Kathy Hanks of the Hutchinson News has a great story that was above the fold on the front page of the Faith section about Golden Rule Travel:
Gift from above
Family-run agency that flies missionaries, others to exotic sites has local office.
By Kathy Hanks – The Hutchinson News – khanks@hutchnews.com
PLEASANTVIEW – When a church group from Michigan needs a flight for an annual mission trip to South Africa, they call a Reno County business for assistance. The same goes for individuals, non-government agencies and humanitarian groups across the United States. While it might easily go unnoticed to motorists zooming along U.S. 50 just outside South Hutchinson, Golden Rule Travel has become well-known to those needing to get to that not-so-easy-to-reach location – say, for instance, Conakry, Guinea, by way of Cameroon. The Christian-based, family-operated travel business began as a hobby around Marvin Mast’s kitchen table in Virginia, back in 1985. Today, it has burgeoned into four offices and 22 employees. Two of those offices are in Kansas.
A quote from the article that I enjoyed was, “Office employees at Pleasantview almost all are related in some way, including two of the Masts’ globe-trotting children, Hans and Benji.” 
One clarification about commissions/fees. First, the article called the 5-7% that dad used to get when he first started a “fee” instead of a “commission”. Commission was taken out of the fare price and paid by the airline, while fees are added on top of the airline fare. Second, the article didn’t mention (and we didn’t think to mention it) that since then, most airlines have cut the commission to 0% and we subsist almost entirely on adding fees on top of the fares we get–whether they’re published fares or wholesale fares. Any confusion arises from our inadequate explanations in the interviews rather than it being Kathy’s fault.
2 Responses
January 18th, 2009 at 12:23 am
“Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings, he will not stand before mere men.”–Proverbs
So encouraging when a Christian testimony and work excellence are combined.
January 19th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Thanks, Dorcas!
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