He held his Sunday Kaffir service in a clearing in the bush, and gained many hearts to himself, and some souls for the Church, while toiling with his hands as well as setting forth the truth with his lips.

Mrs.Robertson at the same time worked upon the women by her tenderness to their little ones, offering them little frocks if they would wash them, caressing them with all a woman's true love for babies, and then training their elder children and girls, teaching them needlework, and whatever could lead to aspirations towards modesty and the other graces of Christian womanhood.
Often extremely ill, always fragile, her energy never failed; and there was a grace and dignity about her whole deportment and manner which caused "the Lady" to be the emphatic title always given to her by her husband and his friends.

Of these the Mackenzie family were among the warmest, and the Archdeacon gladly gave valuable assistance to Mr.
Robertson by supplementing an education which had not been definitely clerical, but rather of that order which seems to render an able Scotsman fit to apply himself to almost anything.
In February 1857 another sister, named Alice, joined the Mackenzie family, when they were on a visit to the Umlazi station.

Her quick powers and enthusiastic spirit fitted her in a wonderful manner for missionary labour, and she was at once in such sympathy with the Kaffirs that it was a playful arrangement among the home party that Anne should be the white and Alice the black sister.
Just after her arrival, it was determined that the Archdeacon should leave Durban, where, indeed, he had been only filling the post of an absent clergyman, and take a district on the Umhlali river, forty miles from Durban, containing a number of English settlements, a camp, and a large amount of Kaffir kraals.

Every Sunday he had five services at different places, one of them eighteen miles from the nearest, a space that had to be ridden at speed in the mid-day sun.