The story returns to the beginning. In verse 2, Mormon had reminded his readers that the sons of Mosiah had been with Alma during his angelic conversion. The story that will be told doesn’t move that far back in time, but it does begin at the beginning of the journey.
We have an interesting doubling of the statement that Mormon will tell of their journeyings. In the first, in verse 5, we have another forward-looking statement. Although it is part of the introduction to the journeys themselves, it is both the ending of the previous outline as well as the beginning of the next phase. The content looks ahead.
Verse 6 begins the actual story of their journeyings, where the readers will see in a more chronological order the events that are briefly described in the synopsis given in verses 2 through 5.
Mormon places the timeframe for their departure in the first year of the reign of the judges. This confirms the fourteen-year absence, as the last sentence of the previous chapter (which was a chapter in the 1830 edition) indicated that Mormon is writing of events at the ending of the fourteenth year.
The brothers apparently take others with them, as suggested in verse 8, though we will hear very little any of those others as the stories of the brothers are related.