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Provo • Mormon missionaries at the Provo Missionary Training Center have some advice for those missing family or friends this holiday weekend: The best way to beat homesickness is to focus on those in need.

And so in the spirit of service — and in an effort to put what they were missing from their minds — some 1,500 sisters and elders spent their Thanksgiving packaging nutritious meals for area children.

Thursday was the fourth Thanksgiving the Provo MTC has partnered with social charity group Feeding Children Everywhere to put together basic food staples for distribution to children in crisis. In just a few hours, the missionaries divided lentils, rice and vegetables into enough meals to feed 350,000 children.

Since the project began, missionaries-in-training have packaged more than 1 million meals, said Feeding Children Everywhere CEO David Green. The meals will be distributed within Utah.

Green said the tradition goes back to an ambitious 2012 service project in Florida that nearly failed. Feeding Children Everywhere intended to host a weeklong event to package 2 million meals. Before long, he said, they realized they didn't have the volunteers, or the supplies, to make it happen.

Green prayed to God for help pulling the project together, he said, and the next day he felt inspired to do something he had never done before — call a Mormon church.

After coordinating with local LDS congregations to make the Florida event a success, Green said Feeding Children Everywhere got a call from the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City to inquire about the possibility of hosting a similar event at Utah's MTC, the flagship training center for the faith's global volunteer missionary force.

Four years later, Green and his family flew out of Orlando, where they live, to spend Thanksgiving in Salt Lake City to honor what has become an MTC tradition.

Participating in a special service project on Thanksgiving is good for the young missionaries, many of whom may be away from home for the first time, said Dean Burgess, president of the MTC.

"It keeps the missionaries focused on others," he said, "on their purpose as missionaries, instead of on something they're missing out on."

Burgess said the missionaries started their day with a sermon on service and had a traditional turkey dinner for lunch. They were excused from their daily classes in religion and foreign languages to participate in the service project. That evening, he said, they attended a second sermon about gratitude.

Destiny Andersen, of Eagle Mountain, said it was interesting to watch her fellow missionaries' moods change throughout the day. At first, she said, some seemed reluctant to participate in the project. But once they got started, she said, they grew energized as they thought of the children they could help.

Service is a daily requirement of missionaries living in the MTC, but this project was different, said Anna Macleod, a missionary from Orem. A typical service project, she said, might entail setting up chairs for classes at the MTC.

"It's really cool to know that we're making a difference to so many people," she said. "Sometimes the MTC feels like its own little world."

Tauivi Olamaleva, from Blue Springs, Mo., has a good idea just who those outside people might be. When his parents lost their jobs when he was a kid, he said, his family had to rely on similar food services until they could get back on their feet.

"We could have done a lot of complaining," he said, "but we bounced back. Now it's time to give back."

Looking at his fellow missionaries, he said, he felt as though he were home for the holidays.

"This is my family," he said. "We all come from different places, but we are of one heart."

epenrod@sltrib.com Twitter: @EmaPen