Picture above: Peter Torjesen (1892 – 1939)
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Peter Torjesen was born and raised in Norway. His father was a chimney sweep. Both his parents were devout Christians. They took Peter and his brothers to church every week, and read the Bible and prayed with them every day.
One evening in 1910 when he was seventeen years old, Peter heard Ludvig Hope, a Norwegian missionary, preach about all the people in China that had never heard of Jesus Christ. What he heard immediately touched his heart, and young Peter felt the unmistakable call of God. After the sermon, when the offering was taken, Peter emptied his pockets into the plate. Then he found a piece of paper and wrote on it “Og mit liv,” and also put that in the plate. “And my life.” The young man pledged to give his life for the people of China, and he would. It was a simple, but total commitment.
In 1911 Peter traveled to the United States to prepare to become a missionary. He began his studies in Rushford, Minnesota, at what would one day become Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Chicago), and then at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. In 1918 he was ordained by the Evangelical Free Church in Brooklyn, New York. He then traveled to China where he worked as a missionary with the China Inland Mission.
After gaining some experience working with others, Peter asked to be sent “to the hardest place, where there was no church and no one else wanted to go.” He was sent to Hequ. Arriving in November, 1921, he began holding meetings in his home and speaking in other places. Living simply, he developed relationships with the people around him.
While in Norway, he had become engaged to Valborg Tonnessen (1892-1970), a trainee nurse. After completing her training, she studied at a Bible
school in Oslo. She then travelled to China, where she and Peter were married in 1923. They went on to have two children.
They planted churches, started schools, and built a hospital. They saw that local girls did not have any opportunities to get a proper education. They also saw that people in the village did not have access to medical care. The couple decided to establish both a clinic and a Christian school in order to meet local needs. Previously, the nearest hospital required a 10-day walk. When the new clinic in Hequ opened for operation, it was always busy.
Over the years they suffered much with these people to whom they had pledged their lives. They faced famine, disease, bandits, and finally, the devastation of World War II. When the Japanese invaded, the Torjesens stood with the people of Hequ, providing food and medicine as they were able, along with building a bomb shelter under the church. At times they were sheltering up to a thousand people in their home and church.
Another Norwegian missionary who had known Peter’s ministry in Hequ for twenty years said: “He had climbed every hill and traveled every valley in the region. He could ‘eat bitterness,’ as the Chinese would say of him; meaning that he would willingly ‘eat’ the bitterness others were ‘eating’ around him, sharing their sorrow and empathizing with them. He never spared himself to bring the happy message of the Cross to the most hidden or forgotten villages.”
On December 14, 1939, Japanese airplanes launched a furious attack, dropping more than 250 bombs on the already-shattered city. A direct hit demolished the Torjesen’s little house. A beam fell on Peter’s head, killing him instantly. It was almost thirty years after he had written, “And my life.”
The funeral was conducted by two Norwegian missionaries who had hurried by mule to Valborg’s side. It was attended by many faithful Chinese Christians who wept openly with grief for their beloved pastor. Over the entrance to the funeral tent hung a silk banner which read, “He gave his life to save the people.”
Valborg and the children spent the years 1941 to 1945 in a Japanese prison camp. After the war, they lived in the United States for a time. Valborg returned to Norway and ran a home for missionaries on leave. She then also went on to work in Taiwan and Minneapolis. She died in Norway on December 12, 1970. The children and grandchildren of Peter and Valborg continued their work in China for many years.
This missionary story is like a million others since Jesus first sent his disciples out into all the world. It is a story of decision, love, risk, devotion, faith, sacrifice, and death. What makes this story so unforgettable is that three-word commitment, scribbled on a scrap of paper, “Og mit liv;” a promise to his Lord, made 116 years ago by a teenager, and kept.
In 1988, local officials from Shanxi Province informed the Torjesen family that Peter’s name was on the country roll of the people’s martyrs, and they wanted to erect a monument on the 50th anniversary of his death. Three generations of Torjesens attended the 1990 unveiling of the marble monument, upon which the story of Peter’s life and work was engraved.
(The story of three generations of this families work is told by Kari Torjesen Malcolm (1925-2014), the daughter of Peter and Valborg, in We Signed Away Our Lives: How One Family Gave Everything for the Gospel, InterVarsity Press, 1990.)
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Philippians 1:20 — According to my earnest expectation and my hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death. (Peter Torjesen’s “motto for China,” written down in 1918.)
Matthew 28:16-20 – (Jesus said), “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
John 15:12-13 — (Jesus said), “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”
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Oh God, you have created me to do for you some definite service; you have committed to me some work to do which you have not committed to another. I have my mission. You have created me a link in a chain, a connection between people. You have not created me for nothing. May I do the work you have given me to do and do it well. Amen.
–John Henry Newman (1801-1890)
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