A Little Boy’s Big Adventure

by Lailani Mendoza

In one year he broke his leg, had kidney stones removed, and underwent a mastectomy. But for Todd Burpo, these were nothing compared to what came next.

It happened eight years ago but he remembers it like yesterday. His four-year-old son Colton had appendicitis and was taken in for emergency surgery. The doctors didn’t offer the distraught dad any hope.

“They were hauling my son away and he was screaming for me to do something — and I can do nothing,” recalls Todd. Fortunately, the surgery was a success. Colton recovered so quickly even medical staff were amazed. But four months later the family realized something significant happened during surgery. Asked if he remembered the hospital, Colton replied “That’s where the angels sang to me.”

For Todd and his wife Sonja, this was the start of a huge discovery — their son had been to Heaven. While the couple didn’t know what to think, they were astounded when Colton accurately identified where his parents were during the operation even though he was unconscious.

“My wife didn’t know where I was. She was mad at me because I wasn’t with her,” Todd tells Living Light News. He had locked himself in a room, praying. “So when he told me where I was and (said) he could see me, I was stunned.” This was just the start of Colton’s jaw-dropping revelations. “He told us about a miscarried daughter and about a grandfather he’d never met,” Sonja shared on NBC’s Today Show.

“How can a kid invent that and be right?” Todd told Oasis Audio. “On things (where) he proved to us that he just knew this stuff, then we, by faith, started accepting the rest of his other descriptions.”
It didn’t take long before people suggested they write a book. “We didn’t pursue writing the book based on encouragement from other people,” explains Todd. When he found out about his miscarried daughter in Heaven, Todd says he felt immense peace and comfort. And he sensed God saying, “Well is it right for you to keep it to yourself?”

“That’s where the angels sang to me.”

“When God leads you to do something and you verify that it’s Him, then you need to follow through with it — that’s faith. The decision was made with a lot of forethought. “We were concerned as parents,” Todd admits. Their children, 15-year-old Cassie, seven-year-old Colby, and 12-year-old Colton, were young.

He prayed to God, “If You bring the publicist to little Imperial, Neb., then I know You’re in this.”
The answer came when a friend introduced the Burpos to Joel Kneedler, from Alive Communications. When Kneedler called him, Todd said it was like the agent was speaking in one ear and God in the other: “You made a promise. Now are you gonna keep it?”

Co-written by bestselling author Lynn Vincent, Heaven Is For Real (Thomas Nelson) has been on numerous bestseller lists since its release in November 2010. A kids’ version, Heaven Is For Real For Kids, was published a year later.

Churchgoers aren’t the only ones fascinated by it — the book’s successful in both Christian and secular bookstores. And another book, The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven, made The New York Times bestseller list at the same time as the Burpo book.

Todd, pastor of Crossroads Wesleyan Church , told Oasis Audio, “I hope people understand, this story is about [God] and what He did, we just were kind of an audience to what happened.” Colton continues to talk about Heaven. He remembers it as a place with “lots of colours,” where “it never gets dark” because “a really, really big” God who “really, really loves us” is the source of light.

In the book, he shares, “Big bright rainbows are everywhere you look. The streets are gold, the gates are made of pearl, and shiny jewels are on the wall.” In Heaven, he said everyone’s happy, there’s no fear, and no one is old. It was so magnificent and enthralling he didn’t want to leave.

“Anyone who believes in Heaven has to understand that it’s God’s house,” Todd tells Living Light News. “God said ‘If you know My Son Jesus, if you have a relationship with My Son, You’re welcome to My house.’ “God gives us the opportunity to invite Him into our lives now to build that relationship with Him.”
While Todd’s aware of skeptics, his main concern is the book remain truthful to Colton’s experience — and sends a message the world needs to hear.

“For those people that might even be against the story, we just look past them and see all the people that are getting peace and hope,” Todd told NBC. “It’s incredible to have ideas: what do my loved ones look like, how am I gonna meet them, what’s it gonna be like? And for them to hear that and to have peace, that’s what we focus on.”
The pastor, who’s also a volunteer firefighter, school board trustee and wrestling coach, tells Living Light News, “Jesus told His disciples ‘I’ve overcome this world.’ If you love Jesus Christ, you can be sure of one thing – one day, when you step across that threshold into eternity, everything is going to be made right in a place called Heaven.”

This Malarkey Makes Sense

by Crystal Kupper

Alex Malarkey takes Nerf gun wars seriously. Wearing protective goggles and a chest protector, the 13-year-old zooms from room to room in his Huntsville, Ohio home.

The iconic toy, however, isn’t in Alex’s hands and no orange-and-blue darts fly to their target. Instead, the gun rests in his lap as he tries to run his siblings down with his wheelchair.

For Alex, a quadriplegic since age six, making light of his condition comes naturally.

Kevin Malarkey, 46, says such humourous behaviour is entirely ordinary for his firstborn of four. “Normal is what you do every day,” he says, “My kids think our life is normal. [Our other three children] don’t see Alex as abnormal. In fact, they look up to him a lot." That admiration is shared by many thanks to Kevin and Alex’s book The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven (Tyndale, 2011). Spending 19 weeks on The New York Times’ Best Sellers list, the paperback nonfiction account details Alex’s encounters with the supernatural after a grisly car crash and subsequent coma.

A family counsellor, Kevin was driving Alex home from church on Nov. 14, 2004. His wife Beth had just given birth to baby Ryan and was home recuperating, along with Aaron, four, and Gracie, two. Kevin turned onto a highway, never seeing the oncoming car coming out of a blind dip.

Kevin walked away with minor injuries. Alex, however, suffered an internal decapitation; his skin, muscles, and tendons were the only things holding his head to his body. At the hospital, doctors gave Kevin and Beth devastating news: if Alex survived, he would most likely have brain damage and
never speak, swallow, or have any movement below his neck.

Beth, only two days removed from delivering her third son, spoke up immediately. “You are wrong,” she said. “Alex is going to be fine. His health will be fully restored, and his story is going to have a national impact, bringing hope to thousands of people.” Her confident words stemmed from meeting one of Alex’s MedFlight attendants a few minutes earlier. “Your son is going to live,” the man told her, “because I prayed for Alex in Jesus’ name.”

Alex did survive, but he remained in a coma for two months. Hundreds of friends filtered through Alex’s room, praying over him incessantly, along with thousands of well-wishers around the globe. The Malarkeys soon saw one result of so many prayers – Alex’s spine reattached itself to his head without medical intervention.

“Perfect is my favourite word for describing Heaven.”

When the feisty six-year-old regained consciousness and eventually speech, he shocked everyone by providing details of the accident he could not have known. Alex accurately relayed the precise location of Kevin’s ejection and landing, the abnormal colour of the MedFlight worker’s uniform, and how Kevin spoke to Beth by cell phone directly after the accident, even though Alex was unconscious and already flying to the hospital. He also knew the doctors put a bolt into his head.

Alex frequently saw, felt, and communicated with angels, first in his hospital room and then at home. But most astonishing, he spoke of traveling to Heaven and meeting Jesus. “Heaven is a place that is not a place. It’s eternal,” Alex writes. “All other places end … perfect is my favourite word for describing Heaven.”

Kevin had been raised in a Christian home. Yet, with an analytical mind and graduate degree to match, he speculated that his son had brain damage. “It freaked me out,” he admits. “I doubt [anyone] is more skeptical than I was, because I didn’t believe it. If I was going to make this stuff up, I would have done a better job.” Thanks to a barrage of accurate information from Alex, however, Kevin soon changed his mind. “I knew there was an authenticity to it. I realized the problem wasn’t Alex, the problem was me.”
In January 2009, Alex made history by becoming the first child to undergo the “Christopher Reeve surgery,” helping him to breathe without a ventilator. Today, Alex is temporarily back on the ventilator but is stable and healthy.

Like Colton Burpo of Heaven Is For Real, Alex is almost nonchalant about his heavenly visits. “I want people to know that God is real and Heaven is real,” he says. “God is my Daddy in Heaven, and He understands me all the time. That’s how He feels about all His children.” Kevin and Alex wrote The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven after a reporter suggested it. Today, Alex is homeschooled, loves sports, and wants to be a missionary or Houston Astros catcher. Yet there is one thing he wants more.

“I want people to understand Heaven isn’t a place where you go just because you do good things,” he says. “You have to ask Jesus into your heart and ask for forgiveness.”

photos courtesy the Malarkey family and Burpo family