Category Archives: thoughts

Housefull

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Last night, we packed over 35 people into our house for a Superbowl party.  Have you ever seen the inside of my house?  If so, then you know this was a superhuman feat.  Our living room is basically a large rectangle.  It only has one practical place to put a television, one practical place to put a couch…you get the picture.  Yet, somehow we had 35 teens and 6 adults in the place.

It was hot.
Loud.
Stinky at times.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.  In fact, those words pretty accurately represent my vision of community.  And when I say community, I want you to know that I don’t just mean a group of people living together in one area, I’m talking about people who get into each others lives and get messy with the details.  That’s the kind of community I mean.  It’s the kind of community where it’s uncomfortable sometimes, it gets loud, and sometimes it’s not just pleasant smells and sights and sounds.  It’s the kind of community that jams all types of lives together in one room to watch grown men slam into each other for the right to be called champions.

It’s eating too many chicken wings, laughing at commercials, and meeting new friends.  It’s five people piled on a recliner.  It’s teenagers, adults, senior adults and toddlers all in the mix.  It’s the way the church should be.  I’m not saying that the church should only get together to watch the game, or that it should be disorganized, but I think sometimes that the church (the body as a whole, it’s people, Christians) forgets that community is sometimes best unplanned.  We get frustrated that we can’t program community, but then the reminder comes, when you open your house to teenagers and the flood inside and fill every available seating area and then some, that community doesn’t come from a program or a plan, but from an open house and heart.

This is why I don’t mind the housefuls of teens that sometimes come over, or why it wasn’t a big deal that I only got an hour of free time to myself yesterday.  See, my job is to point them to Jesus and to foster community, and if nights like last night are what it takes, then so be it.

Broken and Left Out

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When I was 12, I quit the church.

Rather, I felt like they had quit me, so I responded in kind.  I was in 6th grade, the stereotypical nerdy, chubby kid with too many words and not enough social skills.  I would go to school every day and listen to the taunts and jeers of my classmates, then go to church on Sunday mornings and hear the exact same things.  I was the class joke.  It made me hate church.  It made me disinterested with God.  By the time I was ready to transition into youth group, I was nearing the breaking point.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when a boy threw my Bible out of the second story window into the bushes below for no reason other than to laugh at me.

Snap.

I went home and tearfully begged my parents to not go to church anymore.  My reasoning was that the church was supposed to be a loving place, and if that was true, I should be treated differently than I was at school.  People should accept and love me there.  But, that was not the case.  And that is not always the case in many churches across our country.  A place that stands for truth, love, and grace can often become a place of lies, hatred, and gossip.  I see it all the time as a youth pastor.  People who are difficult to love get pushed to the side in favor of those who don’t take much effort to minister to, or old friends that we are comfortable with.  That’s wrong.  It’s sin.

Reese Roper, who was/is the lead singer of one of my favorite bands, Five Iron Frenzy, helped start a church in Denver, Colorado for people who felt left out and abused.  What did they name it?  Scum of the Earth.  I love that name.  Sure, many churches wouldn’t want a name like that, but their mission is right in the name!  They are there to reach those considered the scum of the earth.  The difficult.  The addict.  The dropout.  The “special”.  The outcast.  The orphan.  The very people that Jesus told us that he came for, the very people that God commanded his people over and over again to help in the Old Testament.  What we forget sometime is that we are all scum of the earth.  Because of our sin, Scripture tells us that are God’s enemies, the targets of His wrath, and separated from Him by our own wrongdoing.  We are not holy….we are filthy rags, unrighteous….scum.

I was talking with an older gentleman who works with our youth yesterday.  He’s become a mentor of sorts to me, and I was talking to him about my past, and he was shocked.  He told me he’d always assumed that I had grown up in church, that I was a good little church boy that had never had any doubts or problems, but that now he saw differently.  I was reminded in that conversation of why I do what I do, why I gravitate toward the broken and abused, and why when they walk through the door of our youth ministry I want so desperately for there to be no judgment for them.  Because they are broken, just like you and me, just like all of us.  And they need the same redemption that I was offered, that I have experienced in life, the same salvation that all people are freely given.

So, as scum of the earth, I reach out to fellow scum of the earth, knowing that we all have some kind of hurt, some kind of story to tell, and redemption waiting in the wings for each and every one.

Transparency

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We talk about a lot of things on this blog.

Ministry.  Parenthood.  Video games.  Bad haircuts.  Love.  In all of it, I have one goal, which is transparency.  If I’m going to run a blog about my daily life, where I share my opinions, tell stories, and expose my life to people, transparency is a necessity.  I struggle for it, and with it, each time I write something here.

I ask myself questions like, “How much is too much?”, and “Did I overshare?”.  The problem with transparency, to me, is that it is addictive.  When I come here and talk about something I’m dealing with, or tell a story about my family, the negative emotions associated with those things drift away.  Coming here helps me to process what i’m feeling and what is really going on beneath the surface of an issue.

A few months ago, one of the guys in my life that I really consider to be a mentor brought up this blog, and one of the first things he pointed out was the level of transparency that I’d been writing with.  Originally, I hadn’t noticed, and I’m being honest when I say that.  I was just writing whatever came into my head and out of my fingers as I typed.  But, as I tried to figure out what this blog would and wouldn’t be, telling stories about my own faults, failures, triumphs, and strengths just came naturally.  I was proud, then, that someone had noticed my transparency even when I hadn’t, because that meant that I was willing to share my life with people.

It’s risky to be transparent in our culture, especially in ministry, where a wrong step can see you crucified for something you’re still in process of figuring out.  That’s a risk I’m willing to take though, due to the fact that transparent people connect with their intended audience more.  Since I work daily with people, I want them to know that I’m approachable, that I’m friendly, and that I have faults too, just like them.  I never want to give off the impression that just because I’m called to ministry means I’m on top of some tall ivory tower and cannot be approached.

So, until something changes, I’ll continue to write about all my problems, my fears, my joys, my wins, my losses, and everything in between.  Because that’s what I want people to know about me: the whole story, nothing edited or censored.  Because, after all, don’t we all long for that?

For someone to really know us, as we truly are?

Thunder, Lightning, and….Tornadoes?

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I’m sleepy.  Very sleepy.  But, I was up huddling in a bathroom last night at midnight when I should’ve been sleeping.  So, if this post is a little disjointed and not very good, you’ll know why.

My wife probably thinks I’m crazy.  In fact, last night, she pretty much confirmed it when she said, “I can’t ever remember going to the bathroom or a closet when I was growing up.”  She was referring to the fact that when bad weather strikes our area, I make my family load up in the car and go to our church, where we can be safer.  We don’t have a basement, and if you know our house, there are no interior rooms, so we have to go somewhere else.

The storm last night fooled us.  Lulled us into a false sense of security.  So, we went to bed.  I had just settled down and Erin was brushing her teeth when we heard it.  Sirens started to go off.  I immediately got up, got dressed, and grabbed a few things while Erin woke up the children.  We carried them to the car and took off for the church.  By the time we got there, the sirens were off.  Not sure what was going on, we got inside, made them a small bed in the bathroom, and waited.  Checking the weather, I saw early on that the tornado warning was cancelled, but the wind was still bad, very bad.  We stayed for about an hour, then returned home, exhausted, and collapsed into bed in order to be woken up at what seemed like just 5 minutes later.

Am I crazy for heading to the church?  Possibly.  I do have a fear of storms.  It started with the movie Twister when I was 16.  Am I crazy for protecting my family?  Absolutely not.  They are the things that mean most to me on this earth.  To that end, I will always do what I have to do in order to make sure they are safe.  In the end, tornado or not, we were where we were supposed to be, and are better for it.

Now, if I can just get some sleep today.

 

On Lolcats, Fails, Bronies, and More…

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PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

In visiting our site here yesterday, you may have noticed that we went dark for 24 hours to protest and raise awareness about SOPA and PIPA, two bills that are currently before Congress and will be voted on January 24.  We’re back to normal today, obviously, though I’m not quite sure what normal is for us.

If you haven’t been living under a rock the last few months, you know about these bills and how they could potentially cripple the internet as we know it.  If you have been, here’s the quick run down: major organizations in the United States, mainly the MPAA and RIAA (those who make movies and music) have pushed legislation into Congress to stop pirating from offshore websites, thus keeping American property ours.  This keeps foreign websites from hosting torrents or files that are illegal downloads.  Under SOPA and PIPA, these websites could be shut down permanently, with no warning, and no due process.

I like this.  Sure, protect your stuff, whatever.

But that’s not all SOPA and PIPA could do.  In the interest of protecting intellectual property, ANY website would then be able to be shut down even due to just one small image or piece of text.  Companies within our borders will have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep their websites free of any user posted material which could cause a copyright infraction, which would cause them to be immediately shut down.  No warning.  No due process.

I don’t like this.

That means that my favorite webcomic artist can’t draw a Batman joke anymore, or he might lose his job.  That means that your favorite Lolcats, or Brony pictures can’t be made, or those websites could be shut down.

No Cheezburger Network.  No Failblog.  No Reddit.  And it gets worse.

Under this act, the law would extend even to Facebook or Twitter.  Imagine this: those social networking sites that you love to waste time on so much….gone.  Loss of contact from family and friends, loss of connection to the world, all because someone posted a picture of Angry Birds with a caption on it.

What really burns me up about this is that these acts don’t create jobs like the MPAA and RIAA says, they just continue to allow them to line their pockets.  These laws would actually cause unemployment, as thousands of creatives in our country would lose their jobs.  Again, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. We are spending our time and money fighting for stupid legislation like this while thousands of people in our country don’t have a job.  Where are the bills that all of us are fighting about to create jobs?  Where is the push for that?  Why are we even CONSIDERING a bill that would cause even more Americans to become jobless?

Greed.  That’s it, plain and simple.  The Hollywood Juggernaut is hungry, and it doesn’t want to slow down, even though the world is clearly moving in an opposite direction from it’s archaic means of distribution and creation.  The power is in the hands of the people, not just in the hands of a select few, and they hate it.

So, what can you do?  Do you want to see all your favorite YouTube funnies go away, or do you want to continue to enjoy the internet as it is, a tool that has broadened the world we live in and made it, dare I say it, a better place?

Go here, sign the petition, get educated, call your Senators, black out your site, do something.  It really could make a difference.

Reflecting on Wednesdays

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As I am sure it is in every small town, Bible Belt, southeastern youth ministry household, Wednesdays are rough (or the midweek service time -I’ve learned not everyone does it on Wednesday)  This mid week service is game day, what you’ve been preparing for all week, what the prayers have been focused on, what the extra candy has been bought for, what we’re hyped up for.  It’s the equivalent of the Pastor’s Sunday morning.

While yes, we’re fortunate that our children are in mother’s day out on most Wednesdays, I am spending that time doing laundry, dishes, cleaning, going over my own lesson for the night, getting ready for my afterschool job.  When I’m home from work it’s quickly getting ready and out the door to be there at 5 to help with the bus rider kids, set up my classroom, eat supper (Praise the Lord that we have meals at church on Wednesday nights, not just for the fellowship but the service it provides to our families!) get upstairs for Pioneer club worship, teach, and come back downstairs to stay with the kids whose parents are in the choir.

By the time we get home by 8:30-9:00, depending on what the choir is working on, I feel like we have fought a battle.  Before we stopped drinking soda, every Wednesday night we stopped for the Baptists’ only allowable vices, Rte. 44 Coke Zeros and a chicken strip sandwich from Sonic.   We were so drained, it felt as if our systems needed a little reward. Now, its a glass of water and a Reece’s peanut butter egg.

Maybe we have fought a battle.  I believe we have.  God is using us (by us I mean everyone who teaches, helps, interacts with the students who attend) to teach His truth.  Which often goes against everything else they are hearing.  Last night our lesson was from Job, he was praising God for making his body, which I totally don’t get because it appeared to Job’s friends that God had cursed him (covered in boils, whole family dead, riches gone)  But Job said, I know that God has made me and showed me kindness!  Kindness!  Can you believe it, in the midst of all that, he praised God for showing him kindness!  I was blown away.  The point we tried to get across though was that God made our bodies, He made them good, and that we thank him by taking care of them.   Since we know that His word never returns void, it always accomplishes His purposes,   I pray that someday, when one of the beautiful girls in our class is doubting that, she will remember that God made her.  He knit her together in her mother’s womb, He curdled her like milk (yep, Job really says that!) to make a wonderful cheese.  I pray the boys will know that God created them for a great purpose, to do His will.  Because His plans are good, to prosper us, not to harm us, to give us a future and a hope.

Marty suggested this post

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It’s 11:20 p.m Monday night and we are leaving the house at 7:45 in the morning to take a young lady to the bus stop in Jackson.  Marty asked if I had my blog post ready, I was in the middle of sewing the quilt that I’ve been working on for 40 forevers, ok, 3 months, and I couldn’t think of anything.  I asked that he make suggestions, thinking he would suggest my views on postmodern theology, social welfare, or if generic diapers really are as good as name brand (the answer to that is, depends on the store, walmart bad, kroger good), things that I’m an expert on, you know (ha,ha).  Instead he said, the reasons you love me, to which I almost spit out my decaf coffee, then he said do a 2 part series about the 5 things you love/hate about being a pastor’s wife.  I chose the lesser of 2 evils.

Living with Marty Estes has never been easy, which quite honestly I’ve probably been too vocal about.  I don’t know what I expected, but often times this hasn’t been it.  We probably should have waited 6 months to get married, given him 6 months in the ministry to figure it out instead of jumping into 2 things at the same time.  But I think if we’d waited, he wouldn’t be in ministry.  He would have gone on to get his master’s in education and he’d be teaching.  Which he would have been excellent at, but not called to.  And that is one of the things I love about Marty, his calling.  I love youth ministry.  I love that lives change and God allows me to be a part of it.  I love that Marty is passionate about it, I love that he has never stopped learning or trying to be better at what he’s called to do.  I know that God has called him to this or 9 years ago we’d have been out.  I love him for persevering.  I love that he desires to see students’ lives change through a relationship with Christ.  I love that his philosophy is not “Let’s give them a little Jesus along with our fun, but let’s be on mission for Christ and have fun while we’re doing it.”

Marty’s been called a lot of things in 9.5 years.  Some good, some bad, some true, some not.  One thing I will always call him is a great daddy.  He loves spending time with our kids.  That’s part of the reason we felt God was telling us to homeschool.  We know that ministry is tough on kids, we have games to attend, Bible studies to have, programs to plan, camps to organize, and Sundays are definitely not family days, a lot of that is done during times our kids would be home from school and our attention would be devoted elsewhere.  Marty loves to get in the floor and have the Rescue-bots help to rebuild the Sawmeal so we can return for our pizza sticks and chicken fingers!  And he executes much better “My Little Pony” story lines than I could, he knows all their names, whereas a lot of time I just throw together to cutesy sounding words and hope they work!  He wasn’t so sure about having a child, let alone two!  But I don’t think he’d trade it now for anything.

Yes, he gets on my nerves when we’ve spent too much time together, of course there are things I say I would change, but he truly is my best friend.  He’s the one I call when I’m upset, he’s the one I run to when I’m scared, he’s the one I scream at when I’m frustrated (it’s not always about him), he’s the one who is always thinking of me. I remember my dad saying when we were just starting out, that I sure must like him because he made me laugh like nobody else.  And he still does.

I love you, Marty.

(I bet you didn’t think I’d do it!)

Lessons From a Dance Class

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Again I apologize for the lack of posting, but sleeping til 9, getting up to make breakfast, lounging in pjs and playing video games just took precedence.

A couple of months ago during fall break I got to take Annaliese to dance class.  Marty usually does that because I work every afternoon.  I was so excited because there was the promise of getting to see what Annaliese was learning; the fruits of her labor.  Jennifer was so gracious to let me watch even though she hadn’t really planned on it.

I took my seat and pulled out my phone, all eyes on my baby girl.  As I was watching I began to notice some things.  First of all my daughter has my rhythm, bless her heart, but secondly, there is a lot to be learned from dance class.

1.  If you take your eyes off the leader, you will mess up.  The girls did pretty good as long as their focus was on the right spot.  If it wandered to the wall, a spot on the floor, or the person beside them, they were going to mess up.  They might stumble, they might get behind, they might run into the person beside them.  In my life, if I take my eyes off what guides me, I will mess up, I will stumble, I will get behind, I might even hurt the person next to me.  That’s why we have to have a relationship with the leader as well.  Those girls trust Jennifer, they know she will not lead them down the wrong path.  It’s not about the rules, it’s about the trust they have in her.  Sometimes I wish my faith were a list of rules, but it’s not, it’s a relationship.  I have to trust that God and His word will not lead me down the wrong path.  I am a fallible person, I’m going to screw up.   Jesus said the most important things are to Love God with all our hearts and to love our neighbors as ourselves, that all of the law was summed up into those two things.  It’s not a list of rules, it’s relationship.  When we have the relationship, we’ll know what we’re supposed to do.  Just like Marty and I and the other parents encourage our girls to listen to Mrs. Jennifer and trust her, we have to do the same with others in our faith.  Encourage the relationship, make disciples.

2. You cannot focus on the faults of the person next to you.  Yep, that one hit home.  Annaliese did pretty good, but there was one girl next to her who was very concerned with what everyone else was doing.  Her eyes got off Mrs. Jennifer, and she ended up having to be corrected… a lot.  Now, I know that we are supposed to help those along the path with us, but sometimes we focus on their faults instead of what we’re supposed to be doing.  Just like this little girl, we get so concentrated on the others that we don’t see what we’re doing.

3.  Sometimes you have to freeze so you can refocus.  There were a couple of times that the girls just got too distracted and Jennifer would say, “Freeze.”  The ballerinas knew that this was a time to stop and refocus.  This was made clear to me last night, I came in from my first afternoon back to work, dropped off some kids, listened to their mother vent 15 minutes about life, picked up PePe’s pizza, and ate quickly so that Marty could get to Bible Study.  The kids wanted to play a game that involves me doing a lot of set up.  They began to argue about the pieces, whose turn it was, and were making the noises of the video game it’s based on…I wanted to scream!  So I put them in the bath, poured in some bubbles (thanks Mimi for the stocking stuffers!), shut the curtain and pulled out my Kindle.  I needed to freeze.  I needed the 20 minutes of letting my mind refocus and calm down.  I never understood that about my mom, but now I totally get it.  The noise and distraction had just gotten to be too much.

We’ve done a retreat twice with our youth ministry called Enjoy the Silence.  We go to a remote cabin, with no cell service, we don’t take video games or tvs or electronics and we have 2 days of silence.  Marty teaches, we have reflections, the youth worship through singing, art, prayer walks.  It is the best thing ever, and I always come back refreshed, refocused.  We need times of silence in our lives in order to refocus on the important things, and most importantly, not go insane!

4.  It’s good to come together for encouragement.  At the end of class the girls all come together and Jennifer gives them a sucker, gives them positive reinforcement, and they put their hands in and say, “1,2,3 Princess Snakes!”  Don’t ask, I don’t know where it came from.  But, Annaliese loves it!  She loves those girls, and she longs for Thursdays at 3:30.

When I was younger, I totally didn’t get the need for church involvement, I mean, I was involved!  My dad took me to Father/son work days at church because I was the oldest of 3 girls.  Seriously.  If the doors were open, the Foleys were there.   I totally get it now.  If I didn’t have my church family, I’d be lost.  I need that time together, I need encouragement, I need positive reinforcement (even if it hurts sometimes).  I need these people to be my family, my friends, my community.  That’s what we’re supposed to be. Now, I just think we need a really cool chant.

1,2,3 Baptist Buffaloes anyone?

Plastic gifts

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I’m done with Christmas shopping, for the most part anyway.  Marty got his present in October.  (Thank you apple for always introducing a new phone/gadget/idevice) The kids were done in pretty much one fell swoop.  My parents and siblings are not doing gifts, (praise the Lord!)  David and Marylin, Marty’s parents have been bought for, the kids friends also down in one fell swoop (you’re all getting the same thing!)  I do have to buy for our Sunday School party but I have an idea for that.

I love Christmas, I love the lights, the music, the food, the smells, the attitude of cheer and goodwill.  I love the cold weather and the hopes of a white Christmas.  (Isaac was convinced that it was Christmas the other day when it snowed, “we should open presents mom!”) I love the Christmas specials, Charlie Brown, Frosty, the one with the heat miser, Rudolph, ELF, It’s a wonderful life. I love the message of hope, in the baby born to live a perfect life, show us the right path, and die so that we may live.

But, I hate the gifts.  I know, I know, I’m a spoilsport.  I just hate shopping, trying to find something they will like, seeing the disappointment if they don’t.  I hate the idea of a list, and this is what we must have to have a good Christmas.  I’m not a gifts person.  I don’t need stuff.  We do Santa.  I don’t have a problem with the guy in red, I have a problem with the fact that he takes the place (and the characteristics) of Jesus for the month of December for a lot of people.  I never felt lied to growing up, I don’t have trouble believing in God because I found out my parents were Santa.  And, I totally respect you if you don’t do Santa.  It takes all kinds.

It’s something we talked about, still talk about at our house.  Santa, gifts, the meaning of Christmas.

At our house, Christmas was a big deal, we didn’t get a lot of toys except Christmas and birthdays, and then what we got was limited.  One big Santa gift, and a few things from our parents-usually there were some clothes thrown in there.  And of course I think that’s how things should be done, because that’s my experience.  Marty was raised completely different.  He got toys all the time and Christmas was just that times 10 (I’m totally going by the way he describes it, I don’t really know).  It’s been a struggle.

Last year with our kids, they got 3 gifts plus a stocking.  I really liked that.  They get way more from grandparents than from us, plus aunts and uncle, plus friends, plus goodie bags, teacher gifts…..and the list goes on.  And they are at the age that every gift is of equal value: the pencil in their goodie bag is equal to the Santa present.  But, it’s just too much.

I struggle with the fact that we are the richest country in the world.  That because I have food, clothes, a home to sleep in, and running water I am among the richest 8% in the world.  And my daughter is getting $50 worth of plastic ponies. My husband has every iDevice out. My son has more Mario’s that we can count.  I can watch pretty much any movie I want any time I want with Netflix and cable tv.  We give, we tithe, we make donations to world hunger, we give to Lottie Moon Christmas offering, we bought gifts for the angel tree and made shoe boxes of Operation Christmas Child.  We live pretty frugally, I buy my clothes at goodwill (only on the first saturday of the month), we try to only eat out once a week, I shop with coupons.  But my daughter has a full belly and a room full of ponies and there are children in Romania who are digging in the trash, babies in China who need parents, and kids in America who won’t eat this Christmas because there’s no school open to feed them.  I need to remember that what I claim is mine, isn’t really.

So back to gifts, I think next year, I want to only buy gifts that do good.  Gifts that when you buy them they allow teenage girls in Romania to go to high school and give them a reason not to have a baby at 15.  Gifts that provide an income for men and women rescued from the sex trade. Gifts that support a local business in your hometown. Gifts that feed hungry mouths in Africa for a month.

What’s going to last, a life or a plastic pony?

If you’re still shopping check out:

http://beliefinmotion.org/Cherechiu.aspx  - these are the missionaries in Romania that our church partnered with in 2010 and Lacey Hampton (one of our college students) spent a month with last summer.

http://hello-somebody.com/

http://www.worldcraftsvillage.com/

https://secure1.heifer.org/gift-catalog

http://freesetglobal.com/
(we’ve bought these bags before for our graduating seniors – love them!)

 

Mine!

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Sometime between Friday and Monday morning, this site was hacked.  It wasn’t a malicious hack, I guess.  The only thing that happened was a redirect in the script that pointed this site to a page that said “Nouse was here!!!”.  It happens to tons of other sites, as you can see by a Google search, but even that fact wasn’t enough to make me feel better.  I was pretty ticked.

I spent the better part of yesterday trying to fix it.

This involved me logging into my accounts on both GoDaddy and Bluehost, trying to figure out what I could do to make it work.  10 hours later and a lot of fussing, my site was back up, and I was worn out with it.  But still, something bothered me.

See, this site is mine.  Well, actually, it’s now mine and Erin’s.  This is a place we come to talk about our life; to share, vent, console, encourage.  In the last few days, someone thought it would be a good idea to take down a blog that gets just about 100 hits per day (on a good day).  What’s the sense in that?  Why even bother?  Because you get your jollies from bothering other people?  Pathetic.

I really hope that one day your “work” leaves a trail right back to you that gets you taken down and arrested.  I know there are more people like you out there, but just because they are out there doesn’t mean it’s right, or that you have to be like them.  Because of this intrusion I felt violated and unsafe, and I would never wish that on my worst enemy.  It’s a very unsettling feeling.

So, things are back to normal….for now.  Erin will post something tomorrow.  Thanks for sticking with us during the downtime.