Every story has an author. The best stories engage, entertain, and inspire us.
Our story begins with our founder, Mike Malone, sharing his passion, his scholarship, his joy of travel, and bringing to bear his eclectic background in his founding of Purposeful Journeys in 2017. From the early days of founding the company in 2017, Mike realized very quickly he had a lot to learn. Mike sought advice from within the industry, attended conferences, read, studied, and worked very hard to learn what becoming a successful tour operator with an international focus requires.
From our founding, in addition to the steep learning curve we were required to ascend, black swan events such as a global pandemic and extended military conflict in the Middle East, threatened the existence of the company for several years. We faced that adversity while sharpening and deepening our understanding and delivery of exceptional international group travel experiences.
We thought deeply about the benefits of travel to the organizations and fellow travelers we served and those we would seek to serve. We developed a philosophy that would guide every custom travel experience we create. At the heart of our philosophy emerged the centrality of the purpose of a travel experience. We came to understand that the purpose of a journey connects the mission and vision of the various types of organizations we serve with the need of people to support those missions and visions.
Focusing on the purpose of a journey empowers us to connect the organizational needs to fulfill a mission and vision with the needs of people to give in support of that mission and vision. We learned that once we identify a clear purpose in consultation with a ministry, college, university, or other nonprofit organization, everything else follows including the dates and destination of a purposeful journey.
While the company still formally operates under the original name of Malone Clan Expeditions, LLC or MCE, the company has done business as Purposeful Journeys since 2018.
Our Story Continues
Our story, the story of Purposeful Journeys, not only includes the typical feelings of triumph and disaster among those whose livelihood depends on a small business, our story includes navigating our dream through storms that include an unprecedented voluntary shuttering of the world’s economy for the first time in human history and an extended military conflict that literally threatened the existence of the company multiple times.
We have come to believe, in a spirit of humility, we have benefitted exponentially from maintaining our focus and never losing hope through both the feelings that typically confront those involved in a small business as well as navigating through multiple extraordinary adverse circumstances produced by unprecedented black swan events. We believe living out our story has positioned us to serve churches, colleges, universities, and nonprofit organizations at a level of excellence that would otherwise may not have been possible had our story been easier.
After ascending the steep learning curve required to be a successful tour operator, Purposeful Journeys formed several successful groups for journeys featuring the renowned passion Play in Oberammergau, Germany as well as a very special travel experience featuring a Major League Baseball game in London between the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals.
In March 2020, for the first time in world history, the global economy was voluntarily shuttered. For just the fourth time in four hundred years the famous Passion Play in Oberammergau, Germany was postponed. The baseball game in London was canceled.
The threat to our fledgling, Purposeful Journeys, was existential. Purposeful Journeys navigated the ravages of the global pandemic by taking every phone call, listening to the frustration, anger, and disappointment of those who perceived the Passion Play in Germany as a once in a lifetime opportunity. We focused on solutions to preserve the travel investment of fellow travelers.
Purposeful Journeys successfully navigated the storm of the pandemic. The future again looked very bright as the company pivoted by focusing on journeys to the Holy Land. On October 7, 2023, the Middle East fell into conflict when Hamas attacked Israel. In many ways, the crisis in the Middle East has proven even more severe and lasted even longer than the global pandemic.
The feelings that come with experiencing typical feelings of triumph and disaster inherent to the early years of any small business be overwhelming. Facing existential crisis produced by black swan events made these feelings more intense. We knew the only way for us to survive was to just keep going while trusting this too shall pass. We found inspiration in the words of a nineteenth century German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke: No feeling is final.
We have diversified the types of journeys we offer and the types of organizations to which we offer those journeys. We take confidence from proving our mettle and demonstrating our resilience. The future looks bright as our story continues.