LAYTON -- AJ Dwyer quickly stuffed plastic, sealed bags -- filled with rice, soy and dried vegetables -- into cardboard boxes.
"Papa, you're mixing me up," the 7-year-old Riverdale boy said at one point when his grandfather put additional bags on the table.
The pair were part of a service project sponsored by Alpine Church in Layton on Tuesday. They were among 75 people, ranging in age from 3 to 73 years old, filling bags with the food for Feed My Starving Children, a nonprofit organization based out of Minneapolis.
One bag of food is enough for six meals, said Kevin Ewing, the mobile pack supervisor with Feed My Starving Children.
Community and church groups across the country volunteer to fill the bags each weekend, as well as provide funds to buy the food.
The bags of food are formulated to meet the needs of a starving child, Ewing said. Volunteers across the country pack the food in the bags and boxes.
It takes 36 bags to fill a box, and one box will supply 216 meals, or enough food to feed a family for a month, Ewing said. A pallet of 33 boxes will supply 7,128 meals.
Marilyn Mayfield, 73, of Roy, said she came to help "because I can't think of anything to do that is better than feeding children."
Mayfield said it saddens her to think about her family gatherings at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
"There was so much food left over, we were giving it away to the neighbors, and there are starving children in this world," said Mayfield as she scooped up more rice to put in another bag. "I'm happy to do this."
The boxes of food are shipped to Haiti, the Philippines, El Salvador, North Korea, Indonesia, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Nicaragua. Yearly, the organization sends out 127 million meals, Ewing said.
"We're doing this for the people who need food," AJ said.
There were seven stations with 10 people working to fill the bags and boxes. With assembly-line precision, food was scooped out of large boxes into cups and poured through funnels into the plastic bags.
Then the bags were sealed, counted and put inside the boxes. The boxes were then taken to a pallet, where they were taped together before being put on that pallet.
Volunteers yelled out the number of boxes completed before filling up another box.
For AJ, it meant beating his dad's table.
"Box 17," yelled AJ, as he jumped to grab an empty box and a marker.
"I mentored him," said Pastor Bryan Dwyer, AJ's father. His table had just completed box No. 13.
At the end of the two-hour shift, AJ's table had filled 25 of the 84 boxes.
On Monday, the Weber State University women's basketball team had come to the church and filled 36 boxes, said Pastor Bill Schorr.
"What's amazing is it's not just our Alpiners, but the community is involved," Schorr said.
For more information about Feed My Starving Children or to donate, go to www.fmsc.org.
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