Android : Stop / Kill A Thread?

I am basing my game off of the Lunar Lander demo.

The problem I am having is my game not restoring its last saved state when it comes back into focus.

When the game loses focus/quits it saves all the information to a Bundle correctly, then runs surfaceDestroyed() to shut down the thread.

When I restart the game, I thought onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) method was supposed to always start first, then restore the saved Bundle if it is not "Null". But because it sees that I have started/ created a thread last time, it jumps straight to surfaceCreated method.

The only thing I can think of is to find a way to get rid/destroy the thread so that it runs onCreate at the start. However the stop() and destroy() methods for threads have been depreciated. Is there anyway to do this? Or is there a better method of saving an instance of the game? code...