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We are on the last few days here in India. After finishing up the teaching at YWAM Tiruchurappali, we took a midnight bus down to Coimbatore. It was a actually a new experience for me here in India. We arrived at the area where the buses leave, and it was so chaotic it was almost scary. Loads of buses and people honking and shouting and pushing their way around, and here there are two white guys in the middle of it all trying to figure out where they are supposed to be. Luckily for us, the bus was an hour late.

It was supposed to be a five hour ride, but the driver was a bit of a maniac, which trimmed it down to about 4 hours. We were dropped off at a nondescript corner in the middle of the night in Coimbatore. No identifying marks that it was even a bus station. Just the average corner of the slums. 4 a.m. Our hosts in Coimbatore picked us up and we were able to get a few hours of sleep and a shower before a 12:00 meeting with the leadership team from a local church, where we spoke on leadership principles and team building.

Sunday morning, Kyle spoke at a local church to about 50 people, and Billy spoke in the evening at City Rock Church to about 60 people. Then Monday morning we caught a flight back to Chennai, took a few hours rest, and drove to Chengalpet for a pastors meeting, where we taught on the subject of the results of pride and humility in ministry.

Tuesday, we drove 3 hours to Pondicherry to speak to another group of about 60 pastors on the importance and methods of evangelism, and how to train people in their church to do the work of reaching the world. Wednesday, we had another pastors meeting with about 30 pastors in Chennai. They have a fellowship called SCY (South Chennai Youth pastors fellowship) This was the 5th time in the last 6 years that we have gotten these guys together for a meeting, so these were all familiar faces to me. Kyle taught on finances in ministry, and I spoke on the importance of having long term vision or long term goals in ministry.

Although we have had the most meager budget of all the India trips I have ever gone on, we have had the most packed out schedule and I have been doing the most speaking. We have been doing a lot of equipping young leaders, encouraging the churches, teaching at YWAM, and pastors fellowships. The only actual evangelistic outreach we have done was the crusade, which turned out to be very effective for that village.

Our last two days are going to be busy as well. Tomorrow we have another large pastors meeting, at which we are supposed to be speaking on the topic of evangelism, and Friday morning we have a new church dedication, followed by a visit to some gypsy people, and then another meeting with 20 or so leaders from another local church here in Chennai. Then we head to the airport by midnight because our flight out of here leaves at 3 a.m.

I know this was probably long and boring but I wanted to give you a quick rundown on the ministry here in India. Next week I should have some more typical blogs up for you!
Blessings, and thanks for your continued prayers as our goal is to finish strong!

Well, its been two years since I’ve been to India, but here I am, back in this incredible place, sharing the gospel and encouraging the churches. I am traveling alone for the first half of the trip, and one of the youth pastors from Calvary Chapel Tri Cities is meeting me here on Wednesday the 17th. I’ll give you an update to catch you up to where I’m at today.

I left Honolulu on Monday the 8th, and arrived in Chennai in the evening of Wednesday the 10th. Travel was pretty easy. Little different route than normal, but alright. Because of the time changes, this time i lost 15 1/2 hours when I came over, but on the way home, I gain those hours back. So when I fly out of India on the 27th at 3:30 am, I still arrive in Honolulu at 9:00 in the evening of the same day.

We began ministry on Friday at an afternoon prayer service. There were about 25-30 people there, mostly women, as the men are out to work. I gave about a 45 minute message and then we prayed for people individually. This prayer service is vital for some of these women. They are married to husbands who would never allow them to got o a Christian church at a normal service, so they are able to come to this service and have fellowship. Some of them are coming from abusive homes, which is not uncommon nor illegal here. Theres had prayer requests for more ordinary things like healing or financial provision.
In the evening, we held a small crusade in a village near the city of Chengalpett. The pastors we worked with on this effort have just built a new church in the village, and this coming Sunday is the first service. There were about 300 people in the audience, 75% of whom had never heard the gospel before. It is an unreached village, and this is the first time anyone has ever held a crusade like this here. After the message, when the altar call was given, almost everyone in the crowd stood to receive Christ. It was really amazing. I didnt soft peddle the gospel off to them either. It was a very clear presentation about repentance and faith in the one true living God. So we are hoping that the new church is filled to capacity!

Saturday we worked with a familiar church in Chennai. City Rock Church is a vibrant place with a lot of young faces. They are an event oriented church, which means they like to advertise and hold lots of special events. Saturday night was kind of an outreach night, and the place was packed out. I was asked to speak on relationships.

Sunday we went back to Tuthi Thotham church, (where we had the prayer service) to preach in the morning, and in the evening it was back again to City Rock Church to pump up the youth.

Monday I flew up to Tiruchirappalli (Trichy) to speak for the week at YWAM DTS on the topics of the Character of God and Hearing God’s Voice. When I arrived, they put me to work right away speaking. Two 1hr 15 min sessions, followed by a half hour break, then two more 1hr 15min sessions.  I’ll have to continue that all week. But it’s no problem. I love to teach, and there is plenty of material in the Word to speak for days on those subjects. Ive got the week split up into two parts. First half on Character of God, and second half on how to Hear His Voice.
As I type this update, I am sitting in the hospitality room on the base, enjoying the fan and preparing to teach in about half an hour.

Trichy is a smaller town than Chennai. I would say its a lot like Rajahmundry. Less traffic, more space. But its further inland so it is also much hotter and more arid. That’s why I’m enjoying the fan, especially because there is no AC. The food has been great, and the hospitality is excellent.

One of the staff members here is from Rajahmundry, and when I met him he immediately asked if I had ever been to Rajahmundry. When I said yes, he said he saw my face on a billboard there a few years ago advertising one of our crusades. Small world!

Anyway, my internet is limited to my cell phone service here, so I don’t know how many photos I’ll be uploading to Facebook. But if you follow me there, or the Kyllonen Family Mission page, you should be able to see some photos. I will update you again soon. Thanks for your prayers!

When I met Beth a few years ago, I remember that because of my interest in her, I would purposely go to places where I would run into her. Once we started dating, she became even more of a priority in my life. I was intentional about making time to go out with her. Naturally, there were other things that I used to do with my time that went on the back burner.
When the infatuation turned to love, however, then aside from the Lord, she became my number one priority in life. Everything else in life, like hobbies, interests, and even my job, took second place. I once quit a job simply because the schedule was such that it made it difficult to be with Beth. When you love someone, you will manage your time in order to be with them. You don’t have trouble carving out chunks of your busy schedule to prioritize the person you are in love with. 

I remember shortly after moving to Tri Cities, I was amazed at how many young trees in people’s yards would die or be blown over by the wind. It didn’t take long for me to figure out why. If you plant a tree, you want the roots to go down deep into the ground, so that they can draw out nutrients from the soil, and also so they can be strong enough to weather storms. But this takes time.
However, what seemed to happen all too often is that someone would plant the tree where it was constantly getting sprayed with irrigation water twice a day. So rather than shooting roots deep down into the ground, they spread out shallow enough to absorb the easy water that comes from irrigation. The problem with that is, it doesn’t take much more than a drought in summer or a strong storm for it to either blow over or die of dehydration. That’s the result of shallow roots.

I talk to and counsel a lot of Christians who wonder why they don’t have a deep relationship with God or why they compromise and fall into sin so easily. It doesn’t take long to figure out why.
Many of them simply have very shallow roots. Their prayer life is abysmal. They have no hunger for the Word. They don’t really enjoy going to church, and they rarely, if ever, share their faith! That’s sounds terrible, but one or more of those may describe some people reading this. I don’t write it to be condescending, but to help identify the problem, so we can grow out of it.

Trees that only want fresh new easy water don’t have deep roots. Christians who only want fresh new easy experiences and don’t practice spiritual discipline to grow are shallow. They will be vulnerable to the storms and the dry seasons of life.
Look at Colossians 2:6,7 “And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.”

Proper growth takes time. A strong tree with deep roots doesn’t grow overnight. It happens as we discipline ourselves to follow Christ. Sometimes, in fact most of the time, Bible reading is a matter or discipline. We don’t have earth shattering epiphanies every single time we open the Scriptures. And we don’t hear audible voices every time we pray. God does speak to us in prayer and through the word all the time, but sometimes I’m reading just because I love Him and I apply myself to being a disciple. Going to church isn’t about me and what I’m getting out of it. It’s about being around God’s people and serving wherever I can. Sharing your faith is the surest and fastest way for you to grow and develop in your faith. You’ll experience the power of the Holy Spirit in a way you never have before.
The growth that occurs because of these disciplines is something that happens over the course of time. But the roots you put down will go deep into Christ.
Your relationship with God will be strong and fulfilling, even during a drought or a storm. You won’t be easily ensnared or overcome by temptation, and you’ll be filled with thankfulness to God.

What kind of roots do you have? Are they deep or shallow? Are you only interested in seeking God when it’s easy and convenient? Or do you discipline yourself to seek and follow him?

A number of years ago I was talking one day with the guys on the construction crew about wanting to see the latest movie. One of them told me I could save a ton of money by buying the dvd from a local store he knew of. “How could I do that if it’s still in the theater,” I asked him. He insisted that they had it, so I checked it out.
The store he spoke of was more like a flea market, but sure enough, they had the movie on dvd for $10. I bought it, took it home, and played it. But immediately I knew something was wrong. The picture was fuzzy and was even shaky. This wasn’t the real thing. My suspicions were confirmed when all of the sudden a dark figure stood up and walked across the screen. Someone had taken a video camera into the theater, recorded the movie, and was selling it for $10!
Of course I quit watching and threw it away.
It was pirated! 

Sometimes I get irritated that the volume on my phone doesn’t get loud enough for me to hear certain videos or music. Even if I turn up all 16 bars on the volume control, the slightest bit of background noise is enough to drown out what I’m trying to listen to.
But if I play something at night, when the kids are in bed and the tv is off, no dishwasher is running and no cars are driving by, free from all the other noise of the day, then the volume is so loud and clear, I have to turn it way down to about three bars, otherwise the kids are shouting that they can hear it from the other room!

Some people are frustrated that they can’t seem to hear God’s voice or obtain God’s guidance. They hear people talk about how God speaks to others, but why doesn’t God ever speak to them?
For some it’s been so long since they’ve heard from God, they have accepted that God simply doesn’t speak to people anymore like the Biblesays He does, or that the people who think so are either misled or lying.
So what’s the truth? Does God speak to us? And if so, how do I learn to listen to what He has to say?

When Jesus taught us to pray, he said we should enter into our prayer closet, and shut the door. Matthew 6:6 There is something about getting into a quiet place, where there aren’t any distractions, and focusing on the Lord. It’s important that we free ourselves from background noise that can drown out the voice of God.
Here is Elijah’s experience: “Then He said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. So it was, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. Suddenly a voice came to him, and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” And the conversation continues from there.
(I Kings 19:11-13)
Sometimes God does speak to us loud and clear, but most often, we communicate with God in the quiet places where we intentionally get rid of distractions and tune into Him. Some Christians have never developed the discipline of spending regular quiet time with God. 

Think about it. When your favorite show is on tv, or when your favorite team is playing, do you turn the volume down and have all sorts of other things going on? No! In fact, we turn off all other distractions, keep the kids out of the room, maybe even close the blinds and turn down the lights to enhance the experience.
Shouldn’t we give at least the same amount of effort to our quiet times where we focus on the Lord?
Find a place where you can eliminate background noise and hear the still small voice of God. You’ll find that He has had things to say all along. You were just too distracted to hear it!

Yesterday I got into a huge fight with this idiot blind man over what color looks like. He had all these moronic preconceived notions about it that he held onto even after I shouted at him that he was wrong. So I got really angry at his stubbornness and proceeded to ridicule him for it.
Just kidding, that never happened! But can you imagine how rude and inconsiderate it would be for me to get angry with and fight with a blind man about something he CANNOT see?

This is how silly it is to me when I see Christians getting so upset and angry at the world when they don’t understand spiritual things. Guys, they can’t see. “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” 2 Corinthians 4:4
It’s not a matter of whether or not they WANT to see, they literally CANNOT see.
You wouldn’t go over and kick a blind man if he stumbled over the curb in front of you, would you? Of course not! You would help him, and love him in spite of his weakness.

That’s why it’s entirely possible for me as a Christian to hate the abortion industry, but to show love to the individuals involved in it. I can have a genuine hatred for all the different facets of moral and sexual depravity affecting our society, but give patient love to individual people. If you think about the hot button issues of our day, most of them really boil down to people being blinded. All you have to do is mention certain inflammatory subjects, and you can have a knock ’em down drag ’em out fight on your hands. It’s so easy to fall into the temptation to argue, even to ridicule people for holding onto their ideology and beliefs.

Is that the standard a Christian is called to? How differently would we react to people if we kept in mind that they have been blinded? That they cannot see? How differently would I treat the person in front of me if I remember that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12
I think we would do well to remember that when we engage in discussions or debates, we don’t fight spiritual battles with scarcasm, ridicule, or anger, but that “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds.” 2 Corinthians 10:4

How are you representing Jesus in the way you engage your culture? With patience and gentleness, or with anger and frustration?
One parting scripture:
“But avoid foolish and ignorant disputes, knowing that they generate strife. And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.”
II Timothy 2:23-26

Hey friends,

This week, rather than posting a typical blog, I am going to fill you in on whats been happening here in Honolulu and what the near future is looking like.

I just completed the lecture phase of the School of Missions and Evangelism, and the outreach phase has begun. The outreach for the school was originally supposed to be in Indonesia and New Guinea, but considering the crisis happening in Greece, we switched the outreach location to Lesbos Island in Greece, where literally an average of 6,000+ refugees are arriving daily. The rest of the students are already there, but I won’t be heading over until January.

Because I am a married father of 5, they have been very flexible with me not having to be gone the entire time, so I am fulfilling much of my outreach here in Honolulu, which isn’t too hard of a place to find unsaved people to talk to! However, I have a pretty tight schedule planned out over the next 3 months. Next week I will be in Kona, which is the largest YWAM base. Then I’ll be home for Christmas with the family. Our church is flying Berth and I back to WA for the week following Christmas to do some teaching on evangelism, and also to be the speakers at a retreat for young adults on that weekend.

We will get back to Hawaii on Jan 4, then continue to do a lot of local ministry, but I will be heading to Greece for at least two weeks of January. Then I’ll come home for a couple of weeks, and head out again in February to spend a couple of weeks in India and Sri Lanka. I was supposed to go to Armenia in February also, but that has been postponed for a few months.

Beth and I have been keeping the Kyllonen Family Mission Facebook page updated, but honestly we have been so busy every day with new and exciting things. If you haven’t been there and ‘Liked’ the page, you are missing out on those updates. The page doesn’t tell the half of everything going on. We spend a lot of time doing street evangelism, in all kinds of forms. From simply passing out tracts to people, to engaging in conversations, to full blown open air preaching, we cover a lot of ground. I would give you a bunch of cool stories, but this would get pretty extensive. So I’ll share just two:

Last tuesday night we went out to Chinatown with a bunch of DTS students. I had a couple of girls with me, and we walked around, approaching people, handing out tracts to break the ice and get conversations started. We had a lot of great encounters with people who were open to hear the word of God. WE also got to pray with a lot of hurting people. On one occasion, we were beginning to pray with a couple of guys who had just heard the entire gospel and said they wanted to follow Christ, when a drunk man came up and joined our prayer circle. As we prayed, I looked up, and to my horror, he was vigorously rubbing one of the girls on the back while looking at her with a big dirty smile and trying to hit on her. She was trying to shove him away but he was too strong for her. He happened to be directly across from me, so I leaned forward and literally kicked him, and shouted, “Hey! Watch it, or I’ll break that arm!” Suddenly, he bowed his head with his hands behind his back as we finished the prayer.  I laughed so hard because I’ve never had to do anything like that during evangelism before!

A couple of days before that incident, a group of about 5 of us was on a corner of Waikiki trying to get a crowd gathered for open air preaching. I was really trying hard to get people to listen, but this area has so many people handing out advertisements and brochures, they weren’t responding to any of our tracts or to me, even as I tried to give away money! I had a fake human heart in my hand, and I was asking trivia questions about the heart, when a demon possessed man walked straight up to my ladder and stood an inch for my face and yelled that he was going to kill me if I didnt shut up. I was delighted! Finally, some action. “This ought to draw a crowd,” I thought. So I asked him, “What’s your name, buddy?” “Don’t call me buddy, you blankety blank blank!” This was even better than I thought. So I asked him what was in my hand, to which he replied, “I’m gonna rip your heart out of your chest, hold it in front of you, and make you put it back in!” I laughed. But as I looked around, nobody was paying any attention. As soon as I stopped speaking to my new friend, he lost interest and disappeared. I don’t know why, but even on that busy street corner, with literally hundreds of people passing by every few minutes, I couldn’t get anything going. I tried and tried, but I just could not muster a even a small crowd. Sometimes we have an evangelistic failure. No biggie. There are too many successes to focus in on those what don’t work out.

Thanks for praying for us on this journey of faith. Just about every day I still have moments where I am blown away by what the Lord has done this past year. We have some pretty major decisions to be making in the next few months about where to make a long term commitment to settle in and begin leading a School of Evangelism of our own. Its becoming more and more clear to us where we should be, but God can do whatever He wants. We are open to His leading and are ready to take on the tasks He gives us.

God bless you and thank you for your support. And don’t forget, if you haven’t been following our Facebook mission page, go there and get on board. You’ll receive a lot more updates, even with pictures!

 

I often get asked if I am an old earth or a young earth creationist. Do I believe that God created the world in a literal 6 days, or could He have just initiated the Big Bang and then watched evolution take place? Could God have used evolution when He created the world? And if so, couldn’t He also have set in motion the process of natural selection to create man and the rest of all living things?

The answer is that “Yes,” He could have, if He wanted to. But that is not the creation account we read of in Scripture. He chose to create things His own way.

Here are a few verses that demonstrate that evolution is not scriptural. Bear in mind that I am answering the question of whether evolution is compatible with the Bible. Can a Christian believe in evolution AND the Bible?
The answer is no. He will either have to believe that certain passages are not correct, (the Bible is flawed) or he will have to believe that man’s scientific hypothesis is not correct.

1. Genesis 1:27 says that God created man in his own image. Adam was complete upon his initial creation.
2. Jesus quoted Genesis 5:2 in Matthew 19:4 when he said that “in the BEGINNING (emphasis added) He created them male and female.”
If an asexual creature was reproducing just fine on its own, why would the process of natural selection decide to complicate things in developing male and female parts?
The Bible teaches that they were male and female from the beginning.
3. Genesis 2:5 “Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
This is a specific moment of time. There was no evolution or life until God breathed life into him.
4. Genesis 2:21-24 tells about how God put Adam to sleep, took one of his ribs and made Eve, then brought her to him.
Again, a specific event.
5. Genesis 3 describes the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, bringing death and decay and the curse of sin upon all of humanity and even nature. Death is the direct result of sin. Before this point in time, there was no death, no millions of transitional forms struggling for survival of the fittest.
This is a very important fundamental doctrine that cannot be dismissed if one is to understand the rest of the book, the root of humanity’s problems, and the remedy presented in the gospel.

Evolution, as it is taught in schools and universities, is not compatible with the Bible. To believe it, one must either play word games with or entirely disregard clear teachings of scripture, and that is a slippery slope that leads people further and further from the truth as they wrestle with and explain away every other passage that gives them moral or intellectual trouble.

The plain and simple truth is that science, as we call it, is constantly changing its position and its stance on evolutionary theory. A theory of which we have plenty of conjecture, imagination and hypothesis, but do not possess one iota of fact. The Bible, on the other hand, has never changed or been proven wrong. Not once has ‘science’ effectively or convincingly provided sufficient proof that the Bible contains errors. On the contrary, the Bible has repeatedly proven itself to be a solid record that has been handed down and preserved accurately for thousands of years, has remained steadfast, unchanging and true while withstanding the tests of skepticism and scrutiny.

My screensaver on my phone is a picture of my wife. Sometimes I click the power button on my phone just so that it will light up and I can see her face. But when my wife walks in the room, I put the phone down. Imagine how silly it would be if she came up for a smootch, but instead of embracing my wife in real life, I pull out my phone and kiss the photo!
That would be offensive to her. My wife wants our relationship to be deep and meaningful, with real communication and affection.