- Will you consider this?

For decades, things were moving along, both literally and figuratively.

Etiquette was in vogue, and hopping on a bus for an adventure was the norm.

Then came the pandemic flipping the world for all of us.

Forget good manners.

You weren't gonna be around anybody.

And if you were in the travel business, the brakes were on.

Stay right here.

(bright music) So Peoria Charter Coach with humble beginnings is in the business of moving people.

Now, they just go by Peoria Charter, but they move people thousands or did every year.

However, we all halted our lives.

That pause, that really put a hitch into travel.

So co-owner Cindy Winkler had her own little side hustle business teaching, ever disappearing, proper manners, which also came to an abrupt stop during the pandemic.

And Bill Winkler took time or found the time to share his faith with our precious little ones.

And after I stumbled through that, they join us now and they are bright eyed and bushy tailed.

Thanks for being here, lovely couple.

- Thank you so much.

- thank you for having us.

- Well, so let's start.

Your adventure together started by you going to school in southern Florida.

- That's right, and I'm a boring person usually.

And I found my wife, she's a southern belle and full of personality and compliments me very, very well.

- And how do you feel about that?

You don't think he's boring?

- [Cindy] No, he's not boring.

He's got a lot of energy and a lot of drive.

And I tied a knot in his tail and I hung on.

- Oh good.

- And she's still hanging on.

- Okay and that's what, 33 years now you said?

- Well, actually gonna be 38 years.

- Okay, aha, wow, all right.

Well you guys managed to do it.

We'll just talk just briefly about the whole Peoria Charter and the buses stopped and you had to lay off a lot of people.

- Yeah, we transported over 500,000 people in a year.

And on March 20th.

&- [Christine] Of 2020.

- Of 2020, basically, our million dollars a year is what our million dollars a month, we had revenue.

And in three days we had no revenue coming in.

- That's crazy.

- We went from zero from that revenue to zero, and I had to lay off 95% of my employees the next Monday.

So it was very hard.

Yes, it was wonderful that we were able to get some PPP money and I rehired my employees, but guess what?

We ran outta the PPP money and then.

- Had to let 'em go again.

- I had 'em go again, let him go again.

So it's been quite a ride.

I've been through the fire.

God has been faithful and so has the government of the United States of America.

- Gold is tested in fire.

- Well said, well said.

I don't know if I'm to gold status, but I definitely got some silver.

- There you go.

And then Cindy, so you're kind of a co-owner of, but you don't do any office work with him.

You do the fun stuff.

- No.

You do the travel.

- Yes the the travel agencies.

- We have a wonderful staff, so I'm not actually at a desk in there, but I do help with some of the promotions and just talking about the trips with the tour guides and things like that because you get a little tired after 33 years.

And so it's nice that I have time to do what I like to do and still dabble in that too.

- And you have grandchildren who live here?

So you wanna definitely spend time with them.

- Yes.

- Not so much travel on the road.

- Not so much travel on the road.

Still have a huge passion for it, but love having five granddaughters, six and under here locally.

So, that's a blessing.

- All right, the company's up and running and it's doing well now.

- It is.

- Are you kind of back up to full?

- [Bill] Absolutely, our revenue's back where it was before.

- Good, this is a business that you inherited.

It's been around - That's right.

for over 80 years.

- In fact, my grandfather founded it in 1941.

My dad was the president in 1990 and I took over in 2000.

- I love the story of your grandfather.

He sold his station wagon.

- [Bill] Yes, his only car.

- And borrowed money.

- [Bill] From his sister who had an egg business to purchase his first bus to transport Caterpillar workers to the new plant.

- From Layken?

- Through Spring Bay.

- To Peoria.

- What a story.

- Chris, seriously, you have an amazing memory.

- I reviewed some things before you got here.

- Okay.

- And then you're the Florida girl who came here to cold country in the winter time.

So no wonder you wanted to travel.

He probably took most of those trips between like November and March, right?

- Between Peoria and my parents' house.

- Okay, well that works, that works, whatever works.

But in the meanwhile, you started so, let travel go on.

You started a business called Class Act Etiquette.

- Yes.

- Now, how long ago was that?

- That was in 2016.

Bill said to me, "What do you wanna do in your fourth quarter?

I mean, 'cause seriously, we are in the fourth quarter of life.

- Of our lives, right.

And so you can sit on the sidelines or you can stay in the game and you can make a difference."

And so I said, "I really love etiquette and volunteering, teaching some through the children's classes when they were growing up.

I'd really like to be able to do that to help people."

And he said, "Well, go find out how you do it."

So I did some research.

There's different institutes that you can go take their courses and get a certificate.

And so I did that through the Etiquette Institute of America and got a certificate.

- And where was that located?

- That was in St. Louis.

- Okay.

- And so I thought, "Well, I'm good to go."

Well, I got my name, got my logo, all that kind of thing.

And then I started looking and there's no current material etiquette and manners have changed.

- Gone by the wayside.

- So fast since the day of the smartphone.

So people, they just have their heads in their smartphones and they think it's okay.

They don't think that that's rude to do when they're surrounded by other people.

And so I began to realize I was going to have to write my own material.

Everything was from the 70s and 80s, and there was no etiquette in modern technology age.

- Bygone era, right, wow.

- And all the old people had left and retired and written books that were kind of not contemporary.

- Old fashioned.

- Yeah, exactly.

- There's still a lot of good things in those books, but we just fast paced, moved into technology.

And so I spent two years writing curriculum.

So I have children's curriculum, I have teens curriculum, and I have adults curriculum.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- How does anyone find you to make sure that they're on the right track?

- Okay, so that was a trick.

- [Christine] Okay.

- I had a website classactetiquette.com.

And during the pandemic, there was nothing going on.

- [Christine] Right and you couldn't meet in person.

- Yes, and it expired.

And I had not renewed it, just not knowing where we were going.

And so now people email me or they, go online and search my name and find me that way.

They find me on LinkedIn, find me on Facebook Class Act Etiquette on Facebook.

They find me and message me and say, " Hey, I have a family I'd like for you to do a dining tutorial with, and so I'll do that.

Or I have some children that could use classes."

Homeschool, girl scout groups, all kinds of different things.

- What fun.

- Yeah.

- But during the pandemic hiatus.

- [Cindy] Yes.

- So you could do things online though.

Did you do some instruction?

- I did not do any instructions online.

Some people did do that, but since it's really kind of a hobby/retirement fund, kind of like what you're doing here.

- Okay, okay, you got that right.

- I didn't really pursue a lot.

I thought, I'm more than happy to do this, but I'm not gonna actively go try to find classes, so people find me.

- Well, that's fun, and you encouraged her all along.

- Yes, absolutely.

- He has.

- Yeah, she's trained me very well, I might add.

- Oh yeah, you might as well admit it.

- Yeah, I have to.

- There's something like that, yeah.

- She's likes to accessorize me anyways.

- Well, I witnessed that before we came into the studio.

It was a little windy outside and his hair was a little bit wind blown.

So she took care of that.

Which is good.

- Yes.

Nice combination, nice coupling.

So, you are in the people moving business.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- But you had to stop moving people because we couldn't be together in groups.

- That's right, right.

And I'm going to work with an empty parking lot.

And so I'd go to work for four hours and then I come home and my favorite book in the Whole wide world is the Bible.

And I'd be reading my Bible and my wife who has a gift, and that's of ideation.

She comes out with ideas.

- [Christine] Okay.

- And her idea says, "You read the Bible so much, why don't you just write a book?"

And boom, it just took off.

I mean, she's come up with some wonderful ideas.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So is this your first one?

- This is your first book.

- This is my first one.

is The Bible Tells Me.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- And you specifically wrote it for children?

- [Bill] For children, that's correct.

And the reason I wrote it for children, and I'll start off with a passage from the Bible.

It's Amos 8:11, "And the days are coming declares the Lord when I will put a famine on the land.

But this famine isn't of bread nor of water for thirst.

But this famine is hearing the words of God."

In the Bible are the words of God.

In fact, Chris, over 3,800 times, the actual words of God are spoken.

God said, God declared, the Lord declared, God told Moses, God told Abraham, God told David.

And then over 400 times in the Bible, the actual words of God, Jesus said.

So over 4,000 times, the actual words of God are in the Bible.

And the reason I wrote that is because the famines here, I believe children are not being taught the Bible, nor are they reading the Bible.

The Bible's not even being presented to them.

And also why I wrote it was to help others teach and share the good news of Jesus Christ.

- Well, and that's the beauty of this, because the photographs, and we'll get some closeups a little bit later, but so this is.

- Yeah, there it is.

- Easter.

There it is, Jesus is God.

Jesus is God in human form.

Only Christianity can say that.

All other religions cannot say that Jesus is God.

- And you have your scripture quotes.

And then you have explanations in the back of the lessons that you want the kids to learn from each of the drawings.

- Chris, those words in there that I have are backed up by scripture.

Those are words from the Bible.

Exactly what the Bible says.

They aren't explanations.

That's scripture right out of the Bible.

- Yeah.

- And so it backs up with, because this is about the Bible.

This is not about me.

- There's no opinions in there.

Yes.

- Right, okay.

Well.

- Yes.

- It should be about that big.

- We need that in today's world.

But it also says clearly to children that this is what you need to know.

- Yes, exactly, the Bible says that we are broken, we are broken, and God knows we are broken.

For some reason, people think that God hasn't figured it out.

Well, God is all knowing.

He's all powerful, he's everywhere.

So we're broken.

God knows we're broken.

And God's ultimate desire is to fix us.

And his ultimate desire is to become our friend.

More than that, Chris, to become our best friend.

More than that, to become our best friend forever.

That's what this book does.

- And so your idea apparently came from the big guy.

- It must have, at the time, he was just a caged lion.

- Yeah.

- And so I thought, "I gotta give him a project."

(Cindy laughs) (Bill laughs) - Well, it was frustrating when you're busy, busy, busy, and then you come to a complete halt, right?

- Yes, and so he would spend so much time in there, and he was already working with children in downtown Peoria and afterschool program.

And so I said, why don't you write a book about what you teach the kids?

And so that's how it all happened.

- [Christine] Which is awesome.

And the way that I came about it is, the neighbor of my son, kids came home from vacation Bible school, and they had this, and I went, "Ugh, that's Bill."

But that wasn't your intent.

Necessarily for vacation Bible school.

- No.

- Here's the point.

- It's unexplainable, so guess what?

It's unexplainable, who did it come from?

- Right.

- Exactly.

- From God, yeah.

- [Christine] And then people don't purchase this either.

- No, I've decided not to sell it.

I'm basically donating to churches.

Any churches out there that would like one of my books or multiple books, just let me know.

And also, if you're a 501C3, I'll donate my book there as well.

I've already distributed 11,000 books.

I have a 1000 on hand right now.

- In central Illinois.

- In central Illinois.

- Actually, they've left the country.

- Oh yeah, that's right.

- Oh, some have?

- Where did they go?

- They've gone on mission trips with students going to other countries on mission trips.

Someone will contact him - South America.

and say, "Hey, we've got some kids that were going to go overseas and have a camp for, can we have some books?"

So they've gone many, many places in just a year.

- 2000 have been distributed to the south side of Chicago.

- Yes.

- Wow, wow.

- Yeah.

- Well, yeah, this was published in 2022, so just last year.

- That's right, and my email is Wink, W-I-N-K @peoriacharter.com.

It's on the back of my book.

- Okay, it says Bible Build W. - Yeah, it's a different, but I'm just.

- He'll get it.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- wink@peoriacharter.com.

- That works too.

- Call Peoria Charter.

- And if you're a 501C3 or a church and would like some of my books, I'd be happy to get 'em to you.

- So you've been in direct contact, how did you choose exactly which scriptures you wanted to include in this then to make it child-sized in this case?

- Yeah, it started, it's amazing that I had this all on my mind how the words, how I was gonna write it.

And I got the words written, and then all the verses were easy to put in because each page, that verse is why I have that page.

So, it just came immediately.

- It happened.

It just, unexplainable.

- It's basically the gospel presentation.

- Yeah.

- About who God is, how he lives, how Jesus came.

- Right.

- How Jesus died, and what happens after life.

It's the gospel presentation.

- It is, it is.

- Well, and your faith.

So with this pandemic, with both of you, with this and with your Etiquette, your faith kept you going.

- Oh, absolutely, strong.

- It sure did.

- I mean, we were down, but we weren't out.

- No, not at all.

We knew who was in control.

- Yes.

- We knew that who was in control.

- Yes.

- We knew we weren't in control.

We just know who is.

- And our church continued to meet all throughout.

So we were able to be around other people, other believers and be fed and our own personal studies and things.

- Have you ever been asked the question, what's the most important thing about you?

Have you ever been asked that question?

- [Christine] No.

- Aw Tozer was asked that question.

And this is how he answered.

He says, "The most important thing about me is what comes to my mind when I think about God."

And that's our faith.

- Great answer.

When I think about God, when we think about God, we think of one person, and that's Jesus, our Savior and our king.

That's what, yeah.

- The world definitely needs more of that.

- Yes.

- Absolutely, true.

- And you're doing your part.

- The world needs to read the Bible.

And the reason I say that first, first four words in the Bible, "In the beginning, God," is there a God in the be first, "In the beginning God," first sentence, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

God created science.

That's what that just said,.

In the beginning, that God created time.

- He did it all.

- In the space.

- Heavens and earth mat, in the first sentence, God created science.

- You're still in awe.

That's the best part.

- I'll keep going.

- You are.

- it gets even better.

- In first chapter of the Bible, Genesis 1, God created every living thing.

Chris, are you living?

Are you breathing?

He created you.

in the first chapter of the Bible, Genesis 1, God created.

In the beginning, God created heavens and the earth, and God created every living thing.

God created you in the image.

- Likeness.

- Of a female in a feminine way.

God created me as a male in a masculine way.

You put all that together and you think, "why is there so much confusion out there?"

Because the Bible's not being read and taught.

- So again, it is illustrated beautifully by Becky Lang.

- [Cindy] Yes.

- So tell me how you came to find Becky.

- So Becky was a teacher years ago when our kids were in school and I made a contact, or we need some things, I needed some things drawn for my etiquette classes, and I needed something drawn for the business one time.

And so out of the blue, I just called her and said, "Hey, Becky, are you doing any side work?"

And she said, "Well, I might."

She has four children.

She's a busy mom.

And so I kind of got connected with her that way.

And then once Bill had the copy for the book ready, he said, "Who's gonna draw?"

And I said, Well, that's a really big deal in children's books."

It took about six or seven months for God to lead us to the right person.

We asked some other people, but they either couldn't get the grasp of it or couldn't quite, it just wasn't coming for them.

- You couldn't feel it.

- Yeah, exactly, and art, you have to feel it.

- Right.

- And so we did.

We asked her and she said, "I'm homeschooling my kids right now.

So my time is a little bit tight."

- And how many kids does she have?

- Four.

- She has four.

- "And I'm homeschooling, so it's a little tight, but I'll start."

And so her husband bought her an illustrating iPad that she didn't have, and the programs that she could do it digitally.

So he really moved her up into the next category.

- Really?

- And tried to help her.

- So it's really been a blessing to have her.

- And what's amazing is we didn't tell her any of the art.

- You didn't picture it and say, "This is kind of what I want.

- No, nothing at all.

- It's her art.

- She just had the words.

- Okay.

- And then she came up with all of that.

And with having those children at home, it's amazing because it doesn't matter if we read it to our two year old grandchild or to an eight or 10 year old child, they're enthralled with the pictures.

- With the pictures.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- And they really are beautiful.

- [Bill] Right, and it helps the parents as well, because they can go back to what the Bible says about what I said.

- Right.

- And the kids, I mean, when you read to them, they study the illustrations.

- Yes.

They don't care.

They listen to the words, but they don't care.

And then they will ask questions as well.

- Yes, exactly.

- They're very illustrative.

- My granddaughter, she's first grade.

- First grade.

- She can read the whole book.

- [Christine] Okay.

- And then she made her own book.

- Yes, she did.

- Oh, interesting.

- She stapled her pages and made her own book and gave it to us for Easter.

- She did her own illustrations too?

- Yeah.

- Her name's Leah.

- Oh, for Easter.

- So you dedicated the book to was of course, Cindy.

- The three girls that were born.

- Okay by then.

- I want to share with you, I get a blessing because I get drop her off at school at Peoria Christian School every day.

And the Christian education today she told me the 10 Commandments.

- Oh wow, in first grade.

- All 10 of them.

- Man in the right order too.

- Right.

- Imagine if we would follow the 10 Commandments.

- Let me see that for a second.

- How life would be so much different.

- It would be.

- Yes.

- So are you gonna write any more?

I mean, Cindy's gonna be busy with teaching etiquette.

But are you gonna expand?

- I do have a second book that I have written.

- [Christine] Okay.

- And right now, Becky is putting the drawings to it.

And it's "When I Become a child of God."

This book is "How to Become a Child of God."

The second book is gonna be - When.

"When I become a child of God, Jesus becomes my best friend forever."

And so it's living the rest of your life on what a child of God looks like.

We are all God's children.

Meaning that God has created all of us.

We're breathing, but we are not all children of God.

To become a child of God, we must turn from going our way to going God's way.

God's way is always best.

And so we must turn, there must be a point in our life where we decide, "I no longer wanna go my way.

My way is a mess, and I want to go God's way."

And that turning, once we turn, we must believe that Jesus, God in human form, God sent himself Jesus down to this earth to die on a cross for my sins.

I should be on that cross, took care of my sin problem.

Immediately, my sins are forgiven forever.

God created time.

The past, the current and the future.

God forgave my sins.

- But people don't believe that because it's impossible for them to believe.

- It's too easy.

- Because they can't forgive themselves.

- Yes, exactly, and if God can forgive, you definitely can forgive yourselves.

Have you ever tried not to love yourself?

I mean, come on.

- I don't know, I look in the mirror sometime, it's kinda tough.

- Oh stop!

You know, the bedhead thing.

- So once believe that Jesus died on the cross, but three days later, this is the one He rose again, showing me that Jesus conquered sin on the cross, conquered death to be in heaven forever.

See, unless you turn and become a child of God, you cannot be with God in heaven.

Once you take your last breath, you can't be with God in heaven.

So turn, believe that Jesus died on a cross, rose again and receive Jesus as your king.

Receive Him into your heart.

So it's more like, "What would Jesus do?

How would Jesus feel about that?

What decision would Jesus make about that?

What actions would Jesus, you know, what would Jesus do?"

So receiving Jesus as king of your heart.

He's in charge.

- When you met, just have a couple minutes left.

So when you met, did you realize that he was this faith-filled person?

- We actually met at a fellowship of Christian athletes study.

- I was the athlete and she wasn't.

- [Christine] She was the fellowship.

- Exactly, exactly.

- Supported, okay.

- [Bill] That's good.

- So you knew.

So you knew that.

- Yeah, that's been the base of our marriage.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- It's been the base of our marriage.

It was number one for me when I was searching for someone.

And so, it was just natural.

- Yeah, I was a senior, she was a freshman, and I told my roommate I wasn't gonna date a freshman this year.

- Well.

- And there she is.

- A week later.

- Changed your mind.

- That fellowship.

So just real quickly then, what will Class Act do this year?

So he's working on this other book.

- Yes.

- Can't wait to see that.

- So just continue on, I taught at ICC last month.

I did a dining tutorial, which is everything from walking up to the table all the way through the meal.

I did that for the Agribusiness Club there.

And before that I taught up at a high school in Buddha, Illinois.

They had about 80 students that came to an etiquette dinner.

So yeah, I just keep taking on and being part of the travel agency and being a part with our grandchildren.

So life's full.

- You're doing it, it is.

Well, thank you for taking time to talk with us and share your wonderful, marvelous stories.

Good luck to you both.

Look forward to the next book.

- Thank you.

And thank you all - I'll get you a copy.

for joining us as well.

Stay safe and healthy and hold happiness.

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