The day their youngest daughter got engaged should have been a day for celebration and nothing else. Instead, Corey Lindley and his wife Jan quietly signed papers to serve a full-time mission. He had spent two years as the chief executive of a company that brought in more than $2 billion a year, and rather than settle into a comfortable retirement, the two of them asked to serve wherever they were needed.

The call came, and it sent them to the Solomon Islands, a scattering of islands in the South Pacific that Corey could barely locate on a map. It was a long way from Hong Kong boardrooms and executive summits. It was exactly where he wanted to be.

On this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits down with Corey to walk back through a life most people would call a stunning success, and to ask the question underneath all of it. Why give it up? The answer, Corey says, is the same answer that has guided every decision he ever made.

Becoming a Son of God  

Corey grew up in a faithful home in Utah, the son of parents he loved and respected. When his mission call came, it sent him to the New York New York Greek-speaking Mission, and it humbled him fast. Greek did not come easily. He knocked on doors he could not understand and stumbled through a language that felt impossible, leaning on the Lord in a way he never had before.

Somewhere in that struggle, something shifted. Corey says he went out into the field as the son of Earl Lindley, a good man with a good name, and he came home as the son of God. The mission taught him to recognize the hand of the Lord in his own life, and that recognition became the North Star he would steer by for the next four decades, through every promotion, every move, and every hard call.

The Missionary Who Could Not Speak  

Years later, as a mission president in Australia, Corey met a young elder from Idaho with strong grades, a farm work ethic, and the most severe stutter he had ever heard. The young man was sent to a small country town, and within weeks he sat across from Corey in tears. People slammed doors in his face. He could not get the words out. He did not know if he could do this.

Corey laid his hands on the elder's head and blessed him. He felt a strong prompting that the young man would be healed, though he hardly dared say it out loud. The elder went home, knelt down, and consecrated himself to the Lord. Two weeks later he walked back in with his stutter almost entirely gone. A doctor later told Corey that kind of recovery was not supposed to happen. Corey knew what it was.

Principle Over Profits  

Corey is careful to say that faith and business were never separate compartments for him. He watched leaders at doTERRA walk away at the height of their careers to serve missions, and he did the same when he was asked to lead in Australia. He came to believe that when a company's leaders treat their convictions as more important than their titles, it changes the character of the whole organization.

It comes down to principle over profits, he says. Choosing what is right over the extra dollar builds a culture of integrity and honesty, the kind of trust that customers and employees can feel. Plenty of companies chase their own rewards. The ones that stay focused on helping people, in Corey's view, are the ones that hold real and lasting value in the world.

Breakfast, Scriptures, and the People Who Love You  

Ask Corey how he stayed a present father while running businesses on the other side of the world, and he points straight to his wife Jan. She sat him down more than once and told him something had to change, that he needed to be home. She made family dinner a priority. And after a memorable failure at doing his daughters' hair, Corey took over breakfast, cooking his children a hot meal every school morning for years.

The pattern held into his career. A few years ago, busy in his role as a chief executive, Corey let his personal scripture study slip. His daughter, who had gotten him into running, asked one morning what he had read in the Book of Mormon that day. He had to admit he had not. He saw the look on her face, repented on the spot, and has read every morning since. The people who love us, he learned, can hold us to who we want to be.

The Island He Could Barely Find on a Map  

The Solomon Islands mission became, in Corey's words, one of the great experiences of his life. He and Jan poured themselves into people who had very little by the world's measure and who taught him what real discipleship looks like. He tells the story of a new convert who described his baptism as losing all the rubbish things he had been carrying, a line Corey has never forgotten.

Over eighteen months, the work grew in ways that surprised even him. He watched a small body of Latter-day Saints expand, saw men step forward to serve, and felt the same hand of the Lord he had first recognized as a young missionary in New York. Giving up the corner office, it turned out, had made room for something he could not have bought at any price.

Jesus Christ Is the Why  

Corey is an accountant by training, analytical to his core, and he says that is exactly why his testimony holds. When he looks back over his life and weighs the evidence the way he would weigh anything else, he arrives at a conclusion he cannot deny. Jesus Christ is his Savior and his advocate, the perfect exemplar he is trying to become more like, and the reason behind everything he does.

President Dallin H. Oaks has taught that Christ is the way, Corey notes, and he believes that with his whole heart. But he adds one word to it. Christ is also the why. When the Savior is the fixed reason underneath every decision, Corey says, joy and peace and happiness follow, in this life and in the life to come.

Key Takeaways  

Corey's story turns on a handful of ideas worth sitting with. The first is that Jesus Christ can be the fixed point every other choice orbits around, so that career, title, and wealth settle into their proper place as scenery rather than the main event. The second is that stepping away from success when the Lord asks is rarely convenient, yet it is often how we make room for God to do more than we ever planned.

There is also the quiet power of the people who love us. They tend to see us more clearly than we see ourselves, and when they hold us to a covenant standard, they lift us toward it. Consecration, Corey shows, is less a single grand gesture than a daily handing over of our time and talents, which God then meets by making up the difference. And lasting joy, in the end, comes not from what the world can measure but from covenants kept and lives changed in quiet service.

Thank you for reading and for letting these stories strengthen your own faith in Jesus Christ. If this one moved you, share it with someone who needs it.

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Thank you for reading this week's blog post inspired by the Why We Believe show. If you are interested in more stories like this, you can check out our other blog posts and episodes at WhyWeBelieve.com.

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