Pamela Has a Problem

Connie's mystery surprise turns out to be Pam - her old friend from California, the one who first told her about Jesus - but Pam has brought a secret across two thousand miles. She's going to have a baby, her boyfriend won't speak to her, and she can't bear to tell her parents... so she's found a clinic in Connellsville where she could quietly end it all. Whit refuses to lecture her, offering instead a spare room, help from his church, and one request: talk to someone before she does anything. But after a cheerful phone call home makes the truth feel impossible to tell, Pam slips away with the car, and Connie wakes to find her gone. In the clinic waiting room, forms in hand, Pam hears her name called - and walks away, because the baby is hers. She comes home ready at last to call her parents, only to find them already there, arms open, promising they will always be there for her and her baby both.

Found on The Lost Episodes Album LE · 17 episodes

The run See every episode

0128 One Bad Apple When several Odyssey children fall ill after eating at Whit's End, Whit and Tom Riley trace the trouble upstream to a source no one in town would ever have suspected.

0129 Not One of Us A young reporter's assignment on bigotry takes an unexpected turn when her search for people who've experienced discrimination leads her to a strange little town off the interstate.

1 of 2 0130 Bernard and Joseph While washing windows at Whit's End, Bernard Walton helps a boy fed up with his six siblings by recounting the story of Joseph, whose troubles with his own brothers make any family squabble look small.

2 of 2 0131 Bernard and Joseph While washing windows, Bernard is roped into finishing the story of Joseph for young Artie Powell - picking up in an Egyptian prison, where a pair of troubling dreams sets Joseph's fate, and his family's, on an extraordinary new course.

0132 Thanksgiving at Home When the flu strikes on Thanksgiving morning, two kids decide they can cook the family feast themselves - how hard can one turkey be?

0133 Cousin Albert A middle-school reporter's puff piece on her basketball-star cousin unravels when she stumbles onto the secret he's built his whole future around hiding.

0134 Pamela Has a Problem When Connie's out-of-town friend arrives in Odyssey carrying a secret she can't bring herself to tell anyone, Connie and Whit must help her face the hardest decision of her young life.

1 of 3 0135 Back to Bethlehem While posing for a nativity display at Whit's End, Connie and Eugene are sent by the Imagination Station to first-century Bethlehem, where their debate over what Christmas was really like collides with a crowded inn, a mysterious star, and restless Roman soldiers.

2 of 3 0136 Back to Bethlehem While the census crowds Bethlehem to bursting, two time-displaced visitors find themselves swept into the very night they only ever knew from nativity scenes.

3 of 3 0137 Back to Bethlehem Trapped in first-century Bethlehem on the night of the nativity, Connie and Eugene must untangle two unwanted marriage proposals, a hot-headed young zealot, and the suspicions of a Roman general before they can witness the moment they came to see.

0138 The Adventure of the Adventure At Whit's End, an inventor's dream of making stories come to life sends kids into the greatest adventures imaginable - with plenty of mishaps, surprises, and laughter along the way.

0139 Melanie's Diary When Robyn laughs off her little sister's diary as harmless fun, she learns the hard way that private things have a way of becoming very public.

0140 The Vow When a schoolyard checklist for predicting divorce starts matching her own family, a worried Donna hatches a plan to hold her parents together - contract and all.

Featured characters

Minor characters & crew 7 more roles

7 supporting roles

Nurse Actor Unknown Bible Verse Mirror Phil Lollar Pamela (a) Gaia Marchette Woman Actor Unknown Lynn Cheryl van der Zaag Pamela's Father Bob Hoose Pamela's Mother Terey Summers

Made by

Chris Anthony Host Paul McCusker Writer · Director Dave Arnold Sound Designer · Producer Chuck Bolte Executive Producer

The story

Read the full synopsis 4 min

Connie is certain her mother is up to something. For weeks now her mom has been making plans she will not explain and hanging up the phone the moment Connie walks into the room. Whit suggests that a surprise is nothing to worry about and that Connie might simply sit back and enjoy it, but Connie cannot stand not knowing. Then a voice behind her tells her to turn around, and there stands Pam - her friend from California, the one who first introduced her to Jesus. Connie's mother has arranged the whole visit with Pam's parents, met her at the airport and lent her the car. Whit gives Connie the rest of the day off so the two friends can catch up.

Connie shows Pam around Whit's End, and something about Pam seems off. When Connie explains that the Imagination Station can take a person to any time in history, Pam asks whether it could take her back a couple of months so she could change something. In Whit's office, Pam finally says what she has carried across two thousand miles: she is going to have a baby. Her boyfriend has stopped speaking to her since she told him. Her parents know nothing, and she cannot bear to tell them - her father is an elder at their church, her mother runs the ladies' committees, and Pam has always been their perfect little girl. She has looked up a clinic in the nearby town of Connellsville, and she is thinking of ending the pregnancy there.

Connie takes the problem to Whit on a walk with hot chocolate, and Whit refuses to promise to keep it secret, because he believes Pam's parents should know. When he talks with Pam, he does not scold her. He tells her the news hurts him more than it surprises him, because of the anguish she must be feeling. Then he lays out what she may not be able to see for herself. There are other roads open to her. He has a spare room and so does Connie, his church has a program to help, and when the baby comes she could raise the child or consider adoption. None of it will be easy, he admits, but she does not have to face it alone. He asks only one thing: that she talk to someone before she does anything.

At the mall the next day, Pam spots a baby left alone in a stroller and loses her temper at the mother who steps out of a nearby phone booth, then dissolves into tears while the puzzled woman walks off calling her a strange girl. Over pizza, Pam admits she has already been to the clinic for a preliminary appointment. Connie's patience snaps, and she points out that Pam has just shouted at a stranger over a baby in a stroller. Pam says she came to Odyssey for compassion, not for a finger pointed at her. Connie softens and begs her to phone home. Pam is so afraid of how her parents will feel if she tells them, Connie says, that she has never asked how they would feel if she does not.

Pam does call. Her parents are cheerful and full of hometown news, including a cousin who is sixteen and expecting and has the whole family in an uproar. Then they tell Pam how glad they are that she is their daughter, and the words land like a weight. She hangs up and tells Connie that she can never let them know.

The next morning Pam is gone, having borrowed the car, and a frantic Connie runs to Whit. At the clinic, Pam sits with a stack of forms while another girl in the waiting room tells her it is no big deal, that friends have done it, that it is not really a baby at all and she will be fine if she just does not think about it. When Pam asks whether she truly believes that, the girl says she has to, or she could not be there. Then Pam's name is called.

She comes home to Connie having walked away. She could not go through with it, she says, because the baby is hers. She decides it is time to call her parents at last - and finds they have already come. Her boyfriend's conscience got the better of him, and he telephoned them not long after Pam did. Her mother and father gather her up and tell her they will always be there.

Afterward Connie says she is glad it is over, and Whit gently tells her it is hardly over. The road ahead will not be easy for any of them, and the best thing they can do is pray that God gives them an extra measure of grace. Maybe, Connie hopes, Pam will have a happy ending after all. Whit agrees - Pam and her baby both.