Elder Steven D. Shumway

Two years into his work at Exxon Chemical Co. in Houston, Texas, USA, Elder Steven D. Shumway learned that his parents had been called to preside over a mission in Bolivia and needed help with the family business in Arizona.

“I don’t want to put pressure on you to come back,” his father said to him. “But if you don’t come back, I worry about what will happen to the business.”

It was a difficult decision to make, said Elder Shumway.

He and his wife traveled five hours to the Dallas Texas Temple and spent the day there without receiving an answer. Afterward, they visited a bookstore and spotted the biography of President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008), Go Forward with Faith.

“Both of us felt the Lord say, ‘You need to go forward with faith in my way, not in your way,’” Elder Shumway said. “And so we moved to Arizona, which has turned out to be one of the most significant and beautiful changes in our lives.”

One of the best things they have learned in their marriage, Elder Shumway said, is that “when you accept [the Lord’s] invitation, you prosper. You progress. Things are better than if you try to do things your way.”

Steven D. Shumway was born on June 30, 1970, in Springerville, Arizona, USA, to Wilford Douglas and Dixie Ann Shumway, and grew up in Eager, Arizona. He married Heidi O’Brien in the Salt Lake Temple on December 29, 1994. They are the parents of four children and live in Pinetop, Arizona.

Elder Shumway earned a degree in chemical engineering from Brigham Young University in 1996, worked at Exxon Chemical Co. from 1996 to 1998, and has been the president and CEO of Whiting Brothers Investment Co. since 1998.

At the time of his call, he was serving as an Area Authority Seventy. He has served as president of the Illinois Chicago Mission, stake president, bishop, elders quorum president, stake mission preparation teacher, and full-time missionary in the Pennsylvania Philadelphia Mission.