Paraguay baptizes 307 teens on World Pathfinder Day

World Pathfinder Day 2026 in Paraguay, which the South American Division (SAD) set for Saturday, September 19, saw 307 teenagers baptized, according to a report published on October 1 by Noticias Adventistas, the SAD news agency of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The agency speaks of thousands of participants across the country and places the baptisms within the Week of Hope (Semana de la Esperanza), the September evangelism campaign. In Paraguay, the Pathfinder Club is called Club de Conquistadores, and the day is known as Día del Conquistador.

📰How was World Pathfinder Day 2026 celebrated in Paraguay?

The South American Division set World Pathfinder Day 2026 for Saturday, September 19, with the theme "Fala, Senhor!" ("Speak, Lord!"), taken from 1 Samuel 3:10. In Paraguay, the Noticias Adventistas report describes a festive day with thousands of participants all over the country, and baptisms too.

The report does not give the exact day of the Paraguayan celebration, how many churches or cities held ceremonies, or how many of those baptized were already club members. Another report from the agency, dated October 5, shows the Week of Hope underway in the country from the 19th, which matches the official calendar. The date, theme and program for the day are in the World Pathfinder Day 2026 guide.

📊How many Pathfinders were baptized in Paraguay?

In Paraguay, 307 teenagers were baptized on World Pathfinder Day 2026, according to Noticias Adventistas. The number appears in a single report, filed from Paraguay, and as of October 6, 2026, no other source had confirmed it. The report itself words it two ways: the subtitle speaks of 307 Pathfinders who decided to give their lives to Jesus, and the body of 307 teenagers baptized. This coverage follows the second, which is more precise about what happened.

For scale, the Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists listed 100 Pathfinder Clubs and more than 70 Adventurer Clubs in the country in a 2021 entry. Those figures come from another period and are useful only as a rough order of magnitude.

Sources: Noticias Adventistas (SAD) and Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. The 2026 figures are those released by the agency; the October 5 report does not say whether the more than 300 include the 307 teenagers.

🧣How did a young Pathfinder receive her scarf and get baptized on the same day?

The October 1 report gives a first-person voice to a Paraguayan Pathfinder whom this coverage does not identify because she is a minor. In her account, faith began at home, with her parents praying together, and found company on the radio: the family listened to Nuevo Tiempo Paraguay (the Spanish-language version of Novo Tempo), and two people sent by the station came to their house and invited them to an Adventist church.

It was at church that the club entered her story. She spent the year as a candidate (aspirante), the stage when a newcomer is not yet a full club member. The scarf came on World Pathfinder Day, and so did her baptism. In Brazil, the equivalent ceremony is usually called scarf admission, and the details vary by Conference or Mission.

Read alsoPathfinder tour in Mexico ends with 164 baptisms→

🗣️What did Paraguay's Pathfinder leader say?

Pastor Mariano Sanz, identified by the agency as national leader of the Pathfinder Ministry in Paraguay, summed up the meaning of the day: celebrating "the lives given to Jesus thanks to the spiritual guidance of the leaders" (free translation).

According to the report, the club's work in the country has three goals: introducing teenagers to Jesus, grounding the church's children in faith from adolescence into adulthood, and preparing tomorrow's leaders. The second goal matters most right after a baptism, and it is the subject of the guide to discipleship in the club.

The Pathfinder club helps us keep a clear focus on our identity: salvation and service.Pastor Mariano Sanz, national leader of the Pathfinder Ministry in Paraguay, to Noticias Adventistas, 2026 (free translation)

🌎What was the 2026 Week of Hope like in Paraguay?

The Week of Hope is the evangelism campaign the Adventist Church holds in September in South American countries. Paraguay's 2026 calendar had two stages, according to an October 5 Noticias Adventistas report: first the Macedonia 5.0 mission outreach, from September 12 to 19, then the Week of Hope, with the slogan "Jesús es nuestra Esperanza" (Jesus Is Our Hope).

The outreach had Brazilian reinforcements: 63 theology students and 5 professors from the São Paulo Adventist University Center (Unasp) worked at about 70 preaching sites. The report credits that effort with more than 300 baptisms, without saying whether the count includes the 307 teenagers from World Pathfinder Day. During the Week of Hope, Pastor Pablo Flor, executive secretary of the Unión Paraguaya (Paraguay Union of Churches Mission), toured the country in a caravan, joined from the 19th by Pastor Carlos Gil, ministerial leader of the South American Division.

In southern Peru, the campaign ran under the theme "Jesús, nuestra esperanza" from September 18 to 26 and ended with 2,434 baptisms in the territory of the South Peru Union, according to the agency. World Pathfinder Day also took other forms around the world: in southeastern Mexico, a Pathfinder caravan ended with 164 baptisms, and in Kiribati, clubs planted mangrove seedlings along the Tarawa coast.

🏛️How many Seventh-day Adventists are there in Paraguay?

The Adventist presence in the country began on August 1, 1900, when Pastor Elwin Winthrop Snyder landed at the port of Asunción, according to the Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. The same entry, published in 2021 with statistics accessed in 2020, counted 12,622 members, 28 pastoral districts and 154 congregations (61 organized churches and 93 companies). The work is coordinated by the Unión Paraguaya, headquartered in Asunción, and the story of the clubs in the country is told in the history of the Pathfinders in Bolivia and Paraguay.