What can we do to ease the hunger of starving children? Together, quite a lot, as one area church recently showed.

During its first 24-hour food pack-a-thon Sept. 27 for Feed My Starving Children (FMSC), Lord of Life Lutheran Church in Maple Grove compiled 245,592 meals and 7,500 sandwiches.

It took 1,800 volunteers from Lord of Life and 20 other churches working one and two hour shifts around the clock to do it.

The meals will provide 687 children with nutritious meals for one year, Pastor Todd Buegler said.

Feed My Starving Children is a nonprofit organization that distributed more than 43 million meals to starving children in 50 countries last year. It has locations in Brooklyn Park, Chanhassen and Eagan, a Chicago area site and mobile packing units that go to volunteer packing events.

Denny Kinvig of Corcoran said it was exciting to see teenagers packing meals at two and three o'clock in the morning.

"You can't help but walk away and feel you've accomplished something," he said.

Kinvig, a member of Lord of Life Church, said they first started sending food to an orphanage 12 years ago. Back then, the amount they sent would feed one child per day for one year.

"Then each year we kept on packing food and raising money. Suddenly we are not just feeding one orphanage, we are feeding 10 orphanages a meal every day, 365 days per year, and more than 1,000 children," Kinvig said.

Buegler said the church sends teams to FMSC at least two times per month to pack food. Past food packing events lasted only a day or an evening.

Lord of Life received a grant from Thrivent Financial for Lutherans for about half the cost of the food and Lord of Life funded the rest, he said.

"The volunteers come in and we have the ingredients all ready for them," FMSC Marketing Associate Christine Hallenbeck said. "They scoop the ingredients into bags of food. They weigh the bags to make sure they match what we require for serving sizes and shipment weights."

Hallenbeck said the ingredients are always the same: rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables and a vegetarian vitamin and mineral powder that tastes like chicken. The goal is to make the food appealing to people from all cultures and religious backgrounds.

"We have a consistent food formula that targets children suffering from malnutrition," Hallenbeck said.

The mixture is easy to ship and requires only the addition of boiling water to be edible.

Buegler said the effort not only transforms the lives of the orphans, it also changes how volunteers perceive what God calls and enables them to do. He said he has seen the difference in the children at a Jamaican orphanage the church has supported for years.

"It's just unbelievable how much healthier they are from last year to this year," Kinvig said.

According to Kinvig, $35 feeds 200 children one meal per day and $12,000 will feed them for an entire year.

The church also made 7,500 sandwiches during the food packathon that went to Allen Law, a retired Minneapolis teacher who founded an organization called 363 Days. Law's mission is to feed 150-plus homeless people per day in Minneapolis.

After volunteers quickly reached their goal of 5,000 sandwiches, more food was bought in the middle of the night to make 2,500 more sandwiches. Law freezes the sandwiches and distributes them to homeless people every night of the year.

363 Days refers to all the days of the year except Thanksgiving and Christmas, when holiday meals are served to the less fortunate.

Individuals or groups may call Feed My Starving Children at 763-951-7313 for a volunteer schedule or see details at www.fmsc.org.

For information about making sandwiches for the homeless, go to www.363days.org.

"We can always go to a party," said Megan Zaic, a high school student from Maple Grove who packed meals with three friends at Lord of Life. "There are not always opportunities to help other people. It's one big day we can spend a couple of hours to help other people."

Comment on this story at our website, www.mnsun.com.

Hallenbeck said the ingredients are always the same: rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables and a vegetarian vitamin and mineral powder that tastes like chicken. The goal is to make the food appealing to people from all cultures and religious backgrounds.

"We have a consistent food formula that targets children suffering from malnutrition," Hallenbeck said.

The mixture is easy to ship and requires only the addition of boiling water to be edible.

Buegler said the effort not only transforms the lives of the orphans, it also changes how volunteers perceive what God calls and enables them to do. He said he has seen the difference in the children at a Jamaican orphanage the church has supported for years.

"It's just unbelievable how much healthier they are from last year to this year," Kinvig said.

According to Kinvig, $35 feeds 200 children one meal per day and $12,000 will feed them for an entire year.

The church also made 7,500 sandwiches during the food packathon that went to Allen Law, a retired Minneapolis teacher who founded an organization called 363 Days. Law's mission is to feed 150-plus homeless people per day in Minneapolis.

After volunteers quickly reached their goal of 5,000 sandwiches, more food was bought in the middle of the night to make 2,500 more sandwiches. Law freezes the sandwiches and distributes them to homeless people every night of the year.

363 Days refers to all the days of the year except Thanksgiving and Christmas, when holiday meals are served to the less fortunate.

Individuals or groups may call Feed My Starving Children at 763-951-7313 for a volunteer schedule or see details at www.fmsc.org.

For information about making sandwiches for the homeless, go to www.363days.org.

"We can always go to a party," said Megan Zaic, a high school student from Maple Grove who packed meals with three friends at Lord of Life. "There are not always opportunities to help other people. It's one big day we can spend a couple of hours to help other people."

Comment on this story at our website, www.mnsun.com.