So we’ve launched our new website. The old one had way too many bugs that accumulated during the hiatus so it was just better to start fresh. Surprisingly, we still had a lot of customers coming back to us given our tattered state. I am blessed by all the love and support from all of our customers, especially our returning customers who have stuck through with us. I want to call out one customer who paid a deposit right before COVID hit. She was gracious enough to let us hold onto it during our greatest time of need. I am happy to report that she completed the tour just this past June as if nothing ever happened. Thank you Gwenn.
On another bright note, I am proud to announce how successful our tours went during our church auction. I was compelled to donate our Seoul in a Day tour for the event. I wasn’t sure how well a tour of Korea might do for an audience of Korean church members. At the very least, I could position it as a service to them to have a driver take them around Seoul for 8 hours, going and doing anything they wanted. I was surprised that it did sell to a member who then donated it to someone she knew who would appreciate it.
Then the following month, our Korean-American congregation had an auction night and I decided to place the same tour on for that event. I wasn’t there to attend, but the auction director told me the next day that there was a fierce bidding war and that the final selling price went for $1600! Mind you, this is a tour that we sell for $450 retail. I am at a loss for words. Never in my imagination did I think people would pay that much for something like this. And that is not the end of it.
The auction director emailed me several days later telling me that the person who lost the bidding war wanted to pay the same price of $1600 for a tour. I’m thinking to myself, gosh this guy could have just went to our website and bought it retail for way less. But it tells me the convictions people’s hearts towards church missions. This is an event we will support every year, so long as you all will let me. I am grateful for this opportunity to not only serve my customers mentioned above, but for even a greater calling to get people to experience extraordinary things that they might not otherwise have even known about. More thoughts to come on that later. For now, enjoy the new site and please let me know if you have any comments.