Around 1280, while still young, he was sent to live with his uncle, Abba Daniel (monastically known as Zekaryas), the abbot of the mountain abbey of Debre Maryam Qorqor in Gar'alta, a district of Enderta Province.

Taddesse Tamrat cites evidence that suggests that the interpretation of Ewostatewos regarding the Sabbath was not his own innovation, but had been practiced in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria before his time and only declared heretical in Egypt a few centuries before.

His followers later spread across northern Ethiopia, founding new monasteries that not only promoted Ewostatewos' interpretation of the Sabbath but created a religious hierarchy that was independent of the Abuna.

Their persistence eventually led to their success in 1450 at the Council of Debre Mitmaq in Tegulet, where Emperor Zara Yaqob was able to convince the Egyptian leadership to acquiesce to this observance.

James Bruce notes that the leader of this order, at the time of his visit to Ethiopia, was the abbot of Mahebar Selassie, in the northwestern corner of that country.