Last night, WORLD’s Jamie Dean attended a prayer service at the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The Chinese Christians in attendance remembered a day that forever changed their lives:

Many of them were in Tiananmen Square during the massacre and witnessed the violence firsthand. Most weren’t Christians at the time and said the tragedy in Tiananmen Square was a turning point for their embracing Christianity, along with many other students and intellectuals of their generation.

Several of those Christians helped lead the prayer service from their homes in China, with the help of a computer and a Skype connection. Midway through the service, Mingxuan Zhang’s grainy image appeared on a large screen at the front of the church. Zhang—a leader in China’s swelling house church movement—prayed for the families of victims of the Tiananmen massacre and for the growth of Christianity in China. Like many others who prayed from the podium on the church’s expansive platform, or from small rooms in China, the Christians sounded a similar theme: repentance for their own sins and prayers for religious freedom in their home country.

Read Jamie’s report in its entirety here.