Meet Shamikka. Shamikka Smith purchased a home in Milwaukee’s Lindsay Heights neighborhood in November 2021. Since then, she’s become an active neighbor reaching out to build up community through her connection with her church, Global Outreach, whose parishioners call themselves The Gatherers.

Shamikka feels that God led her to Lindsay Heights, where she found a beautiful home in her price range for her family. Naturally gregarious, Shamikka met other active neighbors after Mr. “Traces” Wright knocked on her door to invite her to the Lindsay Heights neighborhood meetings. Since then, she’s built up relationships and was also inspired by the neighbors.

“They want to see their community rise up. They want to see love in the community. They want to see families out doing positive things. They want to see everything I see,” Shamikka says. “I’m like, well, we connecting! I hear God in you… It’s just coming out. God’s plan is being revealed.”

Shamikka brought the neighbors and her church together to help organize and promote a June 2022 event on the vacant lots on the southeast corner of 17th and Meinecke. Despite the light rain, people came out for an afternoon of prayer, food, music, dancing, and fellowship. Shamikka’s church, Global Outreach, partnered with Mt. Carmel Baptist Church, located across the street and which owns one of the grass lots. The presence of two cooperating churches was celebrated by neighbors happy to see something positive in a neighborhood challenged by drugs and crime.

The Gatherers also walked to Sunshine Park on North Avenue to perform street ministry to people gathered there. Pastor Carla Kimber laid her hands on one woman who closed her eyes as the church leader issued an invocation to set the woman’s soul free in the name of God. “The goal is to provide a space where the presence of God can just manifest,” Shamikka says. “And to bring forth healing, deliverance, and to set the captives free.”

Shamikka and The Gatherers have also started a “House of Prayer” event held Saturdays at 10 a.m. in the Walnut Way Wellness Commons. Her faith has helped her through her own hard times, so organizing prayer and worship is something Shamikka is happy to bring to Lindsay Heights. “I’ve been in a place where I have been broken,” she says. “Where my family, my kids go through stuff. And I had to meet God. And He met me right where I was. And He has been walking me day by day through my life. I have grown. I have matured. I’m just living life. And I’m so happy. But I’m happy because I have the Lord, I have God.”

Shamikka’s community outreach partner, Dávide Donaldson, explains a statewide effort of church leaders to use water and care for the Earth as themes to unite people across faiths who otherwise may not find common ground. Earlier in 2022, church groups collected soil and water from across Wisconsin to offer focused prayers and fill a time capsule intended to be buried at Belmont, Wisconsin, site of the original capitol building where the territorial legislature met before Wisconsin’s statehood.

“We linked arms with all these church groups and intercessor groups in Wisconsin and we all had our own county and our own prayer group that went and collected dirt and water,” Donaldson says. “So, we went to all of the rivers. Then we created a prayer packet, so everybody was praying the same thing.”

Donaldson credits Shamikka with bringing a higher level of community organizing in Lindsay Heights, evidenced in the June 2022 event on 17th and Meinecke. “We couldn’t have done this by ourselves,” she says. “It took many heads to plan this activity—many people with their own vision—and we united with all of our separate visions, and it’s just beautiful.”

Shamikka credits her faith in God with helping bring positive energy to Lindsay Heights. “That is the most important thing—is that we put our own self aside and let God lead us.”