Once brought together by an angel, Alma and Amulek continue as missionary companions. At this point, however, we lose detail. Mormon shifts into generic discussions. He tells us that they preached “in their temples, and in their sanctuaries, and also in their synagogues,” but unlike the quoted sermons, Mormon doesn’t tell us where these places were. The previous itinerary of specific locations is replaced with general statements.
Continuing the vague nature of the descriptions, Alma and Amulek are successful, and they continued to establish the church. In verse 16 Mormon provides the idea of what establishing the church meant: “there was no inequality among them.”
One point of verse 13 has been of some concern, and that is the listing of synagogues. There is a meaning of the synagogue as a specific type of meeting place that postdates the departure of Lehi from Jerusalem. However, the term can also be used in its generic meaning of a gathering place, the literal Greek meaning of the word. Considering that it can simply mean a gathering place, and that we see it in translation, rather than in the original, provides ample explanation for what that term is doing in the text, even if there is a later-developed meaning of the word that would not have been in the Nephite text before translation.