DownloadNov. 16, 2009 issue
Company marks 40 years of tours connecting people of faith
By Susan FishLANCASTER, Pa., and WATERLOO, Ont. — In the late 1960s, two employees of Mennonite Publishing House in Scottdale, Pa., organized a tour of Mennonites eager to recover connections with the roots of Anabaptism in Europe.
TourMagination owners Janet and Wilmer Martin at Ayers Rock in the Australian outback.
Jan Gleysteen and Arnold Cressman found interest in the tour was strong, and in 1970, a group from Ontario, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Indiana toured sites in Europe in an attempt to retrieve the original Mennonite vision and to have fellowship with Mennonites in these places.
Soon, the tours became a regular event, allowing people to blend their faith with an opportunity to see the world. Gleysteen and Cressman formed a tour company, TourMagination.
Now the company is celebrating four decades of Mennonite-oriented travel.
By 1976, TourMagination alumni were asking the company to lead tours to other parts of the world. Mennonite World Conference and mission boards were seeking ways to help Mennonites visit other Mennonites around the world to offer encouragement to local churches.
TourMagination’s first tours to Australia, New Zealand and Siberia came about as a result of requests from Mennonite agencies.
Wilmer Martin, now TourMagination’s co-owner, was a young Mennonite pastor, originally from Pennsylvania and serving in Tavistock, Ont., when he was invited to join a TourMagination tour in 1973 to help promote the vision in Canada.
Martin, who shared Gleysteen and Cressman’s vision, became a part-owner of the company in 1982. Gleysteen and Cressman left the company in the 1990s, and Henry Landes was involved for a number of years as a part-owner and tour leader. Today, Martin and his wife, Janet, have sole ownership.
TourMagination has led tours to more than 50 countries. Tour leaders are storytellers who strive to bring history and culture to life, while taking care of all the details of travel. Faith continues to be part of each tour, through daily devotionals, regular worship and fellowship with local believers.
TourMagination’s mission is to “build bridges among Mennonites and other Christians and faiths around the world through custom-designed travel.”
The Martins have planned more than a dozen tours that involve a visit to the Oberammergau Passion Play in Germany in 2010.
“Janet and I have been blessed by the people we meet as we travel, by the friends who travel with our company,” Wilmer Martin said. “It has been a life-changing experience for us and has enriched our churches.”
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