At Mission Abó, the convento was a complex maze of rooms where two dozen Tompiros carried out many tasks crucial to running the mission, including herding livestock, maintaining church properties, grinding corn, and preparing meals. Some neophytes lived there with the priest, while most continued to live with their neighbors in Abó pueblo in houses now buried beneath the mounds. In 1634, Fray Alonso Benavides wrote that more than 20 Indians took turns serving as watchmen, sextons, cooks, bell-ringers, gardeners, refectioners, and in other duties, performing their work with the same circumspection and care as if they were friars.