Monkeys

Sunday, June 8, 2008

When Wendy and I were in Ecuador, in the amazonian rain forest, our guide took us to a path along the woods and told us if we were lucky we might see a monkey in the trees. We walked slowly, and quietly and finally, we saw one way up high in the trees looking at us. He was frozen and we froze. What a cool thing. None of the rest of the group was seeing this, and I knew I had to get pictures. I slowly pulled out my camera and zoomed to his position in the tree, and tried to get a picture. I took pictures. More and more of them, hoping that I might get one that would actually turn out decent. Suddenly we saw another monkey, and then another. They were dropping closer to us. I kept snapping photos. It was so cool. Then more monkeys, and more. Soon, there must have been 15-20 monkey that were surrounding us. And as they got more and more confident that they could trust us they came closer and closer to us. Now I could snap at will and get great photos of mothers with their babies. Of monkeys hanging by their tails. Of monkey jumping and running along branches.It got to the point where there were so many monkeys, that I stopped taking pictures. They were all around us. It's not that the wild monkeys living in the trees were any less wonderous, but we just didn't appreciate them like we could have.

We're like the photographer. The more rare and wonderous the monkey is we pay attention to it, we want to take pictures of it, we want want to take one home. But as they begin to multiple, as they become less rare and they begin to surround us, it's easy to take them for granted, and we stop holding them as precious.

When we live in the mission field, and we are the only LDS people we know, then when we see another fiathful latterday saint and it's so rare, that we get excited and we love them just because their there. But when we live in Utah, and everyone we meet is LDS, then it's easy to get bored with LDS people. And we stop appreciateing how rare they are in a world of heathen's - those who have not made covenants with God.

May we appreciate living among the monkeys and being a monkey.