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I was visiting rural Kenya with a team building an aquaponics system that would benefit a local church. It was hard work, and our team of Kenyans and Americans was behind schedule. One afternoon, with precious few hours of daylight left to work, a local woman came to visit and see the project.

This is the first summer in twenty years that I have not gone, or helped people to go, on short-term mission projects. Twenty years means that I’ve had multiple decades of evaluating, educating people on, and executing best practices in this arena. Twenty years means 7,300 days full of opportunities to both make many mistakes and play a small role in God’s big story.

When I boarded my jet for Kenya in 2015, I couldn’t wait to arrive at the Nairobi slums and get busy. Many people there needed help. I was prepared to visit, assess the needs and figure out what I could do. The need was overwhelming, but I’m a fixer — and I was armed and ready to fix.

When I think of the word “visit” I am flooded with childhood memories. I recall sitting on my granny’s porch swing with my sister and cousins eating the grapes we had just picked straight off of the vine. We didn’t have a care in the world; we would just sit and visit. Our comfortable American mindset can alter so many images from scripture and the use of “visit” in James 1:27 is definitely one example.

God sovereignly placed Esther in her position to influence the king. Likewise, he has placed us in our positions of influence for his purposes. Will we use our voices to speak up for the voiceless in our time?