Excerpt from Josh's email March 4, 2013: Hey guys! I've had a pretty crazy week! This past week we were out of town from Thursday to Sunday! it was crazy! we went and stayed in Mt sterling then went to zone conference out in Lexington then we went back to Mt sterling that night and then we went to mission conference in Louisville where we got to hear from two apostles and hear from a couple from the 70! It was way cool! The Louisville Temple president and his wife were there as well. It was awesome!! Elder Perry and Elder Cook were the two apostles it was so cool! We got to go up and shake all of their hands and meet them! It was so nice to hear from them. I took a bunch of notes which I don't have with me right now but basically we had the whole mission there about 180 missionaries crammed into the chapel. You know it's crazy when the apostles say that they have never been to such a small meeting in their life were there are two apostles in one location. It was awesome! They talked on missionary work of course and talked about the influx of missionaries. They talked about how we will hit around 60k this month and then by august we will have around 90k!! That's insane!! They talked to us about our responsibility as missionaries right now and what a special opportunity it is to be a part of all of this. Something that really stood out to me was they said from their own mouths that the lord is hastening his work, which is something I have been pondering and reading a lot about in the D&C. Section 88:73 especially. That really stood out to me when I read that. That times is now. What a blessing and privilege it is to be serving the lord at this time. I'm loving it! With everything happening in the church all of the changes the church is making is the lord hastening his work. It's so cool!! But anyways our mission conference was good :) I got to see all of the other Elders I have gotten to work with. It was awesome! Elder Rollins told me that a guy got baptized the day before! I was so stoked! He was one of the only people Elder Rollins and I were teaching before I got transferred so that was awesome to hear! I got to see all my buddies from the MTC except one of the elders that went home. It was sad to hear but it was an awesome conference. After that we went out to eat a MiMi's cafe! It was super good! Make sure you tell mike I had the chicken gumbo again! I remember when mike took me out to Mimi's because we were going to have faijitas and my braces hurt so he took me there. haha also I want you to ask Caroline if she can type up the story about the patriarchal blessing. Anyways we went there to eat with our zone leaders and then we went back to Lexington to stay with them because we had stake conference where elder Clayton spoke about the same thing as the mission conference basically which was super awesome. After stake conference on Sunday we went home finally! It was pretty crazy being out of town for that long. We haven't had much time to do much work. Sunday night was pretty good for us though we went out and tried the best we could to have some numbers to report. It has been awesome out here so far. There are ups and downs but it's all good. Brother Gardener, he's cool. He is a cheerleader and so is his wife at the University here., He went to Chicago on his mission and he said that his mission was the best and worst two years of his life, and some days that is so true haha. Elder Perry was talking to us a lot about authority and priesthood keys which was pretty cool and he also talked about the lord hastening his work now with the influx and growth of the church from converts because of the new missions and new missionaries and all this the younger missionaries will have to start doing things a lot sooner like training and leadership and all that so I thought that was cool and also the growth of members in the church will increase dramatically because of converts and Return missionaries getting married and bringing up families in the gospel! It's super cool to hear that come from an apostle I love you all! Stay safe!