By Lee Davidson
Deseret News Washington correspondent

      WASHINGTON — In the past decade, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gained new, official recognition in a whopping 39 countries and new access to many more.
      Beverly Campbell played a key role in almost every such gain.
      "I can't take credit for it. Ours was just a small piece of the puzzle," she says. But as the church's international affairs director — from which she recently retired — she fostered many of the initial contacts that opened those doors.
      She did it by working with ambassadors from around the world who are stationed in Washington.
      "We found that when countries had problems with the church, they often viewed it as such a uniquely American institution that they asked their ambassadors (to the United States) what they knew about it," Campbell explains.
      She adds that, at first, "They either had little information or a lot of misinformation."
      Now, diplomats are so familiar and friendly with the church that so many of them accept invitations to its functions — such as the opening of Christmas light displays at its Washington Temple — that the events look more like U.N. sessions.
      In fact, Campbell says that at a recent reception, several ambassadors saw her and approached with their personal calendars. They wanted to ensure their plans would not conflict with a popular annual barbecue for diplomats' families hosted by the church at a ranch owned by the prominent Marriott family.
      Building such relationships started rather unexpectedly for Campbell, who originally began working for the church 12 years ago to handle press relations.
      Previously, she had been director of the Kennedy Foundation, where she had created the Special Olympics program, which met a goal of its board "to help bring the retarded out of the closet and into the sunshine." That plus later work as director of her own firm led her to make many contacts with ambassadors, celebrities and others internationally.
      Meanwhile, she also had been a prominent local church spokeswoman who handled response to allegations arising from the excommunication of feminist Sonia Johnson.
      With that background, the church asked her to put off her original retirement — and the extended travel to Europe that she and her husband had planned.
      Instead, it asked her to head its public affairs operations in Washington and New York City to help the church emerge from obscurity much like she had helped the disabled enter the sunlight via the Special Olympics.
      "At first, the emphasis was on trying to get stories about the church into the news media and to work with them as they developed stories on their own," she says.
      But over time, she found problems that were more of an international nature and felt they could best be addressed through embassies. Developing good and personal relationships between ambassadors and LDS leaders and members became her full-time focus. She eventually became known as the church's ambassador to ambassadors.
      She says that knowledge of the church among diplomats was scanty and often negative. Initially she was able to open doors because of contacts made through her previous work and was often assisted by prominent LDS politicians or businessmen.
      "Our visits to ambassadors were for the purpose of seeking advice and insight into how best to approach the problems we were experiencing as a new or emerging church. We chose to see them as allies and were never aggressive or negative," she says.
      She also began inviting ambassadors one at a time to low-key dinners at her secluded home on the Potomac River in Virginia to meet well-known LDS leaders, businessmen, politicians and others.
      "They would often stay for long and substantive talks after dinner," she says. "That kind of interaction doesn't happen in more formal settings." As a result, friendships and trust formed.
      Campbell says she soon found that ambassadors did all they could to present an accurate picture of the church to their governments — and to help calm fears.
      They also often set up appointments with key in-country leaders and advised of sensitivities within countries that helped lead to official recognition in many nations.
      She says such recognition by each country came in different ways. An example is how the church first made trust-building contact with officials of the old Soviet Union.
      "I was at the Kennedy Center (a theater) as a guest of the ambassador of Hungary. During the evening, the ambassadors of Czechoslovakia and East Germany joined us," Campbell says. "Then the Soviet ambassador arrived."
      She had never met Yuri V. Dubinin — nor had she been where she would expect him to respond to her. But at that moment being surrounded by Communist ambassadors, "I seemed to be in the right company."
      So she introduced herself as a representative of the church often known by its prominent temple on Washington's beltway.
      "I invited him and his family to our visitors center," Campbell says, "but he seemed unimpressed." So she was surprised when he called the next week saying his wife and twin daughters had come to Washington and accepted that invitation.
      "He wasn't able to come at the last minute," Campbell says. "But his wife, Liana, their daughters and I had a great time."
      Soon thereafter, a devastating earthquake struck Liana Dubinin's native Armenia. Campbell brought that to the attention of the church, and a key leader came to Washington and offered humanitarian assistance.