Hashgacha pratis story!

amother

Sat, Oct 11 2014, 11:12 pm

Just had to share,

Tonight motzai Shabbos I went to get the mail like I usually do. We live on the first floor of our apartment building--a task that usually takes all of 30-60 seconds max as we aren't that far from the mailbox and I can hear my young kids the entire time--and they are pretty good most of the time. I took the keys that had our mail key on it--but the regular keys had been taken off for y"t. Most of our neighbors on our floor are Jewish and were away for y"t, and we have one Hispanic neighbor who is nice, but often not home. Since we were using a communal sukkah across the street, we were utilizing our door's "autolock" feature that makes it lock automatically behind you as you leave instead of having to fiddle with keys every time we left with food. We had been making sure to undo this feature to avoid accidentally getting locked out. Anyway we came back from eating Shalosh Seudos and my husband had gone to maariv, and as Shabbos was over, I went to get the mail. I came back to the door and it was locked! To make matters worse, we have a child protective cover on the door knob b/c my toddler knows how to turn the knob and run out, so my older child couldn't open the door. My husband often does not take keys with him to maariv and I wasn't sure if he had a spare somewhere and he wouldn't be home for another 10-15 mins. I called my kids to come near the door so that I could make sure that they were OK, but I wasn't sure what to do. I had heard that it was possible to break into this kind of lock using a credit card, but didn't exactly know how to it--and I didn't have any credit cards on me. I was fumbling through the pile of mail when I noticed that one was from a company that I have a credit account with--and sure enough there was a replacement credit card! I was able to slip the card in and open the door! B"H this maaseh happened in all of a few minutes and my kids were fine (don't call CPS on me), but it was a tense few minutes!