Look at this place. Isn't it amazing? This is Kirtland Village on the back lot of the motion picture studio in Provo, Utah. This is where a lot of the Church History films are produced, and I think that it's the perfect place to talk about Saints. This is Saints, Volume 1. Maybe you've heard of it. Over 400,000 print copies have been sold, and over a million people have read it electronically. It's available in 14 languages. So what are readers saying about Saints? I really appreciate with Saints, Volume 1 how the sources were all in the book, but if I wanted more information I could go online and I could dig a little deeper on the things I had more questions about. Saints, Volume 1. Yes, it is a history book, but it does not feel like one. It feels like it's just a journal, almost. It feels like it's a book that you picked up at school, type thing. I love the transparency because there's so many people that want to try and drag down our faith by saying there's secret you don't know and the Church keeps these things from you. But it's not the case. They're just things you haven't read yet. And when you see the story, the good, the bad, the ugly, you realize that they're just ordinary people trying to do extraordinary things. It was not a story that was told. It was real history. And we get to be part of it. I feel like one of the characters I got to know really the best was Joseph and just his story of progression and watching him become the prophet that he was through the mistakes he made and his learning experiences how he was able to grow into who he needed to be to lead the Church. One thing I loved about volume 1 was the stories of the women. They went through so much that we don't really think about. As a woman I could feel for them having to leave their homes when their husband was off across the world. It really was an example to me of how women were so strong in the Church. And we didn't always hear about that until this book, the Saints. Chapters from volume 2 began appearing in Church magazines in July. The chapters are also available in the Church History section of the Gospel Library. Videos depicting some of the stories from volume 2 are also available in the Gospel Library app. So you can watch while you wait. Let's take a sneak peek at some of these incredible stories from Saints, Volume 2.

In 1843, when Joseph Smith calls Addison Pratt and Knowlton Hanks and Noah Rogers and Benjamin Grouard on this mission to the Pacific, it's really a landmark in the history of Latter-day Saints missions. It's by far the longest missionary journey that has been attempted in the history of the Church up to this point.

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] I was Area President in the Pacific Islands from 1998 to 2001. And I went to one of those islands that Addison Pratt had been on. And this 17, 18 teenage girl gets up and talks, and she's the seventh generation member of her family. I'm a descendant of pioneers; I'm the fifth generation. She was the seventh generation. They may feel like they're far off, but they're part of Church history too. Saints, Volume Two also tells the story of the first temple to be built after Nauvoo. The St. George Saints lived too far to come to Salt Lake, and so Brigham Young said, "We will bring the temple to you. We will build a temple that is smaller in scale than Salt Lake, and we will bring the ordinances to you where you live." So they took black volcanic rock from a bluff near the temple site and pounded it into the ground with a cannon that they had turned into a pile driver. And when that pile driver bounced three times, they knew the ground was stable enough to build the foundation on top of it. If you lived in St. George, no matter how poor you were, you gave something. We have stories of members of the Church that donate one dollar because that is all they had. Other people sewed together carpets, fed the workers, made clothes for the workers, or just were there in support. These people were so excited for this temple. They were so excited that their prophet was here to dedicate this temple. Ever wonder how various Church organizations came to be? Saints, Volume 2 also tells the story of Mary Elizabeth Horn and the founding of the Young Women's organization. As the railroad is approaching completion, the Saints have a great deal of ambivalence about it. It was kind of, in some ways, like we feel about the internet today, where we are excited about the technology and all of the opportunity that it opens up for learning and for connection with the world. But at the same time, we recognize the potential of this so-called information highway to bring in all kinds of influences into our homes and into our lives. This was really worrisome to Brigham Young, so he called on Mary Isabella Horn to lead what he called the Retrenchment movement--this movement to ground women in what really mattered. And they needed the young women to be part of this movement. If you want a culture to change, you need to invite the youth. And the young women have a vital role in that part of changing culture. Saints tells familiar stories, like missions to Europe, and stories that you may have never heard before, like the women of the Utah territory being the first women in the nation to vote. It tells inspiring stories, like the handcart rescue, and tragic stories, like the Mountain Meadows Massacre. When we come back, we'll learn why the Church has written Saints now and in such a unique and transparent way.

Elder LeGrand Curtis Jr. is the Church Historian and Recorder for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. We asked Elder Curtis, along with a few other experts, why the Church is writing this new narrative history. In the very meeting where the Church was organized in April of 1830, the Lord said, "There shall be a record kept among you." Saints was the story of normal people touched by the heavens. And when you think about it, that's all of our endeavor. That's all of our journey here is that we are mortal, we're normal, but we're trying to do what God wants us to do. And by seeing Joseph Smith, by seeing Emma Smith, by seeing the normal people--male and female--we can see better how we can serve God now. So, in the past, our efforts to write the history of the Church have relied primarily on people in administrative position. Their voices have been featured and highlighted. This effort at writing the history of the Church relies more on common people: people who are unsung heroes, people who have left been left out of traditional efforts to write the history of the Church. Brigham Young counseled the Church historians in the 1860s, "Write in a narrative style," he said. He knew, as we all know somewhere in us, that we need stories. We need the stories of our past to give meaning to our present and to orient us in the future. So it seems clear to me, based on the wonderful reception of Saints, that that idea to write a narrative was the right one. I am the literary editor and lead writer on the volumes, which means that I'm the one who makes sure that the stories are structured in a pleasing way, in an engaging way, in a way that pulls readers in. And, if you want to engage a reader, if you want to engage someone, especially someone who doesn't necessarily like history or is put off by academic writing, the narrative is the way to go because everybody loves a good story. I hope that readers of Saints will find themselves in the story. I hope that they are able to connect with the pioneers, with the early Saints, with the people who came before us. Well, I think sometimes when we think about our history, it's really easy to focus on touchstones like Joseph and Brigham and to think about those really singular iconic figures who've become characters in kind of the tapestry of our history. And there's really so much more going on even early, early, early in the Church's history. Some of my favorite stories in volume 2, specifically, came near the end of the volume. One woman, who I found particularly compelling, was named Lorena Larsen. She is just an average, everyday woman. But she dealt with the challenges that came when she had to live on the underground with a great deal of faith. But she also, she wrote in a way that was very honest and compelling, which made her a fantastic subject because I was able to use her words and her emotions to tell her story. And I think readers are going to really identify with Lorena. One of the ways that Saints is different than past histories produced by the Church is that it is multilayered. So the top layer, and the main layer, is the narrative text. That's where most people are going to get their information. But other people, we know, will want to dive deeper on a particular topic. So on over 115 topics in volume 1, we've written short essays that are linked to from the footnotes that help explore a particular person, place, theme in greater depth. From the beginning, we knew that Saints needed to be translated broadly. And so it's in 14 languages. It's also global in the stories that it tells.

It takes a team to create all of the amazing tools, topics, and resources that make up the Saints project. Many people have put in countless hours of researching, editing, and writing. Reviewers from Harvard to Hong Kong, Brazil to Brigham City, have also contributed valuable insights to help Saints reach members of a global faith. I've loved being a reviewer on Saints. It's been important to me for a number of reasons. One of the things Saints, the book the Saints, does so magnificently, I think, is take a very, very complex and deeply grounded story that's been developed through a lot of very serious scholarship. It translates very sophisticated scholarship into an engaging and accessible narrative. I received the assignment through the General Primary Presidency, and they asked me to represent them in reading through the manuscript. As I read volume 1 and volume 2 of Saints, I felt this connection to history. It encouraged me to feel like I was part of something greater than just myself. As a product manager for Saints, one of my responsibilities is to take the words that have been created and written by the historians, the editors, and writers, and to then work and coordinate the effort to have those words typeset, illustrated, bound and printed, recorded in audio book format, and made available to members and others who are interested in our history. I have the opportunity to host the Saints podcast. On the podcast I am able to interview historians and writers, General Authorities, to learn more about these topics. And it really has been just a blast for me to explore those things in a little more detail and bring it to the audience in kind of a fun and engaging way. So my role in the Saints project is I am part of the editorial team. And if you look at how the project unfolds, you start with historians. And they know the stories. They know the history. And then the editorial team has two principal roles really. First, we polish it and make it as readable as possible. And then the other role is the source checking. We have to make sure that those historians and those writers have got everything right. So my job is to check the source, see if it's the best source or if there's a better version. And usually there is. Usually there's a more original version from a transcription to a manuscript of a diary. And so I get the pages. And I look to make sure what is written on the page in Saints is actually on the page in the real source. Let's take a look at how it works. So we're going to start in the Gospel Library app. I'm going to click on the Church History section. Then we'll go to Saints, Volume 1. And let's say that I'm reading in chapter 2 about the First Vision. We know that Saints uses all known accounts of the First Vision so I might be reading and find a new detail that I hadn't known before. So we can click on a footnote, 15 for example, to find the sources behind what is written. If I tap on "Neibaur Journal, May 24, 1844," it takes me to an actual document on The Joseph Smith Papers website. Then I can just go back right here, and I can click on Christian churches in Joseph Smith's day, and that provides additional context. Saints is also available as an audio book. People all over the world can listen to Saints while they commute, exercise, or just relax. Let's go meet the narrators. My role was I got to record the audio for the audio book, myself and my friend Hillary. We both got to record it. And so we got to see it and read through it before it was released. Every day that I got to go into the booth was a privilege, and I started out the day and the session with the prayer that I would be able to bring to life the individuals and represent them in an authentic way, that I could really understand who they were. And in doing so, I think I really came to love them and to appreciate their contribution. OK. Now you know the writers and have met the narrators, let's meet the artist behind the beautiful cover art and the illustrations within the book. My role was to be the Illustrator for the project. I got to do all of the cover artwork and the maps and all of the chapter heading illustrations in the volumes. The focus of this artwork was to show the global growth of the Church, with the temples being the anchor points along this timeline. And I thought, wouldn't it be really cool if I could somehow create a panorama of the Church's history with all of the temples dotting the artwork. I think there's a certain nostalgia aspect to it. It has a certain timeless charm, maybe, that people can relate to. And it was really fun to boil down to the essence a moment in Church history with a single image. When we come back, Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will tell us why the Church has written this new narrative history. Stay with us.

Did you know that Utah women were the first women in the United States to vote? Did you know that the Shoshone Indians helped to build the Logan Utah Temple? Ever wonder about the challenges of polygamy, both to the Church and to the families living it? All of these stories and more are also included in the soon-to-be-released Saints, Volume 2.

One aspect of Church history that I hope all of our members around the world know about is the fact that Utah women were the first in the nation to exercise their right to vote. Why does this matter? Suffrage is an example of women being treated as full citizens and women thinking of themselves as full citizens and women taking seriously the potential they have to participate in society and make society better.

Our Shoshone chief Sagwitch was told by three men that appeared to him in his dream that there was a God among the Mormon people and that he needed to send someone to Salt Lake and they'd tell him what to do. Long story short, a missionary from Ogden was sent to our tribe, specifically, north of Corrine, Utah. And after a couple of days of teaching them the gospel, converted and baptized 102 of our people in the Bear River. Once we join the joined the Church, they established Washakie for us. I was told by my grandmother that, once converted, our people exercise the childlike faith. I know we were full tithe payers. We dedicated more than 1,000 hours to the building of the Logan temple. Our people went to the temple often, and did work for those who passed at Bear River. When they first announced that they were practicing plural marriage, they were, here in Utah, relatively isolated. And so it took a while for the controversy to build. But over the following decades, the national government passed a series of increasingly strident or punitive laws against plural marriage and began enforcing them aggressively. By 1890 when President Woodruff announced the manifesto that led to the end of plural marriage, they were faced with a very simple choice: They could continue to practice plural marriage. But if they did, they would lose the temples because the government was going to confiscate all of the Church's property, including the temples. And that would stop the work of salvation for the dead. Truth is not just good things. Truth is good and bad. Truth is a knowledge of things as they are and as they were and as they are to come, the Doctrine and Covenants tells us. There are things that we can learn from such awful events as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. One of the things that I learned in studying that subject was that when people got together in councils and relied upon the collective wisdom of the group, they often made right decisions. When they disregarded the council's decisions and went off to make individual decisions, they often made the wrong choices. Joseph Smith and subsequent Church leaders have talked about zeal without knowledge as not being a virtue. And I think that, in the case of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, we had zealous people who tried to operate under that emotional sense of zeal without stepping back and reflecting deeply on whether what they were doing was right or wrong. The Church has taken a fresh look at its own history, the sweet and the bitter, the tragedies and the triumphs. And yet this new and engaging perspective has found its way into the hearts of readers around the world, both young and old alike. Well, volume 2 of Saints will end with the dedication of Salt Lake Temple. And I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but it is magnificent. You think of all of the challenges that happened in that volume, starting with the Saints being expelled from Nauvoo and coming across the plains, and it ends on a wonderful high note with spiritual manifestations and rejoicing as the Salt Lake Temple, after 40 years of construction, is completed. I would hope that the ultimate result of it would be a deep appreciation of our ancestors and the sacrifices and the hardships they went through. And that that would empower us as a people today to face our different hardships, perhaps, but nevertheless would be a blessing to us and give us strength and power to overcome the issues that face us today. The First Presidency has said, "Remembering our shared legacy of faith, devotion, and perseverance gives us perspective and strength as we face the challenges of our day." Saints is helping us remember. Volume 1 was released just a year ago, and it's already a best seller by any measure. Chapters from volume 2 are available now online and in the Ensign and Liahona magazines. If you've had questions about our Church's history or if you're just looking for an incredibly engaging yet true story, watch for volume 2 of Saints, available in early 2020. Happy reading!