Stuck...

I think my big kids' biggest fear here in Russia is getting stuck in the "lift"  or elevator.  I have tried to encourage them to go in the elevator by themselves for independence sake.  For example, if someone comes to our apartment to bring us something, we all have to go down the elevator to meet them.  It would be much easier if my older ones would go down themselves and meet our visitor.  However, after today's experience, their fears are warranted.   God does indeed work all things together for our good.  In this case, the fact that C4 was being mean to C3 was a good thing because it caused my husband to wait on a separate elevator with C4 while the rest of us went ahead.  We live on the 7th floor of a 16 story building.  The elevator is a little smaller than 3' x 6'.    It is small elevator compared to US standards but surprisingly larger than many Russian elevators.  It is also a very dirty place.   A few seconds up the elevator, we could hear the sound of the elevator chains grinding to a halt.  My children's fear had come true.  We were stuck.  Fortunately, my husband was not far behind me.  I forgot my personal rule of not yelling out in English and yelled to him, "Help! We're stuck!"   I began pressing the 3 buttons on the elevator that were not numbers..nothing happened.  My youngest remained calm the entire time.  My daughter began to whimper and was about to cry.   We prayed and I assured them that God would watch over them even when the elevator stops.   Since my cell phone does not work in elevators, I knew that we could do nothing but wait.  My husband called the elevator dispatcher who began to talk to us from her phone to the elevator in Russian, "Machina poexala" The car has left, she was saying.   I tried to ask her how long, but she hung up.   I decided that in order to keep my daughter calm, we should start singing.  But this idea did not go over at all with my oldest who began to get very agitated and hostile towards me.   We waited some more.  Thankfully we had also just gotten back from church, so we had our Bibles with us.  So I began to read the Psalms and from Isaiah "Do not fear..."  This seemed to calm my daughter, when lo and behold the elevator began to go down again.  A few minutes later the door opened, and we were back on the 1st floor where we started.   It was only 10-15 minutes, but it seemed like a lot longer.  After that episode, the kids were too scared to get in the other elevator, so we walked.  And by the way, the stairway has no lights. 
I told the kids that now they would have something to write to their friends.  C4 replied, "I am going to write JB and tell him that I got to go to the roof with Daddy."  I am thinking that he is making this up, but I didn't say anything.   Remember the building is 16 stories high.  Afterwards, hubby tells me that yes, they did get to go to the roof because that is where the elevator repairman had to go to crank up the elevator again.  And he got to look over the edge of our 16 story building.  Sure glad I wasn't there to watch!