Restoration in the Chaco
In 1980, Walter Flores worked with the headquarters of the Asociacion de Parcialidades Indigenas (API), an organization dedicated to serving the interests of Paraguay’s indigenous groups. Walter was Nivaclé, and his wife, Rosaria, was Toba Qom. After seeing Walter on television, the outgoing mission president from the Paraguay Mission visited him in his office. In June 1980, missionaries visited Walter and Rosaria in their home. Rosaria spoke only a little Spanish, so Walter translated the discussions into Guarani. In August, after several weeks of meeting with the missionaries, Rosaria and Walter attended a baptism at the Moroni Chapel in Asunción. “Let’s be baptized next Sunday,” Rosaria said to Walter. “Yes, I’m also planning on it soon,” Walter replied. They were baptized on August 24.
Walter began to think about his fellow Nivaclé “because the gospel hadn’t arrived to them in the Chaco.”
Over the next few months, Walter and a pair of full-time missionaries made journeys out to the Chaco, the remote wilderness of northwestern Paraguay, where the Nivaclé lived. “We went to my people,” Walter recalled, “and I gave my first testimony. They didn’t want to believe me at first, but they spoke with the missionaries. We worked together.”
The Nivaclé had already converted to Christianity, but they now desired to make baptismal covenants within the restored gospel. On December 4, 1980, many of the Nivaclé gathered for a baptismal service.
The men dug a baptismal font in the ground and lined it with a large sheet of green plastic. Several girls spent hours filling the font with buckets of water from the river. The white baptismal clothing was used in rotation and grew progressively darker from the silt in the river water. After two hours, 139 individuals had been baptized. In subsequent weeks and months, dozens more followed.
In Asunción, Rosaria continued the busy work of raising their many children and serving in the local ward. Walter regularly returned to the Chaco to support the Nivaclé Saints, who formed a Latter-day Saint settlement called Mistolar. They built a meetinghouse that was supported by tree trunks, with a roof of metal sheets.
The Saints of Mistolar faced repeated hardships due to the harshness of their natural environment. Over time, they created another settlement, Abundancia (named after Bountiful in the Book of Mormon), that was closer to the economic and ecclesiastical resources found in Asunción.
Members of the Abundancia Branch during a meeting, October 1989.
“Our life is peaceful,” said one local leader in Abundancia. “Of course, we have challenges, but before our people had been to the temple, we suffered more. With the help of the temple endowment, we understand the purpose of life much more fully.”
Rosaria and Walter and their children continued to share strength from their indigenous ancestors’ values and knowledge as they built the Church.