+Bishop Jon V. Anderson
Our key word this year is "formation". Your synod staff wants to thank you for being partners in the Gospel in all kinds of ways. As people who work with many congregations we continue to wonder at all the ways God is forming the baptized, rostered leaders and communities. God forms and transforms us day after day after day.  

So let's pause to think about and give thanks to God for all the ways we are being formed.  

• Creation - My spiritual life began at my creation. It happened many years ago, but it continues today. That may be more apparent in the young ones around us, but I am thankful God continues to work on us. I am thankful God is continuing to form me.    
• Baptism - In my baptism I was grafted into Christ and the community that bears his name. Day after day I am called back to the water so that the broken parts of me can be drowned and God might raise me to new life. God's grace claims me and never stops forming me.    
• Community of Practice - God's Church is one of many communities of practice that I have been called to be a part of. I give thanks for my racquetball therapy partners. I give thanks for the gift of social media where I experience a new and yet real form of community with people I would not be talking to daily otherwise. Some of you work out in communities, read in communities, experience healing in communities. God forms us in these communities. I am thankful for the gift of God's Church that forms me into a disciple(a student) and apostle(sent one) of Jesus.    
• Ecclesia Crucis - As we read a book, Wide Welcome: How the Unsettling Presence of Newcomers Can Save the Church in our online Facebook - SW MN Book of the Month Group, we are reminded of how we are being shaped into a church of the cross.  The cross reminds us of our broken-ness and alienation, but more so reminds us of the gracious compassion of our Lord Jesus and God. Finally it is a reminder of God's resurrecting grace. So we give thanks that we have a theology of the cross and that God is continuing to work on and with and through us.    
• Spirit - As I drive across the prairie I am regularly reminded of the wind as my car gets pushed around. We give thanks for the work of God's Spirit that most of the time shapes us and turns us around like a potter working on a lump of clay. Sometimes we barely notice the impact and presence of God's Spirit. But other days we are blown off the course we have been on by a fierce and inescapable new call from God's Holy Spirit.    
• Family, the beauty of nature, our friends, food, homes, education.... the list goes on and on of all the things we are thankful for when we stop to remember and give thanks.

May God bless your celebration of Thanksgiving. That is the wish of your whole synod staff. 

• Last week we sent 24 checks totaling $11,120 to lending institutions;
• 5 checks totaling $2,275 are on hold awaiting more paperwork by applicants.
• Total (if all paid out - deadline Nov. 30, 2013) = $13,395 with 29 pastors helped.

• Total remaining seminary debt reported by applicants = $1.27 million.