Heaven Is for Real

Todd and Sonja Burpo provide much service to their community in the farming town of Imperial, Nebraska, whether it be as pastor and his wife at the local church, Todd as a volunteer firefighter, or he, even in his own garage door repair business, accepting payment in goods or services instead of money by those who cannot afford to pay. Despite the church providing them with a house - albeit located close to the railroad tracks, so not ideal - they are in a tight financial situation, wanting to persevere on their own rather than ask for help, an offer which has come from the one person in the know, Todd's best friend, banker Jay Wilkins, and which Todd turns down. They must rush their younger child, 4-year-old Colton, to the hospital for emergency surgery for what is ultimately diagnosed as a ruptured appendix. At first it looks like he won't make it, but he does end up fully recovering. He starts innocently relaying his remembrances during surgery, and he sounds like he had an out-of-body experience and actually visited heaven. This is against Todd's understanding of life, but he can at least entertain the notion as Colton talks of things he would never have known otherwise - could he really have visited heaven, especially since he never actually died on the operating table? Todd's own quest for truly understanding what happened to Colton, especially in not wanting to dismiss Colton's reality as fantasy, begins to place him at odds with many in his congregation, who believe his quest for that understanding is taking away from his role as pastor to them, and arguably more importantly with Sonja, who wants Todd to focus on the realities of the here and now of what it means to survive as a family.