benjamin Woodworth, was a freshman at Brigham Young University, he met another student who became a best friend — they lived just down the hall from each other, went to the same church meetings, shared a common passion for computer science and went on double dates together.
This friend was named Oscar Hernandez, from Honduras.
Jed Woodworth realized this was the son of Hector David and Emma Hernandez, whom he had been learning about and writing about for “Saints.” They had only ever been able to have one child and sent him to BYU.
The Woodworths started inviting Oscar to family dinner. Jed Woodworth said to him, “Oscar, I think that you were sent to meet our son, so that we could care for you while you are far from your parents.”
But the Lord’s hand was even more involved than Woodworth first realized.
At that time, Benjamin, who had been raised in Utah by parents who loved the Church, had been apathetic about religion and did not want to talk about things like serving a mission.
Then Oscar was called to serve a mission in Nicaragua.
Observing Oscar’s excitement to serve inspired Benjamin. “Soon, our son comes to us and he says, ‘You know, Oscar is the most spiritual person I’ve ever met,’” Woodworth said.
Benjamin is now Elder Woodworth and serving a full-time mission in Nevada.
While some people may think of the gospel growing outward from Church headquarters in Utah to convert others internationally, in this case, it was the opposite: A young man from Central America helped light a spark in a young Utahn’s life.
In the grand scheme of things and as seen through this story, Woodworth knows that the Church is coming together more closely than ever before.
“The larger we pan out, the more we see that Saints around the world have much in common. The beliefs that unite us are far more strong and powerful than the beliefs that divide us,” he said. “This familiarity helps Saints all over the world nurture each other.”
‘The best is yet to come’
In early 1996, not long after the milestone marking more international members and just a few months after introducing “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” President Gordon B. Hinckley spoke to a coliseum full of 35,000 Latter-day Saints in the Philippines and noted that people sometimes asked him why the Church was growing so rapidly.
“The answer is simply this,” he said. “This Church stands as an anchor, a solid anchor of truth in a world of shifting values.”
President and Sister Hernandez believe wholeheartedly in what President Russell M. Nelson taught in October 2024 general conference: “The best is yet to come.”
And while there are challenges today and will undoubtedly be more, both said they know the future will bring more miracles as well — because the Lord is involved in the work.
The First Presidency message in “Preach My Gospel” in English talks about having a “new sense of commitment.” But in Spanish, the translation is that the Lord “wants us to reach a new level,” President Hernandez pointed out.
“With the help of the Lord, we can reach a new level,” he said.
Elder Martínez said “the clear direction of Jesus Christ through the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles that all members of all ages are to participate in the work of salvation and exaltation makes us joyfully participate in the growth.”
As more temples are being built and dedicated, more of the Lord’s covenant people are receiving promised blessings on both sides of the veil. “That is awe inspiring,” he said.
The rising generation is attending FSY conferences and enrolling in seminary and institute. More missionaries and Church members are spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ in person and through social media. This is leading to growth and retention, Elder Martínez said, “one by one, family by family.”
“We invite all to come unto Jesus Christ,” he said.
