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WICHITA, Kansas — A Kansas girl with a degenerative disease crossed an item off her bucket list earlier this month when she became the first person in her family to be baptized into her church.
The family of 16-year-old Tia Shepherd gathered in her hospital room March 16 to witness the baptism, performed by a pastor from the nearby Bethel Life Center. Her father took communion for her, since she cannot eat normally.
"Knowing that I'm doing something, that I took that step, knowing that she...it's just a lot of feeling, lot of emotion," her father, James Shepherd, told KWCH.
Tia suffers from an undiagnosed degenerative disease that has left her deaf and without the use of her limbs. She lost her hearing at age 2 and has lost most of her vision within the past year, according to a Facebook page created in her honor.
Doctors said she does not have long to live, so she is trying to accomplish as many of the items on her bucket list as possible before she dies.
Other items on her list include visiting Italy and to "write my own song and have people hear it," along with getting a Yorkie puppy, which was accomplished shortly before her baptism.
Two strangers adopted a Yorkie from the Kansas Humane Society and gave him to Tia on March 14.
"You don't have to have much money to make a kids dream come true," Karla Guillen, whose daughter Ashley told her about Tia, told KAKE. "You just have to have the heart and the will and that's to try."
The No. 1 item on Tia's bucket list is to meet Taylor Swift. Her family said they have put in calls and are hoping for the best.
