Welcome to Throwback Thursday at LDS Missionaries! Our throwback today comes from LDS Church News, 15 July 2011.
In Job 38:31, the Lord tells Job He bound the Pleiades together. Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters, is a constellation of seven stars that are so far away their light needs 350 years to reach the Earth, according to astronomers.
Marisol (Chile Osorno), Antonia (Argentina Resistencia), Daniela (Costa Rica San Jose), Florencia (Honduras Comayaguela), Verónica (Chile Santiago East), Anai (Guatemala City North), and Balbina Nava Aguilar (Argentina Bahía Blanca) are seven sisters bound by their concurrent service as full-time missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
These seven sisters from Mexico, ranging in age from their early twenties to late thirties, are letting their light shine in their family and in the mission field as they share their knowledge and testimonies of the gospel with people in five countries.
The sisters’ first contact with LDS missionaries was when they began attending free English classes at a local chapel.
“As we participated, we began to want to be a part of the Church,” Verónica said. “We contacted the missionaries serving the ward near us and asked them to baptize us immediately.”
In one week, the sisters received three discussions, and in 2006, they—along with another sister and their brother—were baptized.
In the process of these seven sisters’ conversions, they brought their parents, Albino Nava and Isidra Aguilar, who had joined the Church three decades earlier, back into full activity.
Their bishop later told them the ward had been fasting and praying for eight people to join the Church so the ward could be approved for a new meetinghouse. Now the ward qualified, and the family later participated in the dedication of the new Atlacomulco chapel.
Two years after their conversions, the sisters decided they wanted to serve missions. They began preparing financially and spiritually.
The myth of Pleiades holds that the seven sisters were placed in the sky as stars to comfort their father. Brother Nava said that his daughters’ missionary service has brought him peace.
“I told my daughters, ‘If you want to go serve the Lord, go ahead,’” Brother Nava said. “One needs to serve and continue to know the gospel. I am content, and I am happy because my daughters are missionaries for the gospel.”
But a setback occurred when the paperwork for all seven sisters, which had taken six months to gather, was lost.
“Part of us didn’t want to go anymore, but we gathered together and we talked during a Family Home Evening about what we should do,” said Anai. “We decided that since we had made a promise to our Heavenly Father, we would go forth with our goal because there would always be opposition in everything.”
In 2010 they submitted their second round of papers together, and when the calls came, they found they were spread out over seven missions in five South and Central American countries.
