Through Pajama Connection, church seeks to reach and help children in need

Sue Smith of Lexington Park remembers their faces, the children who had been taken into the foster care system. They were often hustled away from their homes with little opportunity to collect any of their own things, she said. She remembers the faces of area children living in poverty, who lived every day with little of their own — the children in homeless shelters who have all their earthly belongings scrunched up in a plastic shopping bag.

As a community health nurse in Charles County, it was part of Smith's job to locate and coordinate doctor appointments for children in need and children in foster care in Charles. The children's situation wrung her heart.

"They have nothing personal," Smith said from her home earlier this month. "They have so little."

Smith wanted to change that. She decided to start with the most basic possessions — pajamas, a stuffed animal, a book, socks, a toothbrush. She started making collections of these items and giving them in a tote to the young children she saw through her work.

Smith retired not long ago and brought the idea of a pajama program to her home church, Hollywood United Methodist. The church adopted the program as one of its ministries this past spring.

Her project has evolved into the Pajama Connection. The program's goal is to express concern for children in foster care or other difficult situations — "to give each child something to call their own," Smith said.

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The group started by distributing their totes to children living at Angel's Watch Shelter in Hughesville. They have since expanded their outreach to four homeless shelters in three counties, as well as the foster care program in Charles County.