Few things make young cowboy JoshuaJohn Waldrop happier than listening to Alan Jackson‘s “I’ll Fly Away” with his family. But one thing might have just topped it.
When the country great learned his 5-year-old fan, nicknamed JDub, is battling Stage 4 hepatoblastoma, a cancer invading his liver and lungs, he sent a private jet to scoop up his brave boy and his family from Rutledge, Tennessee, to Nashville for a trip of a lifetime.
“I was honored to meet JDub and his family,” Jackson tells PEOPLE of their time together. “They have a lot of special angels looking out for him. It was amazing the number of people who contacted me over one special boy. There’s a lot of love out there.”
PEOPLE has an exclusive clip of the visit, which includes a trip to the Country Music Hall of Fame and the legend sitting down with JDub to breeze through “I’ll Fly Away” and “Little Bitty.” Their hug at the end is just about as much as we can take.
Jackson arranged the visit after thousands of people reached out to the country star. Many heard about JDub on his Facebook page, Prayers for JoshuaJohn.
“I just want to say Thank You to God first of all that he saw fit for JoshuaJohn to meet Mr. Alan Jackson!!” his mother, Connie Lampkin, wrote on Facebook after the visit, per WBIR. “And then I want to thank every person who helped to make a DREAM come true for JoshuaJohn. It took everyone!!”
