Lauren McCain still is talking to people and sharing her faith.
Weeks after she was killed in the April 16 massacre at Virginia Tech, the 20-year-old from Hampton is beginning to attract attention from churches and Christian groups across the country through an 8 1/2-minute video clip - filmed less than two months before her death - in which she talks about her faith and her belief in an afterlife.
Her father, David McCain said the video is a fitting legacy for his daughter.
"That was her desire," he said Thursday. "She's telling the world about her Lord."
The footage was shot Feb. 22, on a windy day on the Virginia Tech campus, as part of a project by the school's Campus Crusade for Christ to compile videotaped interviews of students discussing their faith. After the shootings on April 16 that left 33 students and faculty members dead, the Crusade chose to post McCain's video on the Internet.
At one point in the interview, McCain describes a moment at a church camp when she was depressed and asked God to show his face to her:
"As human beings, we're not going to see his face until we're in Heaven, but I was like, 'Oh man, just let me die then, and let me see your face.' And he showed me - I could see him."
Such comments, David McCain said, have given her family and friends a sense of peace as they deal with her death. The video was shown last month at Church on the Rock in Pascagoula, Miss., at a pair of fundraisers the church held for the McCain family.
Robby Wyrick, the church's worship pastor, said it was a way to give back to the family after David McCain spent several weeks sleeping on the church floor while helping victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
David McCain said Lauren's funeral expenses "have been covered by God's blessings."
The money from the Pascagoula, Miss., church, as well as other donations that continue to come in, are being put in a college fund for McCain's younger brother and sister - Christian, 10, and Abby, 7.
"People from all over have really given of themselves - in the community, in the Navy," said McCain, a chief petty officer stationed in Norfolk.
"The letters they write are so touching. Letters from people who have lost children, and they really do help a lot. Letters from friends who we didn't even know she had."
Asked how he and his wife, Sherry, and their children are doing these days, David McCain sighed.
"We are coping."
Lauren Ashley McCain is the light of Christ... Her message here will be with the family and all of us forever until we see Lauren in Heaven
4/16/2007 33 families devastated 50 states coming together 1 nation coming together 1 world coming together
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Old Time Gospel