“The Hand of the Lord, 24 Hours a Day”
Not long after her baptism in 1986, María Luisa de la Flor, her daughter Goani, and her grandbaby traveled from Cochabamba, Bolivia, to receive their endowments at the Santiago Chile Temple. They arrived in Santiago after more than 24 hours on the road. When their initial area contacts fell through, Goani suggested they pray for help. After the prayer, they made another call, and a Chilean brother quickly came and gave them a ride. Another family provided them with a place to stay and drove them to the temple.
On the return trip, María and Goani faced delays and were left abandoned far from home. Again, they received help. “How good are people[.] God does not forget us,” María said. A woman approached them and offered whatever they needed and took them to her house. “It was offered in such a way that it was like we were at home; it was beautiful,” María said.
María described this trip with her daughter as vital to their gospel conversion. “We returned and we were other people, a lot closer to the gospel, much more, and also more predisposed to labor in the work.”
Many years later, Cochabamban Saints responded to similar circumstances by offering love and refuge to Chilean Saints on a temple trip. In 2007, due to social and political unrest between the Cochabamba government and some supporters of President Evo Morales, blockades were placed on the street and prevented a large group of Chilean members from reaching the Cochabamba Bolivia Temple. The Chilean Latter-day Saints had stayed on the bus for 30 hours without access to food or a restroom. One brave couple walked around the roadblock until they at last reached the temple on foot. Learning of their plight, Bolivian members picked the group up and took them to the temple, where 95 breakfasts awaited them in the cafeteria.
During this time, blockades or other obstacles regularly prevented members from reaching the temple. Abel R. Gonzales, president of the Cochabamba temple from 2007 to 2010, remembered the sacrifices Bolivian members made to visit the temple and the miracles that followed. “With faith, many set off, knowing they would be blocked along the way. When he arrived at the blockade, a stake president got out and demanded that those enforcing the blockade open it. And they opened the path, and they arrived in time. Afterward, the members no longer worried about how they would return, for there was already proof of the Lord’s hand on behalf of His children.” In describing his experience as temple president, Gonzales characterized it as “the hand of the Lord, 24 hours a day.”