The Catholic School Leaders Podcast

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John Mihalyo: Welcome to the Catholic School Leaders podcast, where we discuss all things important to leadership and growth in Catholic education. I'm your host, John Mahalio. Well, Catholic School Leaders. Let's talk for a minute. How are you helping your teachers bring the faith to your students on a daily basis? Now, I remember this was one of the frustrations I had trying to find resources, trying to find curriculums that might be appropriate for students.

And so many times I found that they were either very service level Or they were so far above the student's knowledge and it was like teaching a class in theology at a college level. Well, today I'm excited to talk to someone who has something for your teachers, something for your students, your families, and even for you to help you in this.

And it is called the Hollow App. Now, for those of you that are familiar with this, the Hallow app, you know all about what a great resource it is. What a great tool it is. with everything from prayer partners [00:01:00] to daily reflections. So much content on there to help us in our prayer life. But what you may not realize is That HALO is an amazing tool for Catholic schools as well.

~Now my guest today is Alex Jones, the co founder and CEO of the HALO app. It's the number one Catholic app in the world. It's a great conversation and I know you're going to enjoy that all the talks that we have about HALO and, um, Let me do that part again. Let me just Okay, let me read, record that part again.~

~Well,~ Well, my guest today is Alex Jones, the co founder and CEO of the HALO app. It's the number one Catholic app in the world. This is a great conversation and I know you're going to enjoy it. We talk about everything from how HALO started, some amazing stories about HALO's impact on students in Catholic schools, and what's coming next for HALO.

~before I introduce Alex, I want to start our podcast today with a prayer. So if you'd please just take a moment to join me. And let's begin our episode with a prayer. In the name of the Father, and the Son, let me just do that part right there again. Too wordy, I know Jethro would tell me.~

~Before I introduce Alex, I want to start with a prayer.~

~Before I introduce Alex, I want to start with a prayer. ~Before I introduce Alex, I want to start today's podcast with a prayer. If you would please just take a moment to stop and join me. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Heavenly Father, thank you for this opportunity to come together today as your children to talk about and discuss bringing the faith life to our students, faculty, and families.

Please bless my guest today, Alex Jones, in his work and vocation with HALO and as a husband and father, so that together we may give [00:02:00] your name honor, praise, and glory through our discussion. We pray it will bring your light.

In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

John Mihalyo: Well, I'm excited to introduce my guest this week, Alex Jones, the CEO and co founder of Hallow, a groundbreaking Catholic app designed for prayer, meditation, music, Bible, and sleep. With over 1 billion minutes prayed, 18 million downloads, 500 million prayers said, and 200, 000 five star reviews, Halo has quickly become the number one Catholic app globally.

During Lent, Halo even secured the top spot in the App Store. ~Alex's journey is as inspiring as the apt itself. Raised Catholic, he drifted from his faith in his youth. ~Alex's journey is as inspiring as the apt itself. Raised Catholic, he drifted from his faith in his youth, only to find himself drawn back to spirituality through his fascination with secular meditation.

This led him to rediscover the rich meditative tradition within the Catholic faith. [00:03:00] His profound experience with God reignited his faith and sowed the seeds for the creation of Hallow I want to take a quick minute to introduce today's sponsor, Elementary Advancement Solutions. If you're a Catholic school whose enrollment is maybe not where it should be, or maybe continuing to drop, or maybe your fundraising efforts are continuing to fall short, Elementary Advancement Solutions can help.

They work with a small number of schools each year to help them develop strategies unique to their school communities. The goal is to help you increase your enrollment, your advancement numbers, and develop a long term growth plan to help you reach all of your goals. They aim to make Catholic school consulting both affordable and accessible to every Catholic school.

Schedule a time for a free consultation to discuss your goals and your challenges at elementaryadvancement. com forward slash advancement . ~Welcome to the Catholic School Leaders Podcast, Alex. Let me record that last thing again. Welcome to the ~Catholic School Leaders Podcast, Alex.

It's great to see you again~ All right, this is our interview with Alex. Thank you all so much for the work you do, helping us sound so great, and appreciate your time. Alex, by the way, when we do this, I'll have just read the intro in your bio of who you are, so we'll just start this with, like, I just read your bio and introduced you, and I'll just kind of say, hey, welcome, Alex.~

~Okay. Cool beans. Welcome, Alex. It's great to see you again.~

Alex Jones: Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.[00:04:00]

John Mihalyo: Absolutely. So, congratulations first and foremost. I know you're probably still coming off the high of the Halo =Summit that took place a little over a month ago. Congratulations. Seems like it was a great event for Halo and for yourself and the whole team.

Alex Jones: Yeah, it was really a blessing. It was awesome to get to gather with so many folks in person. Um, you know, it's a blessing throughout the year to get to pray with everybody in the HALA community, but really to get to meet people and get to hear stories of what God has done in their lives and how HALA's been able to be some small part of it.

I mean, I was like, I feel like I spent half the time crying. And then the other half of the time you're interacting with people. You know, these saints of humans, like Mother Olga and all these just incredible people. It's a blast to get to hang out with Jonathan. Yeah, you just get to spend time in person together praying and worshiping, which, which and Father Frankie did such an incredible job with adoration.

It was kind of an interesting one for me because we had just had our, we just had our third little kiddo you know, a few weeks before that. So I was kind of like half sleep deprived, which was kind of a cool prayer experience. You know, it's

John Mihalyo: Most certainly. Well, [00:05:00] congratulations on that again. I know that you welcomed a new member of your family recently, and that's so exciting, and I'm sure just a wonderful joy in your lives for sure.

Alex Jones: Yeah, it's a blessing. It's a blessing.

John Mihalyo: So, for people out there right now that, there are people that probably have a 10 year prayer streak going with Happn going with the app and others who are going, what's this Hallo thing all about?

Let's talk first and foremost, what is Halo? Can you give people not familiar with it a little bit of a crash course on exactly what it is?

Alex Jones: Yeah, a 10 year prayer streak would be pretty impressive. We've been around for five, six years, so, you know, that'd be some data manipulation

John Mihalyo: That'd be some good stuff probably.

Alex Jones: but for folks who haven't heard of it, it's um, it's an app, the simple description, it's an app to help you pray. And, you know, it's actually an interesting thing.

It's kind of hard to pitch in the abstract. You really do have to give it a try. I tried to pitch it to my mom when we first had the idea, and she was like, You know, I take my faith seriously. I pray all the time. Why would I need an app to help me pray? And it's a fair point. You know, what you find within the app, [00:06:00] um, You know, just from a description perspective, it's audio guided sessions.

So you have a bunch of different sessions you can pick from. You can choose a length, a guide. You got Jonathan Rumi, you got Mark Wahlberg, Bishop Barron, Father Mike, Jeff Cavins, all these people. You choose a length, you press play, plug in your headphones, and you close your eyes. And the goal is You know, kind of like a retreat within your home for 10 minutes, or in a classroom, or on your way to work or, you know, a little bit easier way to do a rosary with your hands free, and, you know, all these, um, the idea is just finding these moments within your day to grow closer in a relationship with the Lord.

And whether you're a bishop, or a monk, or somebody who hasn't prayed in 10 years, I think we all have an opportunity to grow deeper in a habit, a daily habit of prayer. And, you know, for us the real, you know, treasure that I think we've discovered, and that we try to bring to people is this. Like, wide breadth and diversity of the church's tradition and teaching on spirituality.

And so, you know, I think a lot of people ask the question, how do you pray? How do you listen to God? How do you try to [00:07:00] grow in a contemplative and spiritual life? But even if you feel like you kind of have a sense, which, you know, I've been taking this pretty seriously for a while now. And as soon as you start to feel like you have a sense of You know, I've started to grasp the church's spirituality and tradition.

You start discovering this whole new richness of, you know, a mystical tradition, or Carmelite spirituality, or Ignatian spirituality and it's just, there's so many different avenues for you to grow deeper in a relationship with the Lord, and at different times in your life, so many different things that you might be able to find helpful.

And so for us, we try to bring This, I think we have a hundred thousand sessions on the app now, many different types of collections, the Bible in a Year, Daily Little Gospel Reflection, Imaginative Prayer, Music, Sleep Stuff for Night, a bunch of different types of content to try to help you bring God and Christ into, you know, as many moments in your day as you can.

John Mihalyo: and I think that's something that's really awesome about the app is your different people pray different ways Okay, and the people that you have that come on to lead prayer Each of them might have a different cadence might have a different [00:08:00] style of prayer And I think that helps people because I talk to certain people and they're like, yeah, I just did my rosary with Mark Wahlberg or others are like, yeah, I like Jonathan Rumi because he's little.

Whatever the case might be, I think that different people leading different prayers, different ways speaks to people, especially maybe when you know them in a different walk of life.

Alex Jones: Yeah, and I think, you know, we get, we have this tremendous honor and privilege to get to share really some of the greatest faith creators in the world. And, you know, many of them are priests and nuns who's nobody has ever heard of before who are just incredibly deep in the contemplative and spiritual life and just like these incredible saints living among us.

And, you know, Maybe in a regular life, you'd get to go on a retreat with those folks once a year, maybe once every two years or something, and travel and stay there and, you know, just be able to pray with them each day and be led by these people who are teaching, you know, seminarians, and are the ones teaching spirituality to bishops and monks.

It's just this, it's the beauty of technology, which [00:09:00] is a blast. But the, and I think can be really powerful for people, both people at different, um, stages in different places in the world in their life, but also at yourself as you grow in your spiritual life or as you go through trials or as you go through consolation or desolation, it's, you know, you, different things resonate, you know, I've been praying with the app every day for like six years and it's funny because different things at different points in life, in, in your life, I'll get really into and will really help me grow much deeper in my faith.

It's funny because at the very beginning when we were building Hallow, um, we had nine sessions. So, so we have like a hundred thousand now. We started with nine and we had three different types. We had kind of a simple meditation. We had, um, which was kind of imaginative prayer. We had some, three sessions on Ignatian spirituality, mostly the examine, and then we had three sessions on Lectio Divina.

And the initial thing was, you know, A, would this be [00:10:00] helpful? Primarily for me, I was coming back to my faith and it had changed my life, and so primarily would it be helpful for me, but also we had some friends and family who were interested in using it. And then B was, you know, which of these techniques was going to be the one.

And so we were going to build an examine app, or we were going to build an Alexia Divina app, or we were going to build a, you know, Christian meditation app, and just kind of focus on one. But what we found when we interviewed, it was maybe 12 people used the app, maybe 50, and I don't know, but we talked to everybody on the phone after they used it for the nine days.

And it was hilarious because Everybody said the same thing, which was, Man, those three sessions or those six sessions were incredible. They changed my life. The other three, kind of a waste of time. You know, I don't really know why you did those. I didn't like those at all. The funny thing is, it was split evenly.

A third, and a third. Which one people thought was the least useful, and which one people thought was most useful. And so it's just this beautiful, and I think it speaks to the church, which is this incredible treasure that the church has is this diversity of spirituality and techniques and ways and resources for us to grow deeper in a relationship with the Lord, [00:11:00] and different things resonate with different people.

Um, And so from at different points in their life. And so from the early, earliest days, you know, one of our big things was hey, we want to build a place where people can pray the way that, you know, the good Lord wants you to in that moment. And, you know, whatever resonates best with you, we want you to be able to lean into and, um, you know, use to, to grow deeper in your faith.

John Mihalyo: And that nine sessions now extends to a hundred thousand, over a hundred thousand, um, and such a variety of people that, that lead the prayers, as I kind of mentioned before, was there a specific intent behind choosing such a wide variety of prayer leaders? Did that happen by accident? Did it just, did you stumble upon something or was it, was there intentionality behind, Hey, let's get, let's see if we can find some people to bring such a diverse group of people together

Alex Jones: Yeah, I think we always wanted to focus on bringing and really showcasing the diversity of the church. You know, you have somebody who, I mean, everybody is great at everything, but like, Bishop Barron will make you discover the truth and the [00:12:00] like, incredible theology behind the church, Father Michael will make you cry every time he tells you a story, Mother Olga will be like, oh man, we just got another Mother Teresa living among us, you know, and You know, Immaculae Libigiza has this incredible story of transformation of prayer.

Jonathan Rumi does this phenomenal job of bringing scripture to life in this new way that just, you know, you've heard the same scripture a thousand times, but then you hear it with his Jesus voice, and it's just like, man, that, yeah, it really just, it brings it alive. And, you know, for us, it was just this journey of discovering.

And we'd, I think we've barely scratched the surface, both in terms of content So, like, we went through Father Chizik's He Leadeth Me book last Lent, and like Imitation of Christ, the Lent before, and Seven Last Words, and all these things that, frankly, were pretty new to me, in terms of learning and discovering and diving deeper into, but are just incredible treasures of spiritual transformation, and also talent, and I think, you know, the fun part for us is this combination of And I think it's what works, especially for young people or for people who have really fallen away.

So, you know, how I started, I had fallen away from my faith and [00:13:00] came back to it. And so we, we have a real soft spot in our hearts for people who have fallen away and trying to reach out to people who have fallen away. And I think this combination of these incredible religious leaders, um, with, you know, some of your like celebrities, like a Mark Wahlberg or, um, Jonathan Ramir or whatever, Celtics coach on recently, we've got a bunch more folks coming up.

It'll be fun, but the it's. The cool part about that, like, Mark has all these stories of people who, and we get a lot of them, he gets a lot of them, but people who haven't prayed in, you know, 10 years, 20 years, or people who are young people who have fallen away from their faith and never taken it seriously other than their parents told them to.

But then they see a little thing, a little two second thing of Mark Wahlberg telling them to pray the rosary, and they're like, wait. I'm going to stop scrolling for half a second, and I'm going to listen to this, because isn't that the guy from the Bear movies telling me I should pray the rosary?

That's a really weird, and it's just weird enough that you're like, okay, maybe I'll give it a try. And so it's this really unique way of evangelizing, [00:14:00] which is just the weirdness factor. But it is, you know, I think, and he speaks a good bit to it, Mark does, which is, you know, he feels like when we first started working together, he told us that he felt like God was calling him to use this chapter in his career to use the platform that God had given him to share what God had done for him in his own life and to share the beauty of a relationship with Christ with the world.

And it is just incredible to watch, you know, what Folks like that can do when they're trying to reach out to people who you know Maybe wouldn't stop scrolling for a Father Mike, you know, you don't recognize the priest So you haven't listened to Bible in a year? And so, you know, you're not gonna give it two seconds But you might stop for a Mark Wahlberg or maybe you recognize the Jonathan Rumi guy or you know Any of the other folks that we partner with and so it's been fun for us to have that combination of People who can reach out to people in a new way and invite them into a relationship with God But then also these incredible spiritual leaders who can lead you in these beautiful Transcribed contemplative and spiritual practices that have been, you know, they've been practicing and been steeped in for decades.

John Mihalyo: And once you [00:15:00] give that opportunity to say, Hey, let me give this a try. Let me look at you go deeper and, you know, some of the things like the seven day reflections with some of the saints have been fascinating. And I know my wife and I, as we were listening to the one with Joe Mazula, it's like, You'd get to the point where the thing would end and you're going you're hanging on every it's like we'll come back tomorrow And we're gonna talk about this.

It's like no wait We want to hear the rest of this and so I think those kind of opportunities give you a chance to Get to know people and get to know people through our Catholic faith that maybe you've heard about maybe you know a little bit About them on the surface But really to do such a deeper dive, and I know we're going to talk about the schools here in a little bit, but I think to me that's something that could really benefit everybody that is a Catholic, just to learn more about these saints that we have with, who are just an incredible people.

Alex Jones: Yeah, I mean the fun part about the content that we do is, you know, there's been a lot of really phenomenal learnings um over the last few years [00:16:00] And it's important to have different content that reaches out to different people at different stages in their life and if you've fallen away for a while to have, you know, some intro content and things that explain things and Um all of that, but at the same time You know, it's been fascinating because some of the more intense stuff, some of the stuff that you would think, you know, would never resonate with somebody who didn't take their faith seriously is the stuff that resonates the best.

And It resonates both with people who obviously have, you know, are, you know, daily mass goers or people who take their faith incredibly seriously and have for a while, bishops and priests and monks and nuns, but also with people who have fallen away and, you know, the Saints in Seven Days is a great example of that, like diving deep into these saint stories where, you know, Maximilian Colby, you usually just know the story of how he gave his life.

You don't really know all the backstory and all the stuff that went into it and his career before and, um, You know, St. Sebastian, which was the one is a fascinating story of, you know, really old school story of a martyr. Um, very intense story, but it's the same thing like [00:17:00] Imitation of Christ. We were worried, you know, that's a really intense book.

It's like it throws you off your feet. I mean, it's, you know. Jesus does not mince words in it. And, you know, same with the Litany of Humility. We always kick off Lent with the Litany of Humility, which is arguably the hardest prayer that I know. You know, you're praying for people to think you're humble.

It's like, I'm not prideful, I'm humble. And then you pray the Litany of Humility and you're like, Wow that is what Christians mean when they say humble? That is not, I can't. That's intense. That's a lot. And, you know, He Leadeth Me was another one. It's a story about a priest who was locked in a Soviet Union solitary confinement for decades, and, you know, had this remarkable experience of abandonment and surrender which is, you know, as hardcore as you can get, as intense as you can get of a piece of content, and it was by far the biggest thing we'd ever done in the history of Halo.

I mean, it's funny how This combination of having different on ramps for folks who, um, are coming from different places in their life and not shying [00:18:00] away from the intensity and the tremendous beauty and power of our faith. And doing both of those, I think, you know, God's just done these incredible things through it.

It's been a blast to watch him work.

John Mihalyo: I couldn't agree more on that one. And I think one of the, with the coolest things to see, You know, there, there are the Saints. And if you ask people, Hey, name, how many Saints do you know? Or how many I know this or this but what you do is get so dense. There, there are so many things on there for people that you may not even heard of these people, but they have such an amazing backstory, or maybe you just know a little bit about them.

And so when we shift, let's talk a little bit about for our school leaders out there and for our schools. You know, I think my wife said to me the Hallow app is kind of like a candy store for Catholics because if you know, when, if you're a little kid and you're in a candy store, you're looking up at all the candy that's on the wall, you know, it's like, I want all of this, but I can only eat one at a time.

And there's just such an abundance of material for classrooms to use, for teachers to use, for schools to use, for churches to use, as I know you talked about. Um, talk to our listeners about [00:19:00] what's available out there for Catholic school teachers to use in their classrooms. And you've got things on there from the youngest of the young students in the schools and in faith formation to the oldest.

Um, talk a little bit about kind of how that came to be and what all is available out there for teachers to use within their classrooms.

Alex Jones: Yeah, my wife, um, was a Catholic school teacher. It's always been. Incredibly important for HALO to be able to partner together with the church more broadly, but especially with schools. And, you know, a big reason for that is, you know, the importance the work that schools are doing and how best we can support that.

But even more so, you know, the median age of disaffiliation from the church is, while you're in school, you're 13. And so if we really want folks to have a faith that's on fire, and we really want to, you know, Introduce people to a relationship with God. There's no better way to do that than as they're growing up and you know, the For us getting able being able to partner with Catholic schools to do that is [00:20:00] has always been one of our highest priorities You know for we partner with everybody so we have university partners Many of the big Catholic universities in the country.

We have high school partners. We have elementary schools middle schools And so we have content all over the spectrum, you know for university students for high school students a lot of them will listen to Into the content that's on the app the really popular lens challenges or Mark's content, or Jonathan's content, or whatever it is, Bible Lanier.

But we try to create something for all age groups. So we've created a ton of kids content over the last few years, and a lot of it is really exciting partnering together with a few folks to bring a lot of it to life. Um, you know, I love Saints Alive, which is these kind of, these radio dramas for kids that, um, you know, frankly I love 'em too.

I learned, we just did one in the car with St. John of Arc yesterday. Actually, it was funny, my wife. was like what is this? And it was, it's, you know, this acted out, you have the sound, you've got the horse galloping in the background or whatever, it's St. Joan riding the horse and my daughter's super into it.

She's like, ah, what happened to St. Joan of Arc? And St. Michael appears. And so I am learning [00:21:00] a ton. And then, you know, the kids, I've got a four year old, a two year old, and a one month old, everybody but the one month old was listening pretty attentively. So it was a pretty impressive test. But my wife looks at me and she's like, what is this?

What's this from? I was like, it's from that, the app, the Hello app. And she was like, no way. And so it does just speak to this, you know, there's so much content, but we have it broken down by age range. So We have a whole teacher portal that's custom for the schools that we partner with where you can filter it by grade.

Um, we have like a daily guest at Saint that's super popular, so you give some like questions or a little bit of tidbits and then we have to guest the Saint. You have classroom prayers, um, we have sacrament prep, holy hour, um, prep, music that people use in classes often, family prayers. A lot of times families are praying together after we partner with schools, which is really, um, pretty powerful.

And the last thing that I'd say is. You know, one thing that schools are really struggling with that we've heard and students especially, is mental health. And to be able to find, there's just so much stress and anxiety in a kid's life today, and a lot of it is due to [00:22:00] technology. And so, to be able to, and social media, and to be able to use a tool to try to combat that, and the only real way you can combat that is, with a relationship with Christ.

Obviously there's a bunch of other pieces to it and a comprehensive approach to mental health, but, you know, having a relationship with Christ at the core is something we believe in. And, you know, for us it's important to be able to bring a library and a collection of incredible mental health content that is also 100 percent more Orthodox, and in line with church teaching, um, is, you know, something that schools have found really valuable.

So yeah, I could go on, there's thousands and thousands of sessions, so I could go on forever, but but again, it's something, you know, teachers just find what works for them or find what aligns with their classroom plans. We have a bunch of different material to help people find that, um, and then they work it in however best works for them and kind of pray their own way, just like users on the app do.

John Mihalyo: And I think too, when we get kids that come into Catholic schools, say in preschool or kindergarten, um, and go through our Catholic schools all the way from preschool through 12th grade, we [00:23:00] have 13, 14 years of formation with these kids. That's our opportunity to give them that formation and to give them that foundation and the faith not to have them leave as soon as we're done.

You know, it's not like when you get to 12th grade, you're like, okay, well, I've graduated as a Catholic now I can go, you know, do something else. So I think that's where it's so important to give them that armor and to give them that relationship with Christ so that when they do leave our schools in terms of graduation, they are ready for what comes next and they are ready for the real world because we know it's it's a it's a big place out there it's certainly going to challenge your faith each and every day

Alex Jones: Yeah, and I think, you know, we do a good job, I think, in schools teaching theology teaching. The Kerygma teaching the truth of the gospel, teaching the catechism, and teaching, you know, secular subjects as well. Um, but you know, I think we have such an opportunity to, you know, if I think about my little kids, if I were to send them to a Catholic school, I know they're going to learn the stuff that they're supposed to learn, but like what I really want [00:24:00] for them is to have a relationship with Christ.

Like, I want them to know that. And if they know that, man, it's really hard to leave a relationship with God. Like, you know, you can fall away, you can come, you can go through ups and downs, but when you have a relationship with them, and you see this in the saints, like the saints who are saints from very young, St.

Therese, St. Joan of Arc, I mean, they have this incredible prayer life and this incredible relationship with the Lord from the very beginning. And it's like, man, Can we somehow focus on, yes, all of the pieces are important, there's truth, there's beauty, we have to do it all, but this spirituality, this peace of Christ, and I think especially in today's world for young people, it's like that is what they're hungry for, is real peace, real rest.

Not, you know, a distraction, not another thing to scroll. But a real place to find peace and meaning and purpose and confidence and strength and beauty and all that stuff, but real peace. And I think you find that in a relationship with the Lord, and that's what we've been, you know, we get all these stories from folks who, you [00:25:00] know, very vocal atheists, or who had fallen away, or who had never taken faith seriously, or really struggling with mental health, and are able to find some sense of peace in their life through prayer and a real relationship with the Lord.

And then you just end up like this on fire young person for their faith. And that's what the church, that's what I get really excited about for the church, is just this army of young people who are on fire with a relationship with the Lord. Um, and that leads you deeper into theology. It leads you deeper into all the aspects of the church, the sacraments, everything.

But it stems from this on fire relationship with the Lord.

John Mihalyo: And in order to do that, we have to give these kids opportunities to grow that relationship with Christ if the only thing we're worried about is tests and A's and B's and You there's so much more. We see here all the time in schools. We want to create a whole child. We want to create the whole child.

When you're in a Catholic school, part of that whole child is that Catholic faith and giving them that relationship with Christ. I think that's so important, but we have to be intentional with giving them those opportunities to grow that relationship.

Alex Jones: Yeah, and it's really hard. I mean, we talked to a bunch of theology teachers, a bunch of principals, a [00:26:00] bunch of the school partners. We've partnered with over 500 schools now. And one of the top questions that theology teachers get is, how do I pray? How am I supposed to pray? What does it mean to pray? And if you just think about that, It's a really hard question to answer as a theology teacher in a classroom setting.

You're just like, okay, well, I can give you these steps. I can give you this book. I can give you these But like, what you really need is to pray with them. Like, what you really need to do is just walk with them through prayer and how they pray. And depending on their age, depending on what resonates with them, depending on how you want to structure it, depending on what you're going through, what's worrying them, walking with them through prayer.

But that takes, A, it's hard, but B, Like, we've partnered with a bunch of incredible prayer leaders, and some of the best in the world, and many are, you know, it's hard to, I could never lead somebody in imaginative prayer, that's just a really hard thing to do, but Father Frankie is like, is incredible at it, and and it takes a lot of time, so, you know, it takes like ten minutes, it's a, maybe it's a five minute session, you got a two minute session, [00:27:00] but to really get into prayer, it takes real time.

And you can't, you gotta build a daily habit of prayer. And so you just, it's really hard to do within the classroom setting. And so, and as a teacher. And so for us, it's like, hey, within the classroom, you can use these things. And then you can also have the kids go home and pray with their family and pray on their own and build this own, their own kind of personal relationship with God through prayer.

And what prayer means to different people is, you know, it's, Somebody asked me in an interview once, like, well, how do you listen to God? And I struggled with the question because I was like, yeah, you know, that's, that is, how do you, I could answer it, which is, you know, there's scripture, there's your life, there's imaginative prayer, there's, but it's, it really, the answer is why we built the app.

There's a hundred thousand different ways. And, you know, different ways that you can listen to God, and it's hard, it's not easy to sit in silence and listen for the still small voice, that's, you know, what makes it so fruitful, but, you know, that's, the whole app is the answer to that question, and, you know, it's really hard to do it with anything less than that so I don't know, it's been this blessing for us to get to help teachers answer that [00:28:00] question, and then, you know, in a real way, journey with people through prayer, themselves and the students to grow deeper in, in spirituality.

John Mihalyo: Well, I think your theme for the Hallow Summit of Prayer and Surrender and if we can get kids and get our students and honestly get our teachers and our students and our principals to, you know, surrender prayer, create that relationship with Christ the future is an amazing one for the Catholic Church and for our world right there.

Um, I think one of the things that's really impressive about the Hallow app is You know, as a principal, form principal when you would get a curriculum, okay, and here we get this big box of stuff, and we've gotta learn everything about this, and it's overwhelming, and if I don't implement every piece of it, it doesn't work right, and it can be overwhelming, and it takes me two to three years to figure out how to get it all going.

You don't have to do that with the HALO app. You can start small in, in small places and kind of go down and look at this and, Hey, I can use this. And I [00:29:00] could, I mean, it's really very straightforward and that's something I think that's really great about it is it's not like something that you have to get to know all 100, 000 recordings that you have on there before you can use the app.

It's something that Listen, just start. And it writes these lessons for you. It brings these saints to life for your kids that maybe they've never heard of before. Um, I'm sure you've seen some, a lot of success stories. You're over 500 schools that you're working with. What are some of the success stories you've heard?

Because I know just personally from the conversation, from your talk at the Hallo Summit you spoke about a few of those, but what are some of the success stories you've heard from the schools you're working with?

Alex Jones: Yeah, I mean, to your point to your first point it's, our goal is just to And it's really kind of how the spiritual life works, I guess, you know, God just, you just need to give him a little crack and then it's, you know, he'll take that and you just got to keep at it each day and then he'll take a little bit more and he'll take a little bit more and he'll take a little bit more and for Hallow, that's really, you know, the first thing is just finding something.

It can be, you know, a little guess, that same thing can be a little daily gospel [00:30:00] thing, a little daily reflection. Maybe it's a saint challenge that goes along with, I don't know. The piece of content that you're studying, or the virtue that you're studying, or sacrament prep, or, you know, a lot of people just like to play music in class while kids are studying, or doing whatever, there's quiet reading time, there's, you know, nice chant, you know, that's going on in the background that you don't have to watch out for the lyrics or anything, you know, it's all in line with church teaching, and, um, you know, so the and the mental health stuff is another big piece, you know, when people are struggling, being able to give them resources that you know, are vetted and in line with church teaching.

The, um, So I think for us, it's just finding that, that way that small way that you can build it into either a lesson plan or a daily habit or whatever it is that, um, that you're going through as a teacher. And you also said something earlier, which is, you know, I think the most important part about a Catholic school is the faith life of the teachers of the Catholic school.

You know, having people who are formed and on fire. I don't even, formed, you know, I think they're formed, I think they know what they're talking about, but on fire with a personal relationship with the Lord. And, you know, so much comes from that. [00:31:00] And, you know, I think we all struggle to do that at times, and we can all get a lot deeper in that.

But to have, you know, teachers have a resource for themselves, it's a really hard job. I mean, I can't, I told my wife when she was doing it, it's like, man, it's like you have to prepare seven presentations every day, you have to know the content well enough for you to be able to teach it, and that's only 10 percent of your job.

The other 90 percent is getting the people you're presenting to sit still and be quiet and then dealing with their parents. You know, it's a really tough job. And, you know, the peace is offered to all of us. Kids, certainly, but, um, but especially us. I mean, when we all have this opportunity to grow deeper in a relationship.

You know, there there's, We've gotten a lot of stories. I have a bunch of fun ones for me. There was, you know, a little kid who wrote into us and said, or a mom who wrote into us and said, you know, our kids started praying with the app and she introduced it to me and then we started praying together.

And then at night we would pray together each night. And, um, you know, I finished a session one night and she goes, mommy, please more Jesus. [00:32:00] And she was like, here's to more Jesus. And I was just like, ah, yes, there's this, um, there's a story of this kid who. Was worried about, this was way back when, I love these small stories, I just got, you know, a bunch of little kids here, so, it's, the, but, was worried about the Chinese spy balloon, she had seen it in the news, do you remember this, like,

John Mihalyo: Oh, yeah. Oh,

Alex Jones: or whatever, um, and, they picked a random session, and, On the app cause the mom was like, I don't know what to do with that, and so they just picked a random session.

And it was an imaginative prayer session that we wrote maybe four years ago. Obviously, nothing to do with the Chinese balloon. But it was an imaginative prayer session about all of your worries. Imagine them filling up into a balloon. And you're holding onto the balloon really tight. And then at the end, you let go of the balloon.

And it floats up into the air, into the arms of God, and God takes your words, all of your balloons, all of everyone's balloons. He takes them all if you just let go and give them to God. And the kid was like, Oh, Mom, Dad, Jesus heard us talking about the balloon. That's so nice. He took my [00:33:00] worry. But we have, you know, we have high school kids.

We have this one athlete who is this very vocal atheist. Um, you know, who had started praying with the app and had this radical conversion. I just talked to a guy two days ago who, um, was going through a really tough time with his family and they got introduced to the app and they started praying together as, um, As a family for the first time and he had struggled with alcoholism and a handful of addictions and had a really tough kind of 10 years or so and, you know, it's just bringing this tremendous piece even in like continued really tough times.

Um, and there's been really tough stories too. I mean, kids are going through, I mentioned the story at the summit, but we got this note from, um, a young woman who was 15 and her, she was raised Catholic, but her mom was but she had fallen away. Her mom downloaded the app onto her phone, made her download it and create an account and [00:34:00] whatever.

And she had become very depressed. The daughter had become very depressed and one day decided to end her life. And so she climbed into a bathtub, filled it with bubbles, because she decided she wanted it to be a pretty death. Um, which is heartbreaking. And she said, God, I don't believe in you, but I'm going to give you one last chance.

And she had the phone next to her on the bathtub. And she said, if you're real, prove it to me. And she chose a random session on the app, press play. And it just happened to be a meditation on Christ's passion about how he died for us, um, how he suffered for us so that we didn't have to. And. She said, I don't know what it was, but I just realized in that moment that he was there.

He was there with me in that room and he lifted out his, stretched out his hands and he picked me up out of that bathtub. I dedicated my life to him. And for the last several years, I've been serving as a missionary, um, or I'm now serving as a missionary for in the inner city for, um, kids on behalf of Christ.

And it's like, man, there's just, God does these. You know, for us, it's awesome to get to pray with people who already take their [00:35:00] faith seriously. I think it's this really tremendous blessing to get to pray with families, which we see a lot through this school's work that we do, which is kids bringing it home and then families get introduced to prayer and, you know, it's hard to figure out how to pray together as a family.

You know, you're like, well, do I lead a rosary? Do I, you know, how do I talk to you about prayer? It's a tough, it's a difficult subject. My mom and I both take our faith super seriously, but I don't often ask her, how can I pray for her? I don't often ask her, how's your prayer life or how's your spiritual life?

And, you know, to have something to kind of broach that for you is, um, and to kind of structure that for you can often be helpful. And then especially with folks going through really tough times, which unfortunately too many kids today are, To be able to be some oh, there's this other story that I there's this young woman who'd grown up her whole life and never heard anyone tell her that she was beautiful, which is heartbreaking to me, and she she'd only thought she was ugly, she'd only heard other people tell her she was ugly from her family, from her friends, whatever, and she plugged in the headphones, pressed a random session, looked in the [00:36:00] mirror, and she heard Christ say, you're in silence, so we didn't have any audio for this, and she just heard Christ say to her, you are beautifully and wonderfully made, do you think I make mistakes?

And it was the first time she'd heard that she was beautiful, which is just like, oh, it just breaks your heart with what God does in people's lives. And, You know, he does these incredible things, and for us, the really cool part about Halo is I get to brag on behalf of God, because all we do is just like, hey, press a play button, and then a good chunk of it's silence, and God'll do the heavy lifting.

And I don't have to convince you of anything, God'll do it. And you know, I don't know what you need in this moment, but God does, and He'll tell you. If you structure it in the right way, ~if you have the right, you know, ~ if you're meditating on scripture, it's a living word. It'll speak to you in the way that you're supposed to, even in silence.

If you listen for, if you learn to listen for that still small voice. And so, I don't know it's been this incredible blessing for us to get to journey with folks all across the spectrum, but especially folks who are in really tough places who yeah, who are in real darkness and Christ is able to bring that light into their lives.

John Mihalyo: And just giving them that opportunity. That's the key thing is just giving them opportunities. And I think one of the things that you mentioned there was the [00:37:00] prayer with families, because sometimes we, you know, our generation, my generation, at least I was like, you know, I don't want to say it was, we're kind of very stiff about prayer and things like that, but it was not something that we did a lot as a family or things like that.

Yeah. But, it was, I think this gives opportunities for you as a family, for those people who might not be comfortable praying with their kids. Um, opportunities to, to do something with that. You know, I was with a family member recently, and you know, we were talking about the Halo app, and the person wasn't really that familiar with it.

The 10 year old daughter walked in, and I showed a picture of Jonathan Rumi, and I said, Do you know who this is? Now, I was expecting her to go, Oh, that's the guy from The Chosen. And she said, Oh, that's the guy my class prays with every day, in the morning. Okay? And I said, Now, how cool is that a 10 year old is introducing and showing the faith that they're learning within their classroom to adults who are in the room.

And I think that's just something that's such an important vessel that, that Halo can bring to families. And seeing [00:38:00] them connect in ways that maybe they didn't think were possible before.

Alex Jones: Yeah. It's, I mean, for us, it gets us really excited. It's, you know, usually it's the other way around of parents trying to. Trying to tell their kids to believe and so to have this world where you have kids on fire for the faith And there's just something really beautiful about a kid's faith I mean, there's something really unique about it.

Like I was praying with my daughter. I was praying a rosary with her at night She's three. She's about to turn four and She's I wasn't using the app actually, but um, it was good. You don't need the app to pray. You

John Mihalyo: Don't need, yeah,

Alex Jones: sit in silence. You should, you know, and the cool part about prayer is, you know, you get, you know, you do it sometimes it's helpful to do the rosary.

Sometimes it's not. Sometimes for, I do the surrender novena every day. Cause I don't want to like carry around a little book with a little quotes from the father from Jesus told to father Dolindo. Um, but the, but anyway, she just stops me halfway through the [00:39:00] rosary. And she just goes, dad, who was that?

I was like, who is what? And she was like, that voice, who spoke? And I was like, what voice? It's just me, honey. And she was like, oh, I know who it was. And I was like, who was it? She was like, it was Mary. And then she just fell asleep. And I was like, Like, they're so much closer to the spiritual world than us.

You know, I feel like the angels, I feel like they're just so much, yeah, which scares you when they talk about monsters. But, um, but, um,

John Mihalyo: check under the bed, Alex. You know what I

Alex Jones: Yeah, well I was just, we'll just, in the name of the Lord, in the name of the Lord Jesus, whenever you think there's a monster in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, get out of here.

Um, the but yeah, there is something really beautiful about a kid's faith, and I think it inspires, I think it inspires us as adults more so than, you know, adults faith lives. And, you know, I think, well, Jesus was really clear about it. But, yeah, to be able to watch kids have this relationship with the Lord is you know, the blessing of a lifetime.[00:40:00]

John Mihalyo: And when, like, in little ones there's nothing as a Catholic school principal, when you'd walk down to the kindergarten or the first grade, I mean, they're just cute as can be, and if that doesn't brighten your day then you're not in the right profession, I think, because they're just cute, and they'll tell you everything that, that you want to know and they're just, they're on fire for life right there.

Alex Jones: Oh, that's nice. Our kids don't start talking to us till about five minutes before they're supposed to go to bed. And then 40 minute soliloquy, but, you know.

John Mihalyo: Now, I didn't say at home, I said at school, you know what I mean? So, that's the game plan there. Five minutes before bed, we want to talk about everything under the sun, you know what I mean? That's just the way that one works, so. One of the things that I know HALO really does is when working with schools, it's not just like, Hey, here it is.

Good luck. There's a nice process that you all use. There's support that you're providing for the schools in order to truly bring it into your schools and to kind of teach them how to use it. Can you talk a little bit about that? So maybe there's a school out there listening to this going.

This sounds really cool, but I wouldn't even [00:41:00] know where to start with this. Talk about maybe the support that you give schools in the implementation of the Halo app.

Alex Jones: from the very beginning when we decided to do this, you know, which we've been doing this for a few years now, it's, all we care about is people praying. That's, Hallow's goal is to help people pray. We want to get as many people praying in as deep a way as possible. We don't care if we have a bunch of fancy partnerships with universities or schools or, Whatever, if it doesn't actually lead to people praying, and, you know, that would feel like we were just ripping schools off if we just gave them some tool and then said, you know, go for it, and nobody ended up praying with it, and I think that happens all too often in both the school world and the broader world and the faith world and, um, in a bunch of different places, You know, so for us, it was really important.

From the very early days, you know, me and my co founder would go, we'd be with the school, we'd try to figure out what, and we had someone on the team who came from the school's world, and, you know, what can we do to help schools to, you [00:42:00] know, build a community of prayer and get people actually praying and growing deeper in a relationship with God, and that's what we care about at the end, Hallow and so, and certainly what we would hope that schools would care about.

It's the only reason that they partner with us. And, you know, So we've built a whole team around it, and it's been this really incredible team. We have this phenomenal group of people. We've got formal, former principals former Catholic school teachers, um, a bunch of people from a bunch of different walks of life who really know the school's world, and really know HALO, and can sit with you one on one, and walk through, okay, what's it, you know, what are we gonna do to try to get people praying?

Is it gonna be a little Chick fil a challenge where, you know, the most people praying in this, whatever, the most the classroom with the most people praying gets, you know, some Chick fil a award. Is it going to be Advent launch where we just, you know, really focus on Advent or Lent or something? Um, and, you know, the team does a really great job of, because again the point at the beginning is just, let's pick one thing and let's try to pray it.

Um, and maybe it's [00:43:00] a collection of different things, but let's get you used to how you use the app and then you start to, See all of the tremendous content that's available within the app and discover it over time and then you can bring more of that into your practice. But at the beginning, it's just figuring out what that is that works for your school and how you want to grow, how you want to use it in your classroom.

And so we do focus really heavily on, you know, the success of schools that we partner with for us because, you know, you know, at the end of the day, what matters is people praying. And so, you know, the team's done a really great job of that. And we've made a lot of progress. It's you know, it's hard to figure out at the beginning.

Um, but I think we've done a lot of work over the last few years where we're getting pretty good at helping to build up these cultures of these cultures of prayer within schools. I

John Mihalyo: and I think what you should do is just to get started somewhere. Okay, and just to pick something, because if you're familiar with the Halo app, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't know what I'm talking about, um, you go on there. There's a whole section for schools. And, as you mentioned before, I mean, you've got everything from [00:44:00] lessons, you've got stories about saints, you've got prayers, you've got music, you've got, you know, all these things on there.

And they're not anything that you have to say, okay, I've got to dedicate the next four weeks to do this. It's something that can be so quick to start your day with, or start your classroom with, is a five minute reflection, or a five minute prayer, or a five minute, let's learn about this saint this week, or things like that.

Yeah. That just can really be something that adds so much value and so many opportunities for your kids to grow in their faith. outside just what's in the textbook. Um, and I think that's what's so amazing to me and why, you know, I told this to you up there in Stube, I said, every school in the country should be using this.

Okay. And so I really love what you're doing and that's why I just really wanted to invite you to come on because I think it's such an amazing tool and it's such an amazing vessel that schools can use to just foster that relationship with Christ,

Alex Jones: the kind words. It's all the good Lord doing the heavy lifting, but it's an honor to get to ride

John Mihalyo: Amen to that. So, Obviously [00:45:00] as I know about you're going you've already got things on the horizon for the next 6, 12, 18 months. What's coming next for Halo? I know Advent's you know, coming up here on the horizon, for those of you listening in real time on this. You know, prayer challenges for Advent, things like that.

What's coming up maybe in the future that you can tell people something to look forward to? Give them a little teaser of something.

Alex Jones: I can't, um, give a ton away. We keep

John Mihalyo: Nope, don't want to give anything

Alex Jones: stuff

John Mihalyo: a trailer. Just a trailer.

Alex Jones: pretty secret. The, um,

John Mihalyo: locks. There

Alex Jones: But for school partners, they get a little sneak peek. So, the, um, Advent is gonna be really awesome. It's gonna be, we just wrote it. I was bawling, like, just tears. It's, we've got incredible partners for it, a lot of new folks you know, a lot of familiar faces, and the content is just, it's this really unique take on Advent.

And it speaks to the beauty of God's love for us during the season, but in this really unique way. Like it's not a, you know, when you think [00:46:00] of God's love too often, we think of like this fluffy, you know, feel good thing. And it's sometimes that, but usually not, it's usually hard. And yeah, it's like, well, what does that mean?

What does his love, what does his mercy mean for us in this season? Like when he gives us his child, he's not just giving us God, which is great. He's also sacrificing his only son. Like, in that giving of his son to us in that, in Christmas, he knows he's going to be sacrificed on the cross.

Like, he's sacrificing this this kid, which is just heartbreaking, you know, it should make you cry. But at the same time, like, you know, we put joy for what God did for us and at the nativity and through Advent and the story of Mary and, you know, Mary knew too, you know, she's staring at this baby and she knows that, you know, He's gonna be sacrificed for us.

She knows the story of the Messiah. She knows what's gonna happen. Um, and so it's this heartbreakingly beautiful love. So, I don't know. Advent's gonna be incredible. Lent is gonna be incredible also. Um, That's for a bit. And then [00:47:00] the new year, we have some really great stuff in between Advent and Lent to help people kind of, get back on the horse after the Christmas break and rededicate to build in a daily habit of prayer.

Before Advent, um, right now we're doing a how to pray challenge, which is one of my favorite pieces of content. I hate my voice is in it at the beginning, so I

John Mihalyo: was gonna say, you have a personal interest in this one.

Alex Jones: the, um, but the rest of them are awesome. The You know, they're just yeah for us it my story coming back to my faith was just discovering like wow there's so many different ways to pray and listen to God and Surrender to God and to grow in that surrender and to grow in that listen And what does it mean to do that?

And so we just kind of showcase like a little bit of all the different ways that you can grow in Relationship with God through prayer after this. We'll do a Challenge with Father Frankie, which will be okay, you know, that's kind of you know personal prayer mostly Um, what does it mean to pray, you gotta love Siri, what does it mean [00:48:00] to what does it mean to pray together as a community, um, so, you know, prayer is this unique thing, we're not meant to do it alone, you know, it's not like working out, it's not like secular meditation you aren't supposed to pray alone you are for a chunk of it, but it can't just be alone, you're supposed to pray for people, it has real power, you know, if you're praying for someone it can change things, God gives us that.

You know, opportunity to impact the world through prayer and we're supposed to pray together with people. We're not supposed to do this faith journey alone. And so being able to pray with people and for people is something we get really excited about. And then the other thing maybe that I'd call out is, you know, it's an, it's a unique time in our country, certainly and a stressful time, and usually a predominantly negative time you know, worries are most of what happens, and criticisms, and division, and complaint, and the election will be, you know, certainly a time of a lot more of that, and I think prayer has this opportunity [00:49:00] to heal and to bring together.

And, you know, whatever party you are, you have to pray for both, you know, you don't have an option. You have to pray for your enemies and your friends, and prayer has this way of softening hearts. Like, when you disagree with somebody on a political issue, um, which can be incredibly important, obviously, you know, the church has many issues that she fights for vigorously, um, but like, if you're really trying to change people's hearts, You know, I've talked to a bunch of people about, you know, pro life, pro choice conversations.

I never convince anybody. The only way of changing people's hearts is Christ. And for us, you know, so if you're trying to impact the world, if you're trying to be a good Christian, if you're trying to find some sense of peace in this, like, incredibly stressful, difficult time, prayer, I think, has this unique opportunity to do that and to bring us together, really, regardless of what happens.

And there's these really cool, so we did this, we're doing this challenge for the election, which, um, We're going to have some content coming out, which is really powerful. There's all these founding fathers [00:50:00] quotes about, you know, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, like these incredible quotes and prayers from people that are like, look, we.

We get involved in these disputes and these arguments and feels like we're divided all the time and the end of the world is about to happen, which, you know, for Abraham Lincoln, you know, that was a pretty stressful time

John Mihalyo: Indeed. Indeed.

Alex Jones: and they all come back to this. Did we forget who made us? Did we forget? Like, we get so buoyed up in our own success that we forget that this is God's, this is God's.

We forget that this is God's country. We forget that God made us, God raised us. He continues to raise us. Are we too? There's a, I think it's either Benjamin Franklin or Abraham Lincoln that ends the quote with, Are you, are we too proud to pray to the God who made us? And it's just like, yes! Like, how often do we pray when we get into, like, before we vote?

Or when we're, you know, watching a debate or whatever, how often are we praying? And it should be the whole time. And yeah, so anyway, I think there's a lot coming [00:51:00] up. I'm really excited for Evan. I think the election will be a unique time for us to try to put prayer at the center of how we go about that season.

And, you know, a lot of other stuff that I think will be really fun, but more

John Mihalyo: No, that's it's exciting indeed. And I love that you all are just constantly coming up with new content, new ways, new opportunities to for people who are using the app every day to allow them to continue to grow. And to those people who just are turning onto it for the first time, it gives them that opportunity, that avenue, that vehicle to just kind of say, Hey, there's something like you said, that two second seeing Mark Wahlberg and going, Hey, I think I recognize that guy.

Well, you know, and let's, you know, just give it a chance and give that opportunity. If a school is listening to this right now and they are getting more and more excited about the things you are talking about and they are ready to say, and they said this is what we need in our school, how can they reach out to somebody at HALO to get more information about partnering with you?

Alex Jones: Yeah, it would be an honor to have a conversation. Um, the easiest [00:52:00] way is just to shoot us an email. It's just schools at hallo. app. A P P. So it's the hallo app. So schools at hallo. app. You could also send it to schools at hallo. com, but I like the hallo app is the thing. It's a bit easier, but, um, schools at hallo.

app. And you just send a note saying, Hey, interested. We'd love to have a conversation. We have a whole team of folks who would love to talk you through what, You know, how we partner with schools and, um, kind of the folks who help one on one with getting schools up and running and all that different stuff.

So, yeah, it would be an honor to have a conversation, but schools at hallow. app would be the way to do it.

John Mihalyo: Alright, so schools at halo. app, feel free to reach out. I think you're really going to really enjoy what they have to offer. Check out. Halo, most certainly. Alex, I want to say, first of all, thank you so much for the time. Congratulations on the success that the app is seeing. Wish you all nothing but the best in the future and just continuing to do God's work.

Alex Jones: Glory to God. It was an honor to be to be here and to get to chat with you. Was a blessing, so thanks for having me.

John Mihalyo: [00:53:00] Absolutely. Thank you.

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