Staff Profiles
Mark and Renée Santich have been serving students and TSCF at Canterbury Uni for the last 24 years.
At various times we have had other staff and interns on the team, but currently it is just us, having said farewell to KJ who moved back to Auckland to serve with TSCF last year after three years on the team here. We both love Jesus and students and really enjoy seeing students’ eyes light up as they grow in their understanding of God’s word and their desire to share the good news of Jesus with their friends.
Mark:
Renée tells me I’m an ‘active rester’, I am pretty active on the weekends building things like outdoor tables, raised garden beds, cutting down trees, planting fruit trees, and we still try to head out to watch our young adult children play football on Saturdays occasionally too. I would like to get out fishing more than I currently do and enjoy holidays by water.
Renée:
Renée loves the outdoors and is halfway through walking all of the NZ Great Walks over 10 years. Renée juggles working with TSCF and also working a couple of days with our church as a women’s trainer along with a day of counselling in her private practice. Renée enjoys reading, various sewing projects, swimming and gym and a bit of gardening.
Pray that Renée and I would continue to love and serve Jesus as we encourage and equip students to trust in Jesus, love their friends and invite them to meet Jesus too. Pray too for us as living in NZ means we don’t get to see our family in Australia much as our mothers get older and frailer and our siblings go through tough times.
Campus group: UC Christian Union
Christian Union remains the one TSCF group on campus at the University of Canterbury after the ICF stopped at the time of the earthquakes in 2011. CU is now made up of internationals and domestic students who are both working together to reach campus.
This year we have been joined by many new students, quite a few of them are young Christians and are still learning a lot about what it looks like to live as a Christian. It is super encouraging that every week there are new people visiting, especially many who aren’t Christian but keen to find out more. We aren’t a big group, with just over 30 people regularly coming along to our Wednesday night dinners and small groups but we are friendly and welcoming.
Christian Union had our annual camp at the end of Term 3 where we looked at the book of Job and thought about God’s sovereignty, trusting God and his glory and suffering. It was an encouraging time with 20-25 students heading away together wrestling with some big topics. There was lots of fun and relaxing time too at the beach and playing board games and chatting.
We also had 17 of us from CU at Summit this year in Queenstown. It was a fantastic time with students from all over the country as we dug into Mark’s Gospel and considered how we could help our friends meet Jesus by reading Mark’s Gospel with them. We spent the term after Summit looking at Luke in our CU small groups and many people have invited their friends to join us, but please pray that students at CU would take the opportunity to read a gospel with a friend.
