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W
hen the renowned heart–
ransplant specialist
Christiaan Barnard
heard that his colleague , Roy
McCarthy, was leaving his success–
ful medica! practice in Cape Prov–
ince, South Africa, he was puzzled.
After all, why would a man with
seven years of intensive medica!
schooling want to enroll in an
unknown liberal arts college as an
undergraduate?
Now, over twelve years later, Dr.
McCarthy is returning to his native
South Africa to become the regional
director for the Worldwide Church
of God and its multifaceted activi–
ties in al! ofAfrica.
Those twelve years have been
eventful and occasionally traumatic,
as can be expected when a 43-year–
old man with a wife and four young
children decides to launch out
in an entirely new direction in
life.
Until he decided to move to
England, where the Church at that
time had an Ambassador College
campus, Roy had been a general
practitioner for sixteen years. He
had taken his medica! studies at the
University of Cape Town beginning
in 1943. He subsequently did post–
graduate work in surgery, medicine,
gynecology and obstetrics. In 1950-
the same year he established his
The
PLAIN TRUTH June/ July 1978
Roy McCarthy
practice-he married a young coed
he had met while studying at Cape
Town, Miss Tine Visser. One year
later their first daughter, Catherine,
was born.
Both Dr. McCarthy and his wife
a re native Afrikaners. His father
was descended from British settlers
who carne to South Africa in 1820.
His mother is a descendan t of
French Huguenots.
Roy developed his interest in
medicine at age nine, when he be–
carne seriously ill and was forced to
remain in the hospital for four
months. "I watched the doctors and
nurses very intently and from that
time 1 wanted to be. a doctor," he
relates.
Listening to
The World Tomorrow
broadcast over Radio Louren90
Marques, his curiosity about the
Church was piqued. After studying
the Church's teachings for two
years, he and his wife became con–
vinced that they had to learn more.
In 1966, tbey made the momentous
decision to set aside his medica!
practice, and, after spending fifteen
difficult months in Johannesburg,
they packed their belongings,
shipped their auto by boat and
headed for England.
After so many successful years in
medica! practice, it wasn't easy. "It
was a struggle and we had sorne
difficult years, especially in settling
down in a strange country, adapting
to college routine, and getting the
children settled in school ," he
says.
In
his
last year of Ambassador Col–
lege Dr. McCarthy was appointed
student body president. The same
year he was given charge over the
embryonic Dutch-language work of
the Church as well as the entire
Mail Processing Department of the
Church and college in the United
Kingdom.
For four years Dr. McCarthy
commuted from his home in
England to conduct Church services
in Holland every Saturday morning.
Although Dr. McCarthy's first Jan–
guage is Afrikaans-wl;lich is similar
to Dutch- the first services were
held in English until he could per–
fect his use of the Dutch language.
In 1974 the McCarthys finaUy
moved to Holland. Assisted by a
staff of three, he handled the distri–
bution of the Dutch-language ver–
sion of
The Plain Truth,
as well as
al! mail responses, advertising, cor–
respondence- and he pastored two
churches!
When he returns to South Africa,
he will be used for even greater ser–
vice after aiready a decade of exem–
plary ministry to the Worldwide
Church ofGod.
O
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