Friday, August 07, 2009

Stuck

It was Sunday night. A warm, summer evening. And my friend Chuck had just been baptized at church. Several friends from Bible study joined Chuck at his apartment to celebrate the occasion. We talked, laughed, ate pizza and cake. And then we headed for home.

Ten of us were leaving at the same time. I declared that I was going to take the stairs while everyone else headed toward the elevator. Someone yelled out that there were stairs in their direction, so I joined them.

At that moment, the elevator arrived. Everyone piled into the tiny elevator and motioned for me to just join them. So I did. We piled 10 people into that elevator! It was squishy and hot, but we all made it.

As we waited for the ground floor, I joked. How crazy would it be if we got stuck in here? Then bam! We were stuck. Just like that. And it was hot. And we were cramped. We laughed, then realized this was no joke. The guys tried to pry the door open, but couldn't. We called the fire department. We sang "It Is Well With My Soul." And we prayed.

By then our rescuers arrived. They pried the door open with an ax. It took no time at all. We took a few pictures, thanked them for helping us, and laughed a lot more. We thanked God for protecting us. It was crazy...but fun. I didn't think being stuck in an elevator could actually be a somewhat pleasant experience!

2 comments:

Ayemi said...

next time you can joke "hey wouldn't it be funny if the elevator went all the wya to the ground floor with no incidents at all?"

A. DeVandry said...

I blame Felix.

Funny thing... during our drive out here, we stopped for the night in Grand Junction, and power went out as Dana and I were riding up the elevator. The elevator dropped a few feet, and freaked us out. It took about 10 minutes before the firemen came. I'm a little claustrophobic which made it 10X worse. It got hot in there too, with no lights. Very strange situation. It was definitely a "welcome to Colorado" moment. :-)