Blog Post: After Evacuations Part Three
“Names and titles in the following section about the rest of the story have been changed due to the sensitive nature of involvement in a personal business not strictly aligned with the mission’s goals stated in their documents.”
Chapter Nine
Setting up a tour business in North Africa
My son in law and Laura were on leave from their ministry in North Africa, again living in our old farmhouse, so we would just walk right back in. They had been working in North Africa and felt led by the Lord to find a way to obtain a residence visa to extend their commitment to live and work there beyond the length of time allowed under regular visitor’s and educational visas.
He proposed we open a tourism service to North Africa and we began working on that together. He was doing research on the web and finding out what kind of a company we might be able to set up. He needed to select a name for the company and establish a website where we could advertise the services we offered. The idea was to set up a number of tours, each with its own itinerary, where the attractions of North Africa could be seen and enjoyed. We would make all the arrangements in North Africa and sell the tours over the internet.
I began researching what was necessary to establish an LLC in New York. The legal library in the basement of an old Cooperstown church, now used by the county, had the information we needed to create one. To make it official we were required to inform the public through two local newspapers. The business needed a name and an address as well as an operating agreement between the members. We had no business plan or capital investment funds, no office and no employees, not even an accountant or a lawyer.
My son in law decided we would call the business North Africa Travel!, LLC (NAT!) and for the location we filled in our home address and our own phone number on the application to IRS for our EIN number. The TAX ID was sent to our rural mailbox. He figured out how to create a presence on the world wide web and established email addresses for each of us. He found examples of operating agreements and modified one for our new LLC. We both signed.
A very small bedroom in our old farmhouse became the new office location, where we connected to the internet through our phone line. Each of us had his own computer. I paid the fees for the publication of the information about our new company in two local newspapers, and we officially existed. We bought a Dell laser color printer so the itineraries, vouchers and information papers we sent to the clients would be as attractive as possible. My son in law ordered a raised seal to use on our vouchers. MTS, Menno Travel Service, had worked with the mission many years to make travel arrangements for missionaries and they were generous in supplying advice and a sample packet of what they were then using. I liked the Microsoft Works spreadsheet they then used for invoices and made one very similar for NAT! We needed a logo and an official letterhead, both of which were created. Our business was ready to serve any who would choose to be our clients. IRS sent us the EIN number, and we were ready to be taxed.
Of course we needed to keep accounts and that became my job. Looking back over the expenses paid to get things started it was clear that I had already invested more than my partner had and he wished to retain more than 50% of the shares and the control of the business. The initial expenses were treated as cash transactions, and we opened a bank account in Richfield Springs where he added money to bring his share up to 51%.
While in Idaho doing training for the Koda Hydroelectric project, I had used my evenings at the motel to take a correspondence course in accounting for a small business. There I learned the double entry accounting system where every line in a big multicolumn book, called the journal, had the same dollar amount entered twice, once on the credit side and once on the debit side of the relevant account columns. Basically, the accounts are divided into assets (what the company owns, like the bank accounts) which if entered correctly will equal the total of the liabilities (what the company pays out, like printing expenses) plus the equity (the amount owned by the members, us two). A typical line in the journal might show I used a $285.35 check from the Bank entered on credit (right) side of the bank column with the same amount, $285.35 entered in the Equipment expense column entered on the debit (left) side. Using Microsoft Works, I created a spreadsheet showing as many columns as possible for the most frequently used accounts including one for other accounts that were listed in another book called the ledger. To balance the books, at the end of each page, the total of all the debits and the total of all the credits must match or there is an entry or addition error somewhere. The account balances are then carried forward and used to start the columns on the next page. It was all done on paper, but Ellen helped me make all the entries in our custom-made journal, actually enjoying the meticulous details.
The IRS accepted paper tax returns in 2002 and so we filed our own taxes. They would never bother us; we weren’t making much money anyway.
I’m sure this all worked with wisdom from God and His blessing. This was far from full time work, and we were still under the authority of Africa Inland Mission receiving support to help with our living expenses.
Chapter Ten
AIM home Assignment
AIM had changed the name of what had been called furlough to “Home Assignment” I think to comply with IRS guidelines and demonstrate that they weren’t simply transferring money from supporting churches to individuals who wanted to live in Africa. After our first evacuation AIM asked us to work at the retirement center for several reasons. After the second evacuation we had been accepted to work at RVA and completed the normal missionary term there. Now, on this Home Assignment, they contacted us, interested primarily in having Ellen cater the meals with Gary Eppy for candidate orientation week when all the missionary candidates were invited to the Pearl River headquarters and needed to be fed. Of course we went together.
Our room had a huge king-sized bed in it so I used half of the bed as my NAT! office area and continued working on our new business, while Ellen worked in the big kitchen. She enjoyed satisfying quite a variety of special requirements for candidates who were allergic to various ingredients that could be part of the menu. She quickly memorized those who informed her of what they couldn’t eat and provided alternatives. Frankly, I wondered about what they would do if the missionary candidate ended up someplace where their special needs couldn’t be met. The mission had laser printers to which I could connect to print what I needed for NAT! so the visits were not idle times for me. It was a pleasant walk from the mission headquarters to the Publix grocery store in Pearl River where Ellen could get anything she needed for the meals.
Chapter Eleven
The NAT! Office
The kids were back in North Africa and my son-in-law was selling tours, maintaining the website, and writing itineraries, while she worked with the women. He discovered that he was required to use a local company to make reservations in hotels for our clients and engaged a company called TAM Voyages. He opened a bank account in his local city to which I was able to transfer money from our Richfield Bank. We initially used PayPal or personal checks to receive money from our clients.
We began to get excellent feedback from those who had traveled with us and got permission to use their feedback to encourage others to use our services. It looked like we would end up making a profit in our first year of operation!
They received their residence visa since he was running a business that was bringing foreign currency into the country. He was diligently following the laws of the land declaring all his earnings, paying all the taxes and hiring locals to work in the office. He also hired qualified private drivers for our clients. North Africa accepted real businessmen into their country even if they were Christians, provided they were not trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. My partner was pleased to know that he was becoming accepted as a businessman who worked hard, kept his word, and paid his bills. His friend Mustafa who had earlier helped him establish a small craft store now offered men he knew to become custom drivers for us. He also suggested his wife, a certified accountant, who helped us satisfy the many requirements for reporting and paying taxes in North Africa.
It soon became evident that TAM Voyages, the one we were paying to make and care for the hotel reservations, delayed payment for so long that we needed to care for that ourselves if we could. My son-in-law found out all the requirements to open a fully licensed, local travel service company, took the training online, obtained the certificates in order to qualify as the manager of such a company, and hired his staff. He bought the key (some kind of long-term rental) for a 3-room office space, located in the heart of the bustling old city. The new company was in business for real.
We were honoring God and NAT! began making money.
Chapter Twelve
Making money as a member of AIM
I had grown up as an MK, the son of medical missionaries whose support had come from churches and other Christians through AIM. I knew that a TDR, a tax-deductible receipt, was issued to every donor. Those receipts constituted proof that the gifts were for the declared mission of the sending agency, namely to make the Gospel known and establish churches. I also knew that my parents did not earn a profit in spite of the thousands of surgery cases they performed. In fact, AIM forbid missionaries from engaging in business to make a profit. The making of money could cause them to abandon the primary reason they were sent to Africa. The IRS was tightening their scrutiny of any group operating as a non-profit business, a 501K, 501(C) (3), or whatever they call it now. It looks like there are hundreds of ways to avoid being taxed, to the point where the taxing agency has to re-examine the rules continuously to collect their share of the organization’s receipts and be sure the monies are being used as declared in the mission statement which had allowed their tax-free status. Frankly I only know the basics.
The Bible says to give taxes to whom taxes are due and custom to whom custom is due. It seems a little silly to try to “save God’s money”. How does all this apply to me as one now engaged in making money with NAT! and still receiving money from the mission?
AIM, no doubt was struggling with similar questions since there were many who wished to receive support through AIM to live and work in North African countries where missionaries were not welcome. If the funds were channeled through the mission, the giver would receive a TDR (tax deductible receipt) and the mission would deduct the usual percentages of the gift to cover their operating expenses. Of course, direct gifts from friends to support a Christian worker in North Africa was a possibility, and a gift tax does not apply until the annual gift exceeds something like $15,000. Of course, the IRS rules change continuously and it was necessary for the mission to somehow adjust! Muslim countries offer no welcome to missionaries, viewing their efforts as similar to what the Crusaders did as they tried to forcibly convert people to Christianity. Any businessman receiving his living from a mission organization was automatically suspect if his business was not bringing any money into the country nor paying taxes.
I was now in America receiving support as a missionary on “Home assignment” but it was obvious that I was a partner in NAT!, a company established to make a profit and I had done this on my own initiative. As a member of AIM, earning a profit on the side, I felt that my situation was not all that different from a worker receiving funds from a non-profit organization and earning nothing from his business in North Africa. Here I was, a partner in a business for profit, receiving gifts from a non-profit organization.
I asked our mission leader, Ted Barnett, for advice. “For you, it is easy,” he said. “You can just retire from AIM.”
And we did.
We informed our donors that the Lord was blessing our new business and that we were retiring from AIM. They should give their gifts to other missionaries in need. Almost all gifts previously received through the mission stopped immediately, and since we were old enough, we applied for and began receiving Social Security checks.
That year NAT! again showed a profit. God was faithful and had cared for us as He promised.
Chapter Thirteen
NAT! grows Exponentially
As a retired missionary with AIM, now also self employed as a founding member of a business, that was growing rapidly, I found a number of things were becoming more complicated. We were residents of New York State and our business was operating under its laws. AIM had been managing our finances and had established a couple retirement savings accounts called 401Ks into which they had been depositing some of our money every month. We were now no longer part of the mission health insurance plan and didn’t pay into that, but being retired, and receiving Social Security checks, Medicare was activated and was deducted from our SS deposits. The Mission had no pension plan, but it made no sense to worry. God told us not to think about tomorrow. He would care for us!
Jeff was in Houghton College, and our girls were all married. We owned the old farmhouse outright, bought our used cars for cash, had no debts at all, not even on a credit card. There was no one who was thriftier than Ellen and she found all the best places to buy our food. She remembered all the prices and kept meticulous records of our living expenses. We kept fixing up our old house in spite of my dream to build us a small retirement house that wouldn’t be so hard for her to care for. She nixed that! Where would we put all our kids when they came home to visit! Ellen wanted all our kids to enjoy coming home and to have room for them all!
Chapter Fourteen
Visiting Grandma and Grandpa’s Farm
My elder sister, Leilani, was one of the many family members who had gathered to witness and share the joy of Jeff and Lindsay’s wedding. Leilani, two years older than I, was retired and in a long email wrote of her visit to Grandpa Paul’s Farm. Keep in mind that she was a lonely storyteller from drought ridden Texas, visiting New York in the summer. She clearly idealized life at the farm and even left some of her cloths in the Purple Room closet to have here, she said, if she ever returned to retire.
She has since passed away, and we found this copy of her email written at that time. Here is what she wrote:
“I’m home from my wonderful trip to Central New York to celebrate Jeff Brown and Lindsay Buel’s Wedding, Saturday August 15. I then transitioned by bus back to my real world of 102 degrees’ heat, constant sun, and continued drought.
In Central New York, near Cooperstown, it rains. There are lakes and beaver ponds and little springs. There are muskrats and foxes and flowers and trees and all kinds of birds and butterflies. There were summer apples on old trees standing out in fields, and cows and a lovely dappled grey horse.”
“There were roosters and hens, both in the fields and in the henhouse. There was a goat family–a huge, big ram and a dainty little nanny who was pregnant, and a couple of kittens (half-grown) named by the grandchildren, Tigger (the aggressive bouncy one) and Shyster (who was always hiding).”
(Actually the names would be hard to verify since there were five or six kittens in the hay loft that the girls could tell apart only by which paw had red fingernail polish painted on which claws. I know one was called ‘Her-highness’, another was ‘Shyness’, and a darker kitten with tiger markings was first called ‘Chocolate’, later shorten to ‘Choco’. (We still have ‘Shyness’ and ‘Choco’.)
“And there were twelve wonderful grandchildren, mostly under the age of 12, four for each of the three families who were there. One family from Hollywood, California; one family from British Columbia (the area where they had the terrible Forest Fires) and one from North Carolina. Paul Henry’s four grandchildren in North Africa stayed with their father there, who is the on-site coordinator for NAT!, while Paul Henry and Ellen tend to bookings and organizing on this end.
Paul Henry and Ellen have the most amazing grandchildren–they are all tow-headed and bright eyed and full of energy from sun-up until bed-time. They eat what is served with thanksgiving, and look out for each other peaceably so that grown-ups can talk and visit without interruptions from kids. I heard no whining, no complaining, no tattling, and no unkind words, at any time, from anyone! No threats, no spankings-it was amazing, with SO MANY LITTLE PEOPLE all in one house for a week.
I guess this is what it is going to be like in Heaven! A little crowded but a LOT OF HAPPY!”
“The old turn-of the-century farmhouse on Weeks Road has four bedrooms upstairs, and one down-stairs (originally the parlor); however, there was only one and a-half bathrooms! There were two tents in the yard (Grampa Paul Henry and his wife Ellen slept out in the tent because they said it was so quiet and peaceful in the yard!) There was also one pop-up camper trailer. Ellen shopped and planned for 30 people, and we ate sumptuously three times a day, country fare like ham and biscuits and blueberry pies, and exotic dishes, too, like fried plantain, chicken and lemon with nam (flat bread from the Middle East) and an African dish with all kinds of vegetables and ground meat in a sauce that was a little spicy and hot. Ellen bought 300 paper-plates, and instead of having to wash lots and lots of dishes, we just tossed them in the burn-barrel after each meal, and gave the food scraps to the kittens, the goats or the chickens.”
“The garden was a dream! The tomatoes had got the “blight” (probably from too much rain), but the cucumbers and squash were enormous. The green beans had to be picked daily, and the corn was sweet. There was leaf lettuce and all kinds of onions, red, white and yellow. There were beets and carrots. Children, with nothing to do, could always be sent out to pull the weeds and bring in some thing for the table.
“The kitchen was a very busy place, with bread, pies and cookies being baked often, everything made from scratch, even the angel-food birthday cake! And the clean-up happened so fast, with everyone doing his part. Being dishwasher was an honor it seemed.”
“Children rarely had nothing to do. Mothers and Dads planned a trip to a lake and to falls to swim, a blue-berry farm for picking, and to Cooperstown, for the Baseball Hall of Fame. There was a hay-loft in which to build ‘forts’, trees to climb, and all sorts of swings to swing on. Of course, there were all the farm animals to feed and to chase and to pet. The Billy-goat would chase anyone who got too close to the nanny. The horse had to be caught before he could be ridden. The chickens and the kittens loved to play hide and seek. And eggs could be found in surprising places!”
“There was a parrot who whistled along with Paul Henry and chatted happily to himself when the house was quiet; an African Grey, Paul Henry has had for almost twenty years and a bright bird from the Caribbean that squawked loudly from time to time, if you paid attention to the grey one.”
“I mainly watched all the happy interaction, and told stories, and had stories told to me, and drew pictures and painted with watercolors.”
“It’s been in a wonderful world for a week, but now I’m safely home, refreshed in body, mind and spirit.”
There was more to her email which I must say is rather idealistic, especially when describing my grandchildren who did no wrong and received no spankings. The animals on the farm were real and though my son Jeff called it a hobby farm (a place rich old men play around in the country) it was a lot of work!
Chapter Fifteen
Chickens from McMurray Hatchery
Grandpa Paul’s farm in New York didn’t use an incubator to hatch the first chickens that lived here. The little granddaughter that asked about the chooks has long ago lost her Australian accent. Now she speaks with her hands, as she has been trained in sign language. The first chickens we had on the farm came in the mail.
The mailman in our tiny post office knows everybody and called us one morning asking if we were expecting a noisy package. We were. The chicks came in a specially constructed box, and they were certainly noisy. I had placed a minimum order on line, to the Murry McMurray hatchery in Indiana. They had been in their little box, prisoners without food or water for a couple days and now wanted to eat. They all survived, even the extra one. I now had chickens on my farm. I had also purchased some calves from my neighbor, and they were growing rapidly.
Was this just a hobby?
When is a farm not a farm? My son, Jeff, kidded me saying “I was just playing around and it wasn’t really a farm.” A neighbor, who prepares tax returns, said I didn’t need to report my farm income as there was so little. Real farms have tax free numbers and don’t pay taxes on all the parts they buy at Springers, Tractor Supply, Agway or other farm stores. They don’t pay tax on farm fuel either. I never did try to register Grandpa’s Farm and obtain a tax-free number since the farm was not our primary source of income, and I just enjoyed the work.
I guess I agreed with my son that it was something like a hobby farm. I decided, however, to establish accounts for my farm, since I was required to report any earnings over $600 to the IRS. I doubted the earnings would ever exceed the expenses, but I faithfully reported the calculated net gain or loss as determined by my simple accounting. When I sold off the last of my cows, including Chai, about six years later, my farm finally realized its first profit, increasing my taxable income by about $600 that year. I was finally in total agreement with my son, admitting it was just a hobby farm after all, and I quit doing the accounting and reporting the net gain or loss.
It was just Grandpa’s farm, a wonderful place to share life when family members come home.
Chapter Sixteen
We learn more about running tours to North Africa
My partner and I were both answering inquiries that came in through the web site but soon it became difficult to keep up. He had experienced all the highlights offered in our itineraries and visited the hotels, riads and dars, (similar to riads but with no interior garden), that were selected for different levels of accommodations depending on the luxury level the clients desired. He felt we should travel around together on what he called the circuit, an 11-day tour that included mosques, medinas, mountains and dunes. NAT! covered our expenses and we spent the hours on the road thinking of information we could write to share with the clients to prepare them the best we could for their tour. We wanted to enhance their expectations, sharpen their perceptions, and enjoy the reality during their visit to North Africa. Our tour packets mailed to clients, in the special folders he had created for NAT!, became beautifully illustrated mementos of their North Africa trip.
Accounting was far more demanding and I sought professional help on the IRS tax return from Tom Devaney, a local Christian tax preparer. By then we were using QuickBooks and there were accounts receivable, payable, prepaid taxes, wages, and guaranteed payments for five members. I felt that my accounting skills were no longer sufficient for the growing business, and New York’s suffocating regulations. Their high taxes had us seriously considering moving to Florida.
We were offering services to North Africa, East Asia, Tunisia, and the Middle East, with other countries being explored as the next potential country where we wanted to help Christian workers reside. God had helped us establish a business that He used and allowed to prosper so more Christian workers could become “boots on the ground”, a term that was often used in our board meetings. There was no way we wanted to be deceitful, pretending to offer tourism services, but not be diligent in our work and live blameless lives to be a light to show the way to God in a dark land.
There was no doubt that the North African government monitored the businesses established by the foreign workers to whom they had granted residence visas. My son in law and Laura knew Arabic well and had friends in the city where he and his family lived with the local people. Normally the foreigners lived in a more modern part of town. My son in law was asked by a policeman friend why he still lived in the medina when his business was doing so well.
The transfers I sent regularly to the bank in North Africa and the taxes he paid verified that his business wasn’t simply a front. Sadly, there were businesses that had almost no earnings so the authorities forced those people to leave the country. They were ones who had hoped live there and share the Gospel. The authorities concluded that these guests were living from gifts they received through mission sending agencies. They also expelled other workers; like those serving in an orphanage, who shared God’s love with the needy children, fearing that the children might abandon Islam. The country’s spiritual authorities were exercising their power.
We were grateful that none of the workers who were part of NAT! were asked to leave. We continued to thank the Lord for His blessing.
Chapter Seventeen
Insurance and Liability
Any time service is offered to the public there is the possibility that the customer will feel that he has not been served well. They have the option of initiating a lawsuit against the company if they felt the company was at fault.
Now we did our best to inform our travelers what they could expect to find in North Africa and had each one care for his own international travel arrangements. When our travelers came to North Africa, we had our experienced drivers meet them on arrival to help and advise them during their stay. The English speaking drivers were invaluable, with new customers often asking for them by name to be engaged for their pending tour. Earlier travelers had given them recommendations.
Our terms and conditions outlined what we would be able to refund, or apply to a future tour, if for some reason they had to cancel their tour. We also recommended that they obtain travel insurance for unforeseen losses and included colorful brochures in our tour packet. Rather than purchase insurance for the company, we set aside money to use for any emergency.
NAT! gets sued
Serving papers to NAT! in the lawsuit initiated against us by a California client, was done legally. An unknown small black car drove up our short driveway off Weeks Road and stopped in front of our white farmhouse with blue doors and black shutters. The number on the mailbox and on the house above the garage door confirmed, to the immense black man, that he was at the business address though there was no business sign to be seen.
Laura and her husband, soon to return to North Africa, were here visiting us and he met the man on the rock steps just outside our front door. The delivering agent was confident that the business was located here, and our majority founding member of the company could do nothing but accept the thick folder of papers addressed to NAT!.
The man left.
At the time, I thought the man must have been given his job because of his intimidating, powerful, presence. No one could physically refuse him anything. A California client had initiated a lawsuit against us demanding a trial by jury in California. The jury would help determine the final amount NAT! would be required to pay to settle the lawsuit. We had no lawyer, but we certainly had to answer these papers. The amount stated in the paper served against us was $1 million and we had $25 thousand in our reserve account. The papers stated that an additional amount to cover medical expenses and hardship, because of the man’s inability to do his normal duties, would be determined by the jury, in the named California district and court.
The man had a badly broken leg and placed the blame against the driver we had supplied for his tour. Our hired self-employed driver had shown him the path tourists follow when they leave the road and walk the short distance to a viewpoint where a certain waterfall could be seen. The accident happened when our client jumped from the roadside down to the rock that was at the start of the trail. The compound fracture of his leg was certainly serious and the driver did all he could to get him to a place where he could receive medical attention. The local travel company then cared for the expenses to get him on a plane back home to California.
God brought to my mind the email address of a recent tour client. I had recently sent A. C. all the documents related to his own tour. I decided to try to contact him since he had supplied positive feedback after completing his tour and was willing to be a reference. I wrote to him and asked if I could talk to him about a lawsuit we had been served against us following the injury of one of our clients. It was being blamed on our driver. He supplied his phone number.
He confirmed that he was indeed a lawyer and volunteered that he was 85 years old, obviously one with considerable experience. I was so naïve that I immediately told him what little I knew of the incident, never thinking that his expertise and wisdom, shared over the phone, was costing $15 a minute! I still remember his remark that this kind law suit was “Ho, hum.” I guess personal injury lawsuits weren’t all that uncommon.
He was willing to help and made reference to a lawyer he knew in California. He flew out there to see what he could do. I had informed him that we only had our own “self-insurance” reserve and that we were in the process of closing down our office in over-regulated New York because of their heavy taxes.
I don’t know what he offered to our former client as an immediate out of court settlement.
I couldn’t understand how the plaintiffs could come after NAT! in New York when a North African driver was named as the one responsible for causing the injury. The driver was self-employed, hired for this custom tour by the company that we had established in North Africa. Why did they demand a jury trial in California against NAT!, a company registered in New York? If anywhere it should be tried under New York laws. I did hear that the driver and the local travel company had helped the injured client as we had promised in our Terms and Conditions paper, under our Good Samaritan’s clause.
I’m no lawyer, as our lawyer reminded me, but I asked him those questions. I had also offered my advice to him. Obviously, since the new wife of the injured man was a lawyer, she had selected a trial location that was convenient for her where she said the sale of the tour was made. The plaintiffs had no way to get the amount of money they initially demanded from the driver. The driver might not even have owned the vehicle he drove and his cash assets, if any, would be in local currency. They went after the tour company, thinking we must certainly have insurance, and additional assets against which we could easily get a loan.
It wasn’t long before A. C. called to inform me that the counter offer he had received from our former client was higher, rather than lower, than their first out of court proposal. Unusual. I appreciated the diligence he applied to helping us. He was easy to trust and I readily approved that he ask his California acquaintance to write a motion, or whatever it is called, for a change in trial venue to Albany, NY. In wordy legalese, the motion for a change of venue was duly submitted to the judge. I can only guess that the plaintiffs and judge were properly impressed by the action and arguments presented by our Columbus lawyer. NAT! gratefully approved the settlement finally negotiated by him. I told our lawyer we would love to offer him, as thanks, another custom tour in North Africa, free of charge.
Time has passed and our business has moved from my home to Florida and is now registered there under a new name. The name is now NATT, LLC with a new EIN number. You may have noticed that the “!” is no longer part of the name. We praise the Lord for how He used this business to serve hundreds of clients well, to visit beautiful lands where we seek to serve Him blamelessly. May His light be visible!
Chapter Eighteen
Time for Farming
When our tour business was reestablished in Florida I no longer had all the accounting responsibilities so we had more time for our farm! Ellen and I worked on the documentation for each tour continuously seeking to improve the communication with the clients so there would be the best possible balance between the information we supplied, the expectations the client had and the reality he found during his tour experience. The tour packets became ever more detailed even including custom illustrated maps for each tour.
Travel Restrictions and recovering from COVID
We continue to live in our old New York farmhouse which is in some of the most beautiful countryside in the nation. Our original home phone number became part of the NATT contact information, appearing wherever a phone number was needed. We got a new number for the farm. The old number continued to be used for NATT sales. Even though we have moved to a new address in Florida, we still receive all sorts of calls and mail addressed to the business since the tour packets are still mailed from the farm. Ellen continues to print the tour documents which I am no longer responsible to check and format. I am far less competent than she is at keeping track of the tour details, and she enjoys it.
Ellen is now working for NATT on an hourly basis, having skills learned as we worked together. She rarely needs my help and it will be hard for NATT to replace her if she ever truly retires. Threatened by the pending absence of tours during the COVID crisis and responsibilities in case of large losses, I offered my shares in the company to my founding partner. As we had agreed in our original operating agreement, the transfer of shares would be at “book value” so Tom Devaney, our tax accountant, worked out the details of the transfer.
The business has recovered to become busier than ever before. It was good to retire from my responsibilities and be content with what we have. The Lord’s blessing on our business had been such that our Social Security benefits were adjusted upward by some unknown government formula based on yearly income and self-employment taxes so we can cover our living expenses without the business income. We are confident that the Lord will care for us even to old age and continue faithful to the end.