 He offered himself in 1854 to the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society (PEMS or, in French, "Société des Missions Evangéliques de Paris").He trained under Eugène Casalis, a veteran southern African missionary, and in 1857 was ordained at the Oratoire in Paris.His first posting was to the independent kingdom of Basutoland (present-day Lesotho), where the PEMS had been established since 1833.