An 1855 copy of the Hawaiian language translation of the Book of Mormon will go on display at 7 p.m. Friday at the La'ie Hawai'i Temple Visitors Center after an unveiling ceremony.

"Ka Buke a Moramona" is the result of work by Elder George Q. Cannon, a Mormon missionary from Utah, and Judge Ionatana Napela, a Native Hawaiian from Maui.

Some 3,000 copies of the book were printed in 1855 but only 200 were bound and the bulk of them were destroyed in a fire. About 15 to 30 survived.

Several other editions were printed about 50 years later.

The family of the late Ford Clark, a longtime Honolulu resident and businessman originally from Farmington, Utah, donated the book to the Brigham Young University Hawai'i Archives in 1978.

Clark, who served twice as a Mormon missionary in Hawai'i and spoke fluent Hawaiian, received it as a gift at the end of his first mission in 1920.