In 1850, when the first Latter-day Saint missionaries reached Hawai’i, the islands were still an independent kingdom with a mostly native Hawaiian population. George Q. Cannon, one of the early missionaries to the islands, was particularly eager to learn the Hawaiian language. In the early 1850s, he and a Hawaiian convert, Jonathan Nāpela, translated the Book of Mormon into Hawaiian. The effort marked the first time the book was translated into a non-European language.
Many Hawaiians embraced the gospel. By the 1870s, more than 4,000 Hawaiians were Latter-day Saints. Because of laws restricting emigration (because many Hawaiians were dying from disease), Hawaiian Saints established gathering places on the islands instead of gathering to Utah. The first gathering place was in Lāna’i. Then Saints gathered in Lā’ie, where the first temple outside North America was dedicated in 1919. The first stake outside North America was organized on O’ahu in 1935.
As Hawai’i’s population became more diverse, so did general Church membership. In the early 20th century, for example, a Japanese mission was established in Hawai’i, and work among Japanese Hawaiians flourished. In the 1950s, the Church established a college — now Brigham Young University–Hawaii — in Lā’ie, with a mission to bring together students from around the world. A second temple, in Kona, was dedicated in 2000. By 2018, there were nearly 75,000 Latter-day Saints in Hawai’i, organized into 16 stakes.