The Labor of Love Food Pantry was an honest-to-God labor of love for some Congregationalists who were wielding hammers and saws Tuesday in Eastport.

They were erecting a building for the city’s food pantry on Route 190.

Under sunny skies, more than 30 youngsters and adults were pounding nails and sawing boards. Once done, they stood in a line and using muscles and rope raised up one wall – similar to the barn raising days of old.

The Rev. Renee Garrett, minister of Christian nurture for All Souls Congregational Church in Bangor, said members of the work crew included not only adults and young people from her church, but parishioners and young people from churches in the Eastport area.

Garrett said that her church has a working relationship with the Central Congregational Church in Eastport. The Eastport congregation is a member of the Greater Eastport Area Ecumenical Churches Association. They are the ones behind building a permanent food pantry.

“One of the things they do as several churches is sponsor a food pantry, and they’ve not had a permanent location since it started,” she said.

The association is made up of congregations including Catholics, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists and others.

“We are an ecumenical association begun in 1991 through the efforts of local pastors. Our goal is to create a closer working relationship between area churches and more effective community outreach by combining our resources,” the association says in its fund-raising pamphlet.

“We have committed our efforts and resources to build a permanent home for the Labor of Love Food Pantry and Nutrition Center, providing food, nutrition advice and cooking information to our brothers and sisters in need within our Passamaquoddy region.”

But to make the food pantry a reality the Bangor and Eastport area churches put their heads together.

Garrett said she spoke with the Rev. Colin Windhorst of the association and told him that when they were ready to build they should give her a call.

They got the call. Windhorst is assistant pastor at the Dennysville, Perry and Robbinston Congregational churches.

The crew arrived on Sunday night. The goal – to have a completed shell with doors, windows and roof by the end of the week. “We want to hand over the keys on Sunday when we leave,” she said.

She said another group was working on trails at Shackford Head State Park. “They are improving the trails because we know that a lot of Eastport residents use it for exercise,” she said. Another crew is working on a woman’s house in Eastport.

This is not a new project for the Bangor church. “We do this every other year. It’s part of our mission outreach that we do with our young people and we have a lot of adults jump in as well,” she said. “We do one year in Maine, then the second year we go to. … Honduras and build houses there.” This is the group’s third year in Eastport.

The crew is bunking at the Eastport Elementary School. “We sleep on the floor and St. Joseph’s [Catholic Church] has graciously loaned us their parish hall, so we have our meals there. We brought four cooks to take care of us. We’re pretty much like a little army,” she said.

And the group doesn’t just pound nails. They’ve also raised money to help the food pantry. They even held a musical earlier this year, with the proceeds donated to the food pantry building fund.

Garrett described the crew as an eclectic group. The work crew foreman is Bob Sherman, who teaches theology at Bangor Theological Seminary. “When he was a grad student he was in construction,” she said.

“We have all kinds of folks here. We have doctors, we have nurses, and we have teachers,” she said.

The pantry has served the needy families in the Eastport area since the 1980s, and it has been housed at various locations.

Some day, pantry founder Fern Garrapy hopes, the pantry will have a walk-in cooler to keep perishable foods. Also needed: tables and chairs for nutrition classes.

Use of the pantry has doubled from 80 families a month to more than 170, she said.

Garrapy said Tuesday she is excited by the project. “First of all, I won’t have to move again. We can take more food and we’ll have more room.”