"Thy way, O God, is holy. What god is great like our God? Thou art the God who workest wonders, who hast manifested thy might among the peoples."

- Psalm 77:13-14

Dr. Gary Pitts knows about miracles. He's witnessing it happen right before his eyes.

Last year, Pitts brought Cristina Macario Morales from Chiqua Dos, Guatemala, to Warsaw to have surgery because she had spina bifida. He met her in her village while he was on a missionary trip. Morales underwent the surgery in April and returned home in August.

"It was actually a little over a year ago, about August, I was down checking on Cristina ... dropping off some supplies, making sure she was doing OK. And the little pueblo she lives in, Chiqua Dos, there's a committee that runs the town basically in lieu of a mayor or government like we have, there's just a group of people who are more important there than others and they were actually waiting for me when I got there and they just outright asked me to build them a hospital."

He said people must understand the people of Guatemala "have absolutely no idea how rich we are. They just know we're fabulously wealthy by their standards and they figure 'he's' an American and he can just snap his fingers" and get a hospital built.

"Obviously, the hospital project is way too big for me, but they started quoting some statistics to me and it really bowled me over. It's funny. As many times as I've been down there and as much as I've seen in terms of the pathetic nature of their health care, when they started hitting me with numbers - this is a group of like 10,000 maybe if you included the outlying areas, 15,000 people - and they're losing two to three women a month just in childbirth. I had known about the death rate among their kids but I had never been faced with it in this area, with these people looking at me - it's 40 percent by age 7. They started throwing these kind of statistics at me and ... it just added some meat to their request. It was like, 'This is why we need this. We're asking for a reason.'"

Pitts didn't have much experience with their hospitals at the time, but on that visit, he visited their national hospital in Guatemala City. Guatemalans are proud of their national hospital. The hospital in Guatemala City is large but it doesn't have as much as Kosciusko Community Hospital, he said.

He had not been to any of the outlying hospitals. "After that visit there, I got the opportunity to go to the hospital in Soloa. Now I see more of why they need that hospital. ... I couldn't build that hospital, but we were just forming that group (Hands of Hope International) ... It was supposed to be just a little cover group that we could donate to to fund our trips, that's all this was going to be."

But, Pitts said it appears Hands of Hope is going to take a more active role than they dreamed.

When he came back from Guatemala and talked to the directors of Hands of Hope, then brought the issue to the main group, the resounding answer was, "Yes, we can do this, let's get started."

Getting started and saying you're going to get started are two different things.

Chiqua Dos has land to donate for the hospital. The committee said it would get the site ready if Pitts could build the hospital.

"So we already had a spot for it, so when I came back to the group I told them the dimensions of the site and one of the groups said they knew of an architect who might be willing to help ... ," said Pitts. "She was pretty excited about the project."

A plan was drawn for the site, but Pitts said, "That's all it was, a plan because we didn't have any information she needed to put up the building right. And so still we were stuck in low gear because we didn't have the people to do this right."

In March, Hands of Hope went to look at the site. After returning to the United States, Pitts said, "We started praying about what the next step was going to be and God started dropping people on us."

The pastor of the Free Methodist Church offered to do the fund raising. Another man offered his assistance on the building project. Another pastor, whose brother is a lawyer in Guatemala, offered his help.

"All the pieces started lining up. The financing started to come in ... to where we expect we can meet our goals," said Pitts. More funding is always welcome, however. "... Another fellow who recently became a Christian who is a contractor wants to be involved in this project as a way of giving back to God what God gave him, the gift of salvation."

A southside church is organizing building teams. A bus and equipment have been donated.

"All I'm doing is kind of standing here and watching all this happen," said Pitts. He said he didn't engineer any of the donations or offers of help - they came to him. "That's the fun part of being involved in a project when God's in charge. It happens."

He said they're hoping to get started in January.

For the hospital itself, he said, they're planning an emergency room, a few beds for people to stay overnight if they need to, an administrative quarters, a laboratory area, an operating room, an obstetrics wing and an education area.

By teaching the comadrones (midwives) more about birthing in the education area, Pitts said, he believes he can cut the death rate of mothers by half.

The bottom floor of the hospital will be about 18-by-32 feet and the top floor will be 32-by-62 feet.

Pitts said, "What we need at this point is, of course, funding, connections with hospitals. People who have equipment. And again, we're getting blessed with that. ... We also need people who can lay one brick on top of another."

As for staffing, Pitts said, they don't have the answer yet but they have "several possibilities."

They have 57 people this year who want to make the trip to Guatemala.

"This is not a small endeavor ... and we have a lot of other people who are supporting us stateside," said Pitts.

Donations for the project can be sent to Lighthouse or Free Methodist churches. Hands of Hope has corporate status but not tax-exempt status yet, though they hope to have it by the end of the year. [[In-content Ad]]