1932 - Gustaf Tornvall

July 23, 1932

Xi’an, Shaanxi

Gustaf Tornvall preaching to a group of Chinese men.

The Scandinavian Alliance Mission, which was founded in 1890, was a collection of workers from both Scandinavia and Scandinavian expatriates living in North America.

The Swedish missionary David Tornvall had lived in Pingliang, Gansu Province, since 1895. Over the years more workers joined Tornvall, so that by 1900 there was a small team of around a dozen missionaries in Pingliang. In 1925 David Tornvall’s health broke down and he died in Sweden. The work of the Tornvall family carried on, however, as they had been blessed with seven children—six girls and a boy named Gustaf, who had been born in China.

Despite his youth, Gustaf D. N. Tornvall took over his father’s ministry. He “preached, taught, and managed the work with skill and conscientious fidelity. The people loved him and trusted him and listened to his helpful messages.”[1] During a terrible famine in 1929-30, Tornvall did all he could to alleviate peoples’ suffering. He took a job as manager of a road construction crew with the International Famine Commission, providing thousands of men with an income by which they kept their families alive. Tornvall never lost sight of his spiritual responsibilities, frequently preaching the gospel to the workers.

Tornvall paid his workers in cash, so he frequently travelled by horseback to Xi’an to collect their wages. During one of those trips on July 23, 1932, Tornvall and three other men were

“robbed and murdered by bandit soldiers and their bodies so disposed of that they could not be found. So, the seed of another beautiful life having given a full measure of devotion to Christ was planted in China’s soil, an honour to the Scandinavian Alliance Mission and to the glory of Christ.”[2]

1. Grauer, Fifty Wonderful Years, 89.
2. Grauer, Fifty Wonderful Years, 89.