Bible Translators Theologians John Christian Frederick Heyer (July 10, 1793 - November 7, 1873) was the first missionary sent abroad by Lutherans in the United States.

"Father Heyer" is commemorated as a missionary in the Calendar of Saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on November 7, along with Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg and Ludwig Ingwer Nommensen.

After being confirmed at St. Stephen's Church in Helmstedt, in 1807, his parent sent him away from Napoleonic Europe to reside in America [1] with a maternal uncle (Wagener), who was a furrier and hatter in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,specializing in the popular beaver hat.

To this couple, six more children were born: He was a teacher at Zion School, Southwark, Philadelphia from September 1813 to March 1815, when he returned to Germany for a visit.

He spent the next twenty years ministering and establishing churches and Sunday schools in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, the mid-western states, and as far west as Missouri.

[5] In 1829, he used his private funds, along with that of twenty two other stockholders (all Lutheran clergymen), to purchase the former Adams County Academy and form the Gettysburg Gymnasium.

[6] He studied Sanskrit and medicine in Baltimore, and set sail for India from Boston in 1841 with three other missionary couples on the ship Brenda, under Captain Ward.

Supported initially by the Pennsylvania Ministerium, and later by the Foreign Mission Board of the General Synod, Heyer was also encouraged and assisted by British government officials.

Luis P. Manno Valett of the North German Missionary Society in 1845—grew to become the Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church (AELC), organized in 1927.

It also concentrates on diaconal works such as Establishment of Hospitals, Emancipation of Women’s Status, Rural Development Projects and Mother & Child Health Programme."