The last time I spoke with Brenda Davis, her Crossroads Ministries was bursting at the seams of its cramped facility in Old Town.

That was last spring, shortly after Georgia-Pacific Corp. had laid off 300 millworkers and made the Old Town area the most recent in a long line of Maine communities which suddenly had to figure out how to help a growing population of people in need.

The new faces were just then arriving at the small food pantry, which was quickly overwhelmed with donated food, clothing and household goods that poured in from the community. At the time, Davis could only imagine how great the demands would become on the charitable organization she had begun 12 years earlier from the trunk of her car.

These days, she said, the ministry is still struggling to assess the full scope of the need. The operation has moved twice this year in order to expand its services, first to Center Street and most recently to its new headquarters in the former Penobscot Times building on Wood Street.

The number of people served by Crossroads has soared from 375 families in February to nearly 800 in the last several months, Davis said. Each week, the pantry distributes about 1,400 pounds of nonperishable foods, and another 300 pounds a day of items such as bread and produce. On Wednesday alone, 37 families sought assistance from the ministry.

“It’s a day-to-day thing,” said Davis, whose ministry has become an important component of the community-based relief team that is operating out of the Old Town-Orono YMCA. “There are days when the demand is so great that we’ve been down to a couple of cans of soup on the shelf.”

Davis said the town’s sense of shock has become subdued over the last few months, especially after about half of the original 300 displaced workers were rehired by the mill in May.

“But there are 150 families here who are still in transition, people who are on unemployment and trying to train themselves to do something else outside the mill,” she said. “Meanwhile, it’s been very difficult for many of them to even admit that they need help to support their families. There’s a stigma attached to accepting food, which is so unfortunate, so now we prefer to call ourselves a resource rather than a food pantry to erase some of that stigma.”

For many people, she said, the shock of a few months ago has been replaced by depression, especially as unemployment benefits run out.

“We’re seeing a lot of that as the reality of the situation sets in,” Davis said. “Anger, too, and something between a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. That’s a frightening place to be. When you’re a displaced worker, it’s as if your life suddenly had become a jigsaw puzzle spilled out onto a table. To rebuild it, you’ve got to find the corner pieces first and go from there.”

With twice the space of its former location, the current Crossroads Ministries building has enabled Davis to develop a thrift shop that she hopes will generate extra money with which to buy food.

“But it also provides a homey atmosphere where people can drop in just to sit and talk, and maybe share their concerns with other people,” Davis said. “Looking back on our growth in the last few years, a part of me is happy that we’ve been able to expand our services, but another part of me is sad that we’re so desperately needed. As much as I love it, this is a job I would much rather work myself out of.”