As volunteer directors of the Stone Soup Food Pantry in Biddeford, we were distressed to learn about further state cuts in food stamps (“About 6,500 childless adults in Maine to lose food stamps as of Jan. 1,” Dec. 19).

Therefore, we have extended an invitation to Gov. LePage to visit our pantry and meet our volunteers and clients. (We have no paid staff, so we all pitch in to make it work.)

We are hoping he will be able to spend a few minutes getting to know us, because most of the clients he would meet here are the kind of Maine folks he probably already knows.

They are the people who made blankets in Biddeford, cleaned motel rooms in Old Orchard Beach each summer and fought our wars overseas. None of them wants to rely on the pantry, and most of them have known better times.

But as times have changed, many of our clients cannot work to provide enough food for themselves and their families. They are elderly or disabled. They are single young mothers with children at home. They are working parents who can’t get by on minimum-wage jobs. And, yes, some of them are addicted to alcohol or drugs.

But they all are hungry. So they come to the pantry to supplement the food stamps that do not last the month.

We sincerely hope that when the governor has a chance to meet his neighbors, down on their luck though they may be, he will reconsider taking more of them off the food stamp rolls.

Helen Lewis and Donald Liberty

volunteer co-executive directors, Stone Soup Food Pantry

Biddeford