Four hundred missionaries assembled 50,000 food packs for hungry Davis County schoolchildren on Saturday, Oct. 24 in Clearfield, all headed to the Bountiful Food Pantry.

The assembly event was organized by MTN OPS, a health and wellness company whose founder, Trevor Farnes, once struggled to feed his own family while living in Farmington. The Pantry Packs will go to children who lack meals on weekends, first reported by the Davis Journal.

Missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints volunteered for the project, part of MTN OPS's Operation Conquer Hunger initiative. Farnes said the program has surpassed 12 million meals donated nationwide. A December 2025 company blog post put the count at more than 11.4 million at that time.

A Farmington family that knew hunger

Farnes said his path to the hunger initiative started when he and his wife were raising two young children in Farmington and his early businesses failed. Feeding his family weighed on his mind constantly, he told the Davis Journal.

In Davis County, one in four children don't have enough food in the pantry when they go home from school, Farnes said. "We were that one in four."

He recalled a morning when his wife discovered their bank account was drained. "She just said 'I just got into our bank account and everything is gone,'" Farnes said.

Then came a Thanksgiving when, 30 minutes before the family left for a holiday dinner, a woman knocked on their door with paperwork putting their home up for auction. Shortly after, the doorbell rang. This time, a pile of groceries sat on the porch.

From $22 a month to millions of meals

Farnes said the couple decided not to wait for their finances to recover. They started donating $22 a month to feed a child. The effort began in Malawi, Africa. Around 2016, MTN OPS held its first pantry pack assembly with a youth group and packed about 4,000 bags.

The company then tied a meal donation to every customer order, buying the food directly rather than writing a check to another organization, Farnes said.

Operation Conquer Hunger has since held events across the country, according to the company's blog, with projects in Utah, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Wyoming, South Carolina and Hawaii.

Where the food goes

The Bountiful Food Pantry, a nonprofit at 480 E. 150 N. in Bountiful, distributed 2,725,000 pounds of food and served 102,000 people in 2025, according to its website. The specific schools set to receive the 50,000 Pantry Packs were not identified in available reports.

The pantry logged 44,026 volunteer hours in 2025, the equivalent of more than 20 full-time employees.