He had learned the alphabet in his childhood, while tending his father's flocks on the mountains, and became a reader without farther instruction.

At Oroomiah he was now both a learner and helper.

Three months of the summer he spent among his native mountains, preaching the Gospel in the villages around his home.
Little of the truth had been heard there for ages, except in the unknown language of the liturgy, but the people were eager to listen.
In September, Robert Glen, son of the Rev.William Glen of Tabriz, was hopefully converted while at Oroomiah on a visit.

He was born at Astrakhan, where his father labored seventeen years as a missionary, and was now employed as a teacher in a small school of Moslem young men.

The mission at this time had twelve schools in as many villages, containing two hundred and seventy-two males, with twenty-two females; and seventeen pupils in the female boarding-school, and fifty-five in the seminary, which was taught by a priest and deacon, under the supervision of Mr.Stocking.
The scarcity of copies of the Holy Scriptures among the Nestorian people would be remarkable, in view of their receiving them as their rule of faith and practice, if we did not remember how sorely they had been persecuted in the past, and how much they still suffered from Moslem oppression.