FRIENDS - February update

Living as a missionary in another country is truly incredible, there is nothing I would rather be doing with my life. With all these crazy opportunities to travel and live in other places it gets hard to stay in touch with all the friends I have made along the way. The month of February was great because I had some good friends come and visit me here in Barcelona. I want to share briefly about four friends who made last month very memorable.

My first visitor was Fernando, a young skater from Panama city who came on a month long skateboarding trip. Barcelona is one of the best locations in the world to skate, and it was one of Fernando's dreams to come skate here. Some of you may remember Fernando's name or face because he is one of the young guys I spent a lot of time with in Panama. I have known "Fer" for 6 years now and we have a great relationship, he is one of my many adopted skater sons. Fer is 17 years old and quite a character, having him sleep in my room with his stinky feet, farting non stop and staying up late for a month was quite the experience. Fer and I had a lot of fun times together but we also had very meaningful time where I could encourage him in his walk with Jesus. Having him here in Barcelona was really special.

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The second visitor to come through was my friend Roberto Celis from New Jersey. Roberto knew I was working on building a dark room for photography as part of my plan for ministry and had expressed that he wanted to come out and serve in any way possible. I had no idea what God had in store, looking back now I am amazed at what we were able to accomplish working together. The testimony of working with Roberto is hard to put into words... I don't know if I have ever felt the favor and Joy of the Lord while working on a project like I did with this guy! We did plumbing, cutting, grinding, painting, brainstorming you name it we did it. Together we made so much progress on the future space where skaters will come and learn about and create fine art photography. We built the big sink you see in the photo out of recycled materials and it is a true testimony to creativity and Gods goodness.

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My Third friend is Travis Cooper who got here right after Roberto and is also from New Jersey. Travis is a passionate skateboarder and is super gifted in video work, he wanted to come out to Barcelona and support me through making a video (coming soon). Even though Trav was only here for a week we had a really awesome time together and did a lot in a short amount of time. Travis has a great heart and simply came to serve and encourage me in what I am doing here with Calling All Skaters, and he did exactly that!

Quote “Coming out to Barcelona was a real blessing to be able to encourage Dave and help him create an update video for ministry work. Overall I was blown away by the amazing skating in Barcelona but I was really excited about the God-filled conversions and experiences I had with Dave” TRAVIS COOPER

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Being a skateboarder in Barcelona you meet new people nearly every day, sometimes those people become really good friends. The last story is about a girl named Kayla who was in Barcelona traveling with a group of friends from Canada. After hanging out, skating together and getting to know the group of Calling All Skaters Kayla decided to extend her stay in Barcelona a few days, not exactly sure why. The extra days proved to be really purposeful and it was clear God had a plan for her to stay in Barcelona. During those days we were able to talk about her relationship with God and what it looks like to live a life of faith following Jesus. God had been working in Kayla's life way before she came to Barcelona and it was really cool to meet someone so open and hungry for Gods plan. Kayla is now back in Canada raising funds to come back to Barcelona and be part of a

Calling all Skaters discipleship school. It was

really encouraging to see a very clear picture of

how God draws people to himself and how He

sometimes lets us be a part of that journey for others.

You can check out Kayla's fundraising page by visiting the link below!

https://www.gofundme.com/calling-all-skaters