Spirit Tracting

When I was in the CTM I was assigned to a very spiritual elder. He was a convert and had the gift of prophesy. He was a former Greek orthodox and had worked for the phone company before his mission. Elders told me that he would tell them what was going to happen and it usually happened just like he said. He asked to be assigned my companion even though most elders wanted to avoid me. He spoke Greek and I spoke Italian. I actually learned a few phrases from him. He had a black belt in Taekondo. He could break marble with his bare hands and had once killed a bull in a slaughter yard to reach his rank. One time a Hell's Angel type threatened us and said he was going to hurt us. My companion was a small guy even shorter than me and I am 5'6". My companion spoke to the man in a whisper with command saying I wouldn't do that if I were you, the tall and massive biker actually jump back if hit and walked away doing nothing but laughing. My companion found me a small smooth rock that he had me pound on each day. Then little by little he had me break larger and larger tree limbs. The trick he told me was the speed of the hand and to keep it in motion even if it smarted a little. I could break massive tree trunks by the end of our assignment. We had a huge area that included over a half a million people in the Toronto area. We did things like stand on a street in front of massive fifteen story apartment complexes preaching the gospel. One day someone called the cops and one undercover cop came by and asked us for a Book of Mormon, which we usually asked a dollar or two. Our mission president M. Russell Ballard told us if they didn't pay anything they wouldn't value it as much as if they had so we were instructed not to just give them away. The Spirit told me to just give it to him or we would be arrested. My companion started to ask him for the money. I stopped him and said come here and told him what I suspected. We gave to him for free when he insisted he wanted one for free. The cop after we gave it to him identified himself and told us we were lucky we gave it to him or he would have arrested us for soliciting without a permit.

One of our best proselyting techniques was what we called spirit tracting. We would leave our apartments on bike or foot and follow the spirit wherever it lead us. It usually worked by one of us saying lets go left on this street then right on that street. Sometimes we wandered for hours till we stopped at a particular house. Inevitably we would get in and teach the person who would progress towards baptism. We might have three or four discussions a day using this approach. We learned how to be in tune with the Spirit. We had great success doing this and a couple of people were baptized.