In the city of Tiberius, on the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee on a December evening in 1998, Bill Bailey listened as a friend shared his testimony about being called to witness for the Lord.
BOSSIER CITY – In the city of Tiberius, on the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee on a December evening in 1998, Bill Bailey listened as a friend shared his testimony about being called to witness for the Lord.
At that moment, Bailey felt the Holy Spirit convicting him in a similar way, he said later.
“I thought that if Jesus could change [my friend] so much he could change me too,” Bailey wrote in his book You Will Never Run Out of Jesus. “I prayed for a long time that night. I told Jesus that I knew I was His child … but not a true servant. I asked Jesus to let His will be mine. I wanted to surrender my life and services to him – whatever that would be.”
Over the next year, Bailey’s life was changed forever, said the doctor, who is a member at Airline Baptist Church in Bossier City.
By February of 1999, Bailey was doing short-term international mission trips. By September, he had retired from full-time medical practice to devote himself fully to short-term mission trips.
“There comes a time in life when you reach the point of success but you’re not satisfied with it,” Bailey said. “I came to that point,” which the doctor calls “halftime.”
Now, when he isn’t out of the country, Bailey works three 12-hour shifts a week in the emergency room at DeSoto Regional Hospital in order to earn money to fund his mission trips, he said.
“The more trips I went on, the more I got into it,” Bailey wrote in his book. “My calling was calling me.”
After retiring, Bailey made a mission trip to Thailand in November 1999, and then followed that up with another trip to the Holy Land in 2000, where he was baptized in the Jordan River as a commissioning for his new life of service, he said.
Since then, Bailey has traveled to Africa, South Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Burkina Faso, Honduras, the Amazon River, Cambodia, the Philippines, Ghana, China, Rwanda, and the Ukraine – a total of 35 short-term mission trips in less than eight years, he said.
Bailey isn’t just a participator in these trips; he organizes many of the trips and recruits others to go along, too, he said.
A trip takes about six months to plan, and he is usually planning at least two at any given time, sometimes slipping another trip in as resources allow.
One trip can include as few as nine people or as many as 19, he said, and Bailey will recruit anyone who shows the slightest interest. Once he took along a young woman who’d not even weaned her 12-month-old child, he said.
“There’s only one thing I ask, and that’s a willing heart,” he said. “You have a willing heart, and I will put you to work.”
Bailey has a big black book full of the names of people who are always wanting to go on mission trips, he said. While the cost can be expensive – as little as $1,400 and upwards from $3,000 per person – many volunteers are able to raise money.
Sometimes, money just seems to appear, Bailey said. His recent trip to Rwanda was basically paid for by people who gave him money.
One lady wrote him a check for $2,000, a friend sent $500, and a Sunday school member at Airline Baptist handed him a check for $100.
Bailey himself usually pays for the medications that he takes to distribute, which can cost as much as $5,000 per trip, he said. Medicines include ibuprofen, antibiotics, and Tylenol.
“People work all day, every day, and they have headaches and backaches,” he said about the people he treats during a mission trip. The doctor treats malaria and malnutrition and performs minor surgical procedures, a lot of teeth extractions, and field circumcisions for those who urgently need it for medical reasons.
The mission trips not only provide Bailey with a way to fulfill his promise to the Lord, they are also fertile ground for learning, he said.
Among the things he’s learned? How to pull teeth. Though Bailey is a general surgeon, much of the need he sees is simple, he said.
“So many people have rotten teeth, and they’re hurting,” he explained.
Bailey has gone from using a pair of pliers to meet that need on his first mission trip, to taking training from a dentist on the proper procedures and using appropriate dental instruments, he said. He now even has a dental chair.
The physician also has learned to personally evangelize and to streamline the mission work, he said. On his first mission trip to Benin, Africa, in 2000, he led more than 30 people to Jesus, he said.
Now, the mission trips have a slightly different face, as people are led through various “stations,” he said. Once people receive their medical care, they’re sent on to the “spiritual station” where other missionaries present the gospel to them using a variety of tools, such as the evangecube, or a F.A.I.T.H. presentation.
“Now, my job is attracting people,” he explained. “People come for free medical treatment, free medicine, and eye glasses, which attracts people by flocks. But our main goal is to evangelize these people.”
“I miss doing the personal evangelism,” he added. “I don’t mind witnessing. I don’t mind telling people that you need something and you need something bad. No, indeed, I’m not bashful about the Great Commission. There’s nothing greater than leading someone to the Lord. But I’ve got to do what I do to keep the thing running.”
Besides his international mission trips and his ER work, Bailey also finds time to work in the Bossier Parish prisons where, as a part of his work as a Gideon, he distributes Bibles, a ministry he’s been doing for more than three years. He gives away about 200 Bibles a month to prisoners, he said.
“Those guys literally run for a Bible,” the doctor said. “They’ll even leave a table with a minister to get one.”
The biggest obstacle Bailey faces in his ministry is time, he said.
“I don’t have time to do all I want to do,” he added. “I’d like to be gone about six times a year, two weeks each time.”
Bailey’s wife of 35 years, Vickie, accompanies the doctor on about half of the trips he coordinates. Even when she doesn’t go, he knows she supports him. This year was the second year in a row he was gone on their anniversary.
“She understands,” he said. “This is tough work, but it’s extremely gratifying.”