One Floor at a time . . .

Well. It happened. For days now we have questioned, wondered, pondered the “what if” and tonight it happened. What happened? The creaky metal box that takes us to our ninth floor apartment and which we call an elevator failed to elevate . . . and we were inside. This was not without warning. Sunday afternoon we returned home from church at 3:45 after a long day of meetings. We pushed the button . . . and waited, then pushed again. No grumbling motor or clanging metal doors high above. We waited and pushed and waited but nothing. Not a problem. We could take the stairs. After all, we had missed our morning exercises and this would be a good workout. It was. We had left home that morning shortly after 8 AM without breakfast, and by afternoon were beginning to feel the effects of insufficient glucose. By the time we reached the fifth floor my head was feeling dizzy and my feet refused to respond. It was good there was a metal hand rail.

Monday morning the old metal cage was back, working like a charm. It took us down at 8:30, then back up on Monday afternoon and down again when we left in the evening for dinner and home evening with our mission president. So it was that, as we returned home tonight, we failed to heed yesterday's warning. We even ignored a second warning when Dad's magic finger would not work once we were inside the small, dark closed-in cage. The enemy seemed almost to taunt us as the door would close, then immediately open, refusing to heed our request to ascend to the 9^th floor. I tried MY magic finger, simultaneously giving the verbal command: “UP.”

 It worked.

But our triumph was brief. One moment we were moving skyward, then the next moment all was still.
No clang, no grunt, no rumbling tremble . . . only a sudden cessation of motion.
 We looked at each other and both knew that we had made a significant error.
 We should have brought our Russian Dictionary. . . Neither of us knew the Russian word for “UP.”

Ok. What do we do now? Maybe if we pushed more buttons . . . so we did.

 Nothing. 

 Dad pushed an unlabeled, out-of-the-way button and we heard a voice from above . . . but it must not have been heaven because it was in Russian!

What was it saying?
Were we being asked?
Or told?

Dad responded fluently:

“Net gavarite po-Ruski”
“We are stuck in the elevator!!”
“Net robota!”

The voice did not respond.

Mom kept pushing buttons. . . . . .

We are not writing this from inside our ancient elevator, so the outcome must be a positive one. Our only problem now, is what to do in the morning!