Four-year-old Colton Burpo (Connor Corum) is the son of Todd Burpo (Greg Kinnear), pastor of Crossroads Wesleyan Church in Imperial, Nebraska. Colton says he experienced Heaven during an emergency surgery after having Acute appendicitis. He describes to his incredulous family about having seen the surgeon operating on his ruptured appendix, his mother calling people in the waiting room to pray, and his father in another room yelling at God to not let him die. He also speaks of incidents with people he never met or knew about: meeting a great-grandfather who had died long before he was born, an unborn sister he never knew about who had died in a miscarriage, and having met Jesus.