I’m about to undertake another round of travel in (among other places) Israel and Egypt in order to (among other things) accompany tour groups there. So, as regularly as Swiss clockwork, one of the most dishonest of my anonymous critics is accusing me of “priestcraft,” profiteering enormously from such tours — as he has also accused me of scheming to make money from a fraudulent film project, just as he and his cleverer and more cunning role model, my Malevolent Stalker, have routinely (and falsely) accused me of generating considerable income from defending the claims of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and so forth.
There’s probably no hope, in this life, of repairing such accusers, who continually lie about me and who obviously feel no moral inhibitions about doing so.
But I suspect that others may be under an actual sincere misimpression regarding these trips, so I think that I’ll try to set things forth on the topic while I’m sitting here in the airport.
I’ve been doing tours with the Cruise Lady company every year for a decade or so. Maybe a bit more. Diane Larsen, the owner of Cruise Lady, approached me about doing so at the end of a large Education Week lecture in the ballroom of the Wilkinson Student Center at Brigham Young University. I still remember the occasion well. I have enjoyed working with the folks at Cruise Lady, and we’ve had many good experiences together — as, I believe, many of the people who have traveled with us have had.
But here’s the financial deal:
I’m not paid for these tours. I don’t profit from them.
My expenses — my airfare, lodging, food, and so forth — are covered by Cruise Lady, as are those of my wife, who always accompanies me and who is a wonderful help to me and (I’m sure that others could testify) to those on the tour. (If we were paying those expenses myself, my wife and I would go on our own, on our schedule, at our pace.) But those are expenses that we wouldn’t occur if we were not on the trip, and so the financial impact on us is a wash.
Actually, it’s less than a wash for us, because we always pay at least a few expenses ourselves, and we always give substantial tips to the local guides who accompany us (and whom, in places like Israel and Jordan and Egypt, Cruise Lady is obliged to employ).
Anyway, if I’m expecting to grow wealthy by accompanying these tours, somebody urgently needs to sit me down and help me to rethink my business model.
I’m reminded of the old joke that my father used to tell, about a farmer who bought a pig for $100 and then, about a year later, sold the pig for $100. “What was the point of that?” asked a neighbor. “Well,” responded the farmer, “I had full use of the pig for a year!”
And I remember the joke told in Conference once by President Dallin H. Oaks about the two enterprising agricultural salesmen who would buy watermelons for a dollar and then transport them by truck to a market in the nearby city, where they sold them for a dollar. After a season of extremely brisk sales, they looked over their books and discovered to their amazement that their financial position hadn’t improved a bit. “Obviously,” said one to the other, “we need a bigger truck.”
Posted from Salt Lake City, Utah
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