The first time Kyle Yeo’s faith and integrity were tested in a big way was during his army days.

He was an officer in the Air Force and a sergeant under him had failed to hook up a missile launcher properly.

As a result, the launcher unhooked itself while being transported downhill and suffered surface damage.

“It was a big issue because the equipment was expensive and it was also a safety issue. So, I was about to be charged – going to detention barracks was a real possibility,” said Kyle, now 32.

Kyle in uniform during his army days.

Then a 19-year-old, the prospect of going to prison and having a permanent mark on his record scared him greatly. He went sobbing to his mentor and asked for advice on what to do.

His mentor urged him to trust God and tell the truth of what had happened. The army boys had told a half-truth – that they had done a visual check but not a manual check – when in reality, no checks had been carried out. 

Resolving to tell the truth, Kyle went to tell his sergeant, who was driving the launcher, what he intended to do. His sergeant pleaded with him not to reveal the truth as he was afraid the incident would make his father – a high-ranking officer in the army – look bad.

Tested and found wanting 

“I desired to honour God and trust Him for mercy and intervention, yet I also had very mortal fears. My sergeant’s pleas gave me another reason not to come clean,” he admitted.

In the end, they chose not to volunteer the full truth.

“Despite our wrong decision, God still showed up with mercy and gave me favour with the master sergeant who knew me and knew this was just one momentary lapse,” said Kyle, who subsequently repented of his wrongdoing. 

He was not charged eventually but given extra duties in camp.

Kyle (left) being commissioned as an officer during his army days.

As a young Christian then, this episode showed him that one will only know if he truly trusts God when one is put to the test.

He would go on to experience test after test till his trust in God was refined.

Experiencing guilt and shame from a breakup 

In 2013, when Kyle went to Durham University in the United Kingdom to study law in 2013, he also began a long-distance relationship with a Singaporean girl.

“I was immature and projected many of my insecurities on her. I was a monster and unconsciously made her feel like she was not good enough,” he told Salt&Light.

Wracked with guilt over how he was treating her, he broke up with her a year later.

Kyle (second row, second from left) at a law faculty ball.

“Despite the break-up, the guilt kept me from feeling that I deserved any grace or forgiveness. I was very hard on myself,” said Kyle, who suffered constant self-condemnation.

“To cope with all of this, I drank a lot. I found that I could only sleep if I drank.

“(Then) I started to sleep around and stopped going to school. I lost all will to lead a proper life,” he said.

“I loved God and believed in Him, but my life was still led by the flesh. I placed my own guilt above His grace, out of pride,” he added.

Kyle during his partying days in university.

Failing key modules in law school  

He failed two core law modules – criminal and land law – during his second year of undergraduate studies, and had to retake them to be promoted to the next year. Had he failed one more module, he would have been kicked out of school.

That year, while back in Singapore for his term break, he tried to study for the retest.  

“I just kept reading the same line of my notes over and over again. I realised I couldn’t process what I was reading,” said Kyle.

As he struggled with studying in his living room, a strange yet persistent thought instructed him to “call IMH” (the Institute of Mental Health).

He heeded the prompting and called IMH, and after seeing a doctor, was diagnosed with depression.

“It was God’s grace and mercy that I got an official mental health diagnosis. Though I failed the first retest, the school allowed me to take a gap year to rest and recover before taking the two exams again due to my illness,” said Kyle.

During that gap year, Kyle began to heal mentally and spiritually. God provided him with authentic Christian community and role models in the form of a loving housemate and a church called Bethshan.  

Kyle with some friends at Bethshan church in the UK.

It was also during this time that Kyle volunteered at a school for special needs children and juvenile delinquents.

“I fell in love with teaching and journeying with young and lost people,” he said.

One of the youth that Kyle taught at the special needs school.

However, it was still difficult for him to study as he was still depressed. He could read and reread the same paragraph for a whole 20 minutes.

Thus, when he retook his exams at the end of the gap year in May 2016, Kyle knew he might pass his criminal law exam, but not the land law exam.

When he came back home after the exam, he sank into a heap on the floor.

“You have given me so many chances. I am retaking this for the third time with a full year to prepare for it. It is already so much grace, yet I still squander it,” Kyle told God.

Coming Home to God 

He felt like the prodigal son who did not know how to go back and live with the Father. He had hit rock bottom.

At that moment, a song began playing on his Spotify radio. It was “Come Out Of Hiding” by Steffany Gretzinger.

Written in first person as if God Himself was speaking, the lyrics spoke deeply to Kyle: “Come out of hiding, you’re safe here with me… ’cause I loved you before you knew it was love.”

“It ministered to me because I realised it is not about my understanding of grace and love. It is His love and how He wants to interact with me. I told Him I cannot do this myself,” he said.

In that moment of utter surrender, Kyle promised God: “Where You go, I go. Where You stay, I stay.”

Fortunately, he had one final chance – the fourth time ­– to retake the land law exam as students could retake their final exam once per summer for each academic year.

However, the adventurer in him (not knowing that he would fail his exam again) had already applied to work as a counsellor in a US summer camp that summer break. There was no time nor space for him to study there as he was overseeing children there.

The US Summer camp –called Camp Chen-A-Wanda– that Kyle volunteered with.

“Obviously, I wasn’t going to pass the land law exam for the fourth time,” said Kyle.

Kyle, who was a counsellor to these young adults at a US summer camp

At the end of the summer break, he was due to fly back to the UK from JFK airport in the US to take the exam.

But he did not make the flight.

A terrorist attack at the JFK airport 

He heard what sounded like gunshots. It was believed that an active shooter was on the loose at the JFK airport at that moment in time.

Kyle and other passengers were told to lie flat on the floor as the SWAT team moved in to tackle the terrorist threat. Needless to say, all flights were grounded.

JFK airport after all the passengers were evacuated post terrorist attack

Kyle had official documentation from the authorities to state why he had to miss the flight and by extension, his upcoming exam.

“You can’t make this stuff up,” he told Salt&Light.

“At this point, the school just decided to move me up to continue my third year without needing to take that exam.”

By the time he was in his third year, he was mentally strong enough to focus. Against all odds, he graduated with Second Class (Upper) Honours.

“I don’t know how that happened. I just surrendered to God and there was a miraculous unlocking of my brain,” said Kyle.

“It reaffirmed to me that God is really in control. There was nothing I could do to plan such a sequence of events. It was unmerited grace that got me to where I was and I knew that He is a God I can trust.”

Still, Kyle knew that going into law after graduating was not the path for him.

Having felt purpose and passion in his previous teaching role at the special needs school, Kyle planned to remain in the UK after graduation and continue teaching and walking with the vulnerable youths there.

Alas, those plans were not in line with God’s plans for him.

Kyle (pictured with his parents) graduated with Second (Upper) Class honours in law, despite failing core modules multiple times.

A few months before he graduated in the May of 2017, he went for a church retreat.

On the first day after the sermon was preached, the church members were given some quiet time on their own to respond to God.

As he sat in the silence and prayed, Kyle received an open vision. He saw himself walking with Jesus along some cliffs. When Jesus jumped into the water, he followed. The deeper they swam, the darker the ocean appeared to be.

“In real life, I was feeling actual palpitations because I was fearful,” said Kyle.

Because of the fear, Kyle stopped swimming. Jesus also stopped.

“Jesus told me: ‘I can show you where you will end up or where you need to go, but that is not what you need to know. All you need to know is to follow me,’” recounted Kyle.

Jesus then snapped His finger and the ocean lit up and became clear. After that, Jesus snapped His finger again and they continued in darkness. When they reached the bottom of the ocean, Jesus stepped across a threshold. Kyle followed suit, somehow knowing that the place he had stepped into was Singapore. He felt peace when the vision ended. 

Kyle hanging out with some friends at the church retreat where he received visions from God.

When he came back to reality, Kyle wondered whether he had just been daydreaming.

“What I saw just didn’t make sense. God led me to the UK and I had a beautiful church and a beautiful job there. I didn’t want to come back to Singapore. I assumed that what I saw must be from the devil,” he said.

A day later, after another sermon, Kyle received another open vision.

This time, he saw himself on the stage of Grace Methodist Church (GMC). He knew it was GMC because he had been there once before and recognised the distinctive glass Cross that stood three storeys high.

In the vision, God told him two things, said Kyle.

“’I want you to lead worship in a way you have not known before. I want you to bring hunger.’”

“When I asked him what did both statements mean, I began to understand. I had only led worship in the form of music, and God wanted another type of worship.

“He also revealed to me my underlying fear of why I did not want to come back to Singapore,” said Kyle.

“I had a church community in the UK that was really hungry for God, like the church in the book of Acts. I didn’t want to lose that as I remembered what a number of Singapore churches were like – outcome- and event-driven instead of people-focused,” he added.

Bethshan church members having some outdoor time during their church retreat.

After receiving the second vision, he could not deny any longer that God was calling him to return to Singapore and to go to GMC.

“I could not logic this second vision away because there was no way I would think about GMC. I had only been there once before and it is under the Chinese Annual Conference umbrella (Mandarin-speaking Methodist churches), while I scored C6 for my O level Chinese exam,” said Kyle.

By then, he had experienced enough of God’s grace and love to desire to obey Him completely, just as he had promised.

“It was a hard decision to make. But I made the right decision to honour God, unlike making the wrong decision back in my army days,” said Kyle.

Returning home to Singapore and its Church 

In December 2017, Kyle returned to Singapore. His flight landed on a Saturday, and he made his way to Grace Methodist Church the next day.

When he stepped into the church and saw the glass Cross, he knew he was where he was meant to be.

The glass Cross at Grace Methodist Church

Kyle told Salt&Light: “I realised that my whole time in the UK was just meant to bring me to the end of myself and to bring me back to Himself.”

He assumed that he was just meant to serve in GMC, so he subsequently went to work in two different roles in the education sector, which were in line with the teaching passion he discovered while he was in the UK.

In 2019, God opened the door for him to consider an internship at GMC, and the possibility of full-time ministry thereafter.

“I never thought of doing full-time ministry when I was so young and early in my career. I was tempted by other job possibilities in education and law, which paid so much more,” Kyle admitted.

Yet the timing of the open door and a significant prompting from God eventually led him to take up the six-month internship and enter full-time ministry after that.

Kyle hanging out with the youths as part of his ministry work.

Fortunately for Kyle, who has a much stronger command of English than Mandarin, GMC is an outlier among the Chinese Annual Conference churches and its services are in English.  

In 2019, Kyle began serving full-time in Grace Methodist Church, taking up various responsibilities such the Young Adults ministry and Alpha programme.

Kyle serving and having fun with the teens during youth camp.

Kyle preaching at Grace Methodist Church.

Challenges abounded in the next four years of his ministry, which coincided with COVID.

“There were times of disappointment when I also questioned my calling. I felt my ministry didn’t really grow,” he admitted Kyle.

His pastors, however, saw otherwise and encouraged him to go for further theological studies, with a view to become a pastor.

In late 2022, God gave Kyle the confirmation that he needed to start his next season of studying for his Masters in Divinity at Trinity Theological College, as part of preparation for pastorship.

Kyle (bottom right) with fellow classmates during the orientation programme at Trinity Theological College.

Once he is ordained, he knows full well that it is highly likely that he would be posted to any of the Mandarin-speaking churches under the Methodist network of Chinese Annual Conference churches. Thus, on top of his heavy workload now, he is also taking weekly Chinese tuition.

“Many of the decisions or paths in my life don’t make logical human sense. I may not know what’s happening but my prior years of experience with God leads me to the point where I choose to surrender and trust God, and follow Him,” said Kyle.

“This is not the life I had dreamed of or planned for, but it is a beautiful, abundant life. Our choices matter, as they interact with the will and providence of God.

“God really has a plan for each of our lives.”

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